Our final days in Europe can best be described by a mix of elation and melancholy. We’re all eager to get home. To see family and friends. To get back into the office to work by way of face time rather than FaceTime. To walk into the grocery store at the hour of our choosing. But there is so much about Italy and all our adventures that we’ll miss terribly. The sights and sounds. The new experiences. The uncomfortable situations we have learned to laugh our way through. And, above all, the simple time as a family. Because while we’ve each found our own daily routines, and we’ve certainly gotten under each others skin on an occasion or two (or fourteen…), we have all appreciated the intentional togetherness. We hug more. We hold hands. We talk in more than one-word sentences about our days. And part of me fears that when we stuff the last things into our suitcases and lumber our way down the jetway a final time, all that learning and all that togetherness will somehow get lost amid the shuffle of a regular old routine.
The girls seem to share our moments of reflection. But I guess it’s good to have a little regret. It means we must have done something right.
Packing up nearly four months worth of life and shoehorning it into our suitcases was comical. As much as we tried to avoid accumulating “things,” our stuff had somehow magically expanded into a mass that began to dictate what sort of CAR we could actually drive. Perhaps our lack of a proper dryer to regularly shrink our clothes was the cause? For hours we packed in waves, pausing on occasion to jump up and down on the bags to compress the ingredients. And with each bit of success, it seemed, Lindsay would walk in with another pair of shoes that somehow needed to go. In the end, we left a rather large tub of things for the local homeless shelter.
Then we put Italy in the rear-view mirror, passed again under the Mont Blanc massif and headed toward Paris to return our car and catch our flight. We planned to have a final day in the Paris area, enjoying the holiday lights and embracing the exotic culture of the city a final time—a cultural exclamation point on the end of our time here. So of course we did what all Parisiennes do at this time of year. We went to DisneyLand Paris.
After all, what better place to see the Christmas holiday draped in such bright and festive garlands of commercial joy than Walt’s magical kingdom? DisneyLand Paris is a lot like DisneyLand California. Except that it is 2 degrees Celsius and the children smoke.
“We could ride Space Mountain” I said, when a banner ad popped up while searching “Holiday Things to Do in Paris.” Hannah’s eyes lit up. Lindsay rolled hers. Our one Disney trip had been when Hannah was too young to remember.
We were on the outskirts of one of the world’s great cities, on the lead up to Christmas. The Eiffel tower probably had lots of lights on it. And the storefront windows along the Champs Elysées would be aglow in magical displays. It seemed illogical and random. Spontaneous and silly. It made zero sense. But the new Coes were not about boring rationalization. The new Coes were about embracing life and leaning into every adventure with a smile. So off we went.
As we stood in line shivering at the Haunted Mansion, the sign above us predicted the wait time at just under 60 minutes.
“This is perhaps the stupidest thing we’ve ever done,” I whispered to Kel.
“We could be eating crepes and sipping drinking chocolcate in a Café on the Sienne,” she replied.
“I can’t feel my feet,” said Hannah.
A six-year-old blew smoke rings by my head. Then I realized he was just trying to breathe in the frigid air. We rode a few roller coasters and took the obligatory picture in front of the castle. For our final meal in Europe, we bought a side salad and muffin for 23 euro and huddled in a corner of the AdventureLand Café near a heater. It was dysfunctionally, illogically, and unexpectedly, wonderful.
Then, in the late evening, we headed to our hotel by the airport to stomp on our suitcases some more before our morning flight to Iceland.