The South of France

We spent the last ten days of August in Collioure, a small town on the Mediterranean about twenty-five kilometers from the Spanish border. Ochre and salmon buildings walled in the old town's pedestrian streets. A stone promenade traced the shoreline, including five small beaches, a medieval chateau, a former lighthouse turned clock tower and its adjacent church.

Our hotel, half a block and across a street to the old town, had a delightful inner garden and courtyard where we ate breakfast under a magnificent magnolia tree. Then we'd head to one of the beaches on either side of the clock tower.

Sam is obsessed with bell towers. Of the half-dozen parks we regularly frequent in Paris, he prefers the ones near churches so he can hear "the guy ring the big bell." He and Pat tell stories about what the guy does when he's not ringing the bell. If it's morning, maybe he's getting a coffee, or a croissant. If it's the afternoon, maybe he's off getting a chocolate cookie or an ice cream cone. If it's happy hour, he's having a pastis, no maybe about it.

So, to sit on a beach all morning with a bell tower so close you could touch it (that is, if you were willing to swim to it), was a dream vacation for the kid. Except for the minor detail that he was afraid of the water. He wouldn't play at the water's edge, or jump over the dribbles of waves, or stand in the clear turquoise sea to look at his toes among the rocks. He would only leave land if Pat carried him, careful not to let any body part touch water.

I had talked up the vacation to Sam by telling him the beach would be like a giant sandbox, only one where he's allowed to play with water. (In Paris, I forbid him to fill his bucket at the fountain--you try cleaning that mess out of the stroller.) But Collioure's beaches, are mostly rock, so we couldn't even build sand castles. (Pat did try burying Sam in the rocks a few times, but when you're a twenty-pound skeleton, too many rocks apparently inhibit breathing.) On our third day, Pat observed that, basically, we could've taken a train ride to a gravel parking lot and it would have all been the same to Sam.

By the middle of the week, Pat was swinging and dipping Sam into the water, though he never did stand on his own. After observing other beach-goers, the two even brought some leftover baguette to feed the fish (much to my inner-environmentalist's horror, though admittedly, I delighted in Sam's enthrallment). Oddly, Sam wasn't the least bit concerned by the schools that completely encircled them, flapping out of the water. Once, he even fed a fish right out of his hand.

Finn wasn't much better. He didn't like sitting at the edge with the waves running over him. (To be fair, the water was a bit chilly.) He did tolerate and even seemed to enjoy being held in the water more than Sam. But most of the time he was content to play with the shovel, drop rocks into the bucket, or take the little dump truck when Sam wasn't looking.

We brought our own snorkeling gear, and Pat and I took turns on little jaunts skirting the clock tower wall. We saw lots of fish, and once I thought I saw a small octopus tucked under some rocks.

We'd usually bring a picnic lunch to the beach. Twice a week there was a market in the town's main square with wonderful local produce (apricots and tomatoes, oh my!), cheeses, cured meats and saucissons, olives, honeys and so on. After lunch we'd shepherd the boys back to the hotel for a quick shower and their afternoon nap, and then a second beach outing (with ice cream snack, of course), before cleaning up, again, and heading to a restaurant, preferably with outdoor seating. We ate lots of moules frites, fresh grilled fish, tapas, paella, and local rosé wine. Most restaurants didn't open for dinner until 7:30, usually the boys' bedtime. Much to our amazement, we were able to push their schedule and occasionally even go for moonlight walks. (This was one of the few times the boys have ever been awake and outside late enough to see the moon--it was a very big deal.)

Twice we took the train to neighboring towns with sandy beaches, for a change of scenery. Sam, of course, didn't understand why there was no clock tower, resulting in a minor tantrum at one beach. At the other, we grossly underestimated the distance from the train station to the beach (an otherwise gorgeous expanse) and spent most of the excursion traipsing through uninteresting and hot suburbia.

One afternoon we took le petit train, a white motorized touring "train," around Collioure, over the vineyard-covered hills to the neighboring port town and back again. The train left from the street across from our hotel's entryway, and Sam was always keen to check if it was there and if it's yellow light was flashing.

Despite the fatigue of the boys' schedules, we had an enjoyable, delicious vacation. Any gloom we may have felt about returning to Paris, to work, to starting preschool, was tempered by our impending departure for Corsica on September 19th--the last of our grand vacations during our year abroad.