Hello fellow toddlers of the world! It's your favourite travel blogger here to tell you about my recent trip to France.
My parents took my brother and me on a road trip to the Loire Valley for the half-term break. Long car rides can be boring, so I invented a game called, "Sing as loudly as you can until your brother starts crying" to amuse myself. Any song will do, but for the sake of irony, I recommend "Happy" by Pharrell. I played this game all the way from Calais to Chartres (pronounced: /shart/ as in what I did in my pants every time we had to wait in a long queue.)
The Loire Valley is known for its castles, so my mum paid 80 Euros in admission tickets to visit them. She said they were historical treasures. I don't know about all that, but I do know this pole outside of Chateau de Chambord was pretty freaking cool.
Just a heads up if you ever go to Chateau de Chambord: prams are not allowed inside, so your mum may ask you to walk. My suggestion is to complain about being tired until she carries you up the twelve flights of stairs, but be sure to escape from her arms whenever you enter a room with antique ceramics on display because Louis the 14th would have wanted you to touch his plates.
Adults have a mysterious affinity for eating dinner in European town squares. Something about the quaint, picturesque buildings makes grown-ups want to sit on open patios with drinks and bread. But who has time for restaurants when European town squares also have fountains in which you are supposed to run?
We spent our nights tent camping in the rain because my dad likes to tread dangerously close to divorce territory with his half-baked ideas. Tents are basically personal bounce castles. The point is to throw one's body around from wall to wall like a demon-possessed kangaroo auditioning for Australia's Olympic rhythmic gymnastics team. Only a thin veil of flimsy fabric separated me from my parents each night-they knew it, and I knew it-so I used this lack of bedtime enforcement to perfect my backflip whilst using the window cord as an apparatus ribbon. My Olympic dream seemed as close as my brother's head when I did a split leap over his pillow.
The other thing about camping is everyone wees in the bushes after dark. It is an unspoken rule, which requires discretion. Since rich French food didn't agree with mum's tummy, she tried to have a sneaky, quiet pee behind the tent but instead woke up the entire campsite when relaxing her bladder only to release a jailbreak of screaming farts into the silent sky. The next morning she avoided eye contact with other holiday makers. Don't worry, I made up for her lack of social skills by introducing myself as "butt crack" to everyone we saw.
We're home now and mum has put the tent up for sale on eBay. I guess that means we won't be going on holiday again any time soon.
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Crystal Lowery is an American mom working in England. By day, she does medical research, by night she wrangles two toddlers, a boy and a girl. She has made millions laugh on The Huffington Post, Scarymommy, Sammiches & Psych Meds, In the Powder Room, Mumsnet, For Every Mom and others. You can find her blogging at www.creepygingerkid.com and she'd love for you to follow her on www.facebook.com/CreepyGingerKid .