All this is to say that I’m discerning about which apps I actually use for family travel. They have to work easily and well and solve actual problems or I can’t be bothered. And one app that I have used on every trip during the past year is TripIt.

There are two versions of TripIt, one free and TripIt Pro, which is $49 a year. TripIt didn’t ask or pay me to write this review of their product, which I’ve liked since I started using it. But I did receive a year’s subscription to TripIt Pro for free as an attendee of the TBEX conference for travel bloggers last June. I like it so much that when my subscription runs out, I plan to renew it on my own dime.

To sign up for the free version of TripIt, simply visit the website and enter the email address you use for trip planning and a password. You can choose to use TripIt in its online version only, but to get the full benefit, I recommend also downloading the app to your phone or tablet.

When you purchase a plane ticket, book a hotel reservation, or rent a car and get an email confirming your reservation, TripIt will pull that information into its tool and create an itinerary for you. The itinerary includes all the vital information you need, like addresses, times, and confirmation numbers, but you can also easily customize it with maps and other details if there are things you want to add. TripIt is smart and automatically groups together items that are clearly on the same trip.

Having my entire itinerary for a trip with links on my phone is absolute genius, especially since I don’t even have to think about collating the information. No more painstaking data entry, staring at screens in airports to try and find our gate, or juggling folders and sheets of paper along with all of our family’s gear. You can sync TripIt with your online calendar as well and if you have friends, a spouse, or family you want to share your itinerary with, TripIt allows you to easily email it to them.

TripIt Pro is an even more robust tool because it sends you alerts that remind you to check in for flights or let you know when there are delays or gate changes, in my experience often ahead of when the airlines themselves let you know.  This is a valuable service for any traveler of course but is even more critical for families who might use that extra hour before arriving at the airport to let their children expend some energy before being confined to an airplane seat. There are other benefits that come with TripIt Pro including a promise to let you know if you are eligible for a refund if the price of your flight goes down.

If you’re into the social networking side of things, TripIt offers the opportunity to create a profile and share your trips publicly (you can of course also keep them all private). If you like, you can also sync with your other social media profiles and if you’ve got other friends there who are TripIt members with public profile you’ll see where they are going and can even engage in some friendly travel one-upsmanship.

Got your own favorite travel app? I’d love to know what it is and why. And don’t forget to check out Travel Tips Tuesday over at Walkingon Travels and Suitcases and Sippy Cups where you’ll find all kinds of other travel advice.

This is the second of my posts about this trip; read about the first community meeting I attended in Belanjé and the process being used to establish wells in these communities here. Many thanks are due to Expedia for covering most of the costs of this trip and to Water.org and Haiti Outreach for organizing and hosting it.

Arriving in Niva

Our large caravan off officials and aid workers leaves Belanjé and after a quick stop for some fluids in downtown Mirebalais, drives about ten minutes to Niva. Realizing that it would be rude to drink in front of the Haitians who have no beverages of their own, I guilty slurp the last of my cold can of Coke, which after the hours-long meeting in the heat at Belanjé tastes like ambrosia.

As we have been all day, we are late for this meeting, but that doesn’t prevent the committee from encircling our van when we pull up. After a round of handshakes and friendly “bon soirs” we all congregate under a tarp where benches and chairs have been arranged around a small table covered with a yellow cloth and decorated with a vase of plastic flowers.  We pray and sing a song about God’s goodness that all the Haitians seem to know. As there have been at each stop today, there are introductions, a few political speeches, and then it is time for the well committee to take over. Unlike Belanjé, this is the permanent, elected committee, not the provisional committee that has made the initial request for a well.

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We first meet Emmanuel, the president of the committee and an obvious elder in the community who tells us with great dignity that he was born in the very place where we have all congregated. But it is Melissa, the younger secretary of the committee, who seems to be in charge of this meeting (I’m operating on instinct and not information, but I have a feeling she is also responsible for the careful floral arrangement that decorates the table). Her manicured nails are each painted a different color and her manner is both fierce and humorous as she informs us that of the 61 houses in Niva, 30 have latrines and that the committee wants to encourage everyone – everyone! – to dig a hole for their poop.

Our already large entourage has been joined in Niva by Cèsar who works for DINEPA, Haiti’s governmental agency for water and sanitation. Because I speak some French, with careful attention I’ve been able to understand some of the Creole being spoken around me. But his thick accent and the speed with which he talks render him utterly incomprehensible to my ears. Yet his body language leaves little room for doubt – perpetually hunched shoulders, raised eyebrows and waving arms indicate absolute urgency. After the committee gives its sanitation report he leaps to his feet and urges those present to think about latrines, about how they are spreading disease and causing problems for themselves by not using proper sanitation.

Rogé Michel, the lead community aid worker from Haiti Outreach is more urgent here than he was in Belanjé as well – after all this is Niva’s second community meeting, and he wants to make sure that people understand the implications of poor sanitation. When he starts asking questions as he did at the meeting in Belanjé, the answers are incorrect – the first response is that the committee has said there are 60 houses and 60 latrines. With much use again of the word “caca” he launches into an explanation that piles of human excrement lead to flies, dust, disease that is tracked about everywhere. I lean over and ask our translator Ben if people here really don’t understand yet the problems caused by not having latrines. “Oh, no, they don’t know,” he says. “That is why Cèsar and Rogé are telling them and will keep telling them.”

A conversation begins. “Why can’t the committee help us dig latrines? Why can’t they give us money to build them?” asks a man with white hair. Melissa steps up and waves her manicured hands. Absolutely not! she says. You must help us get clean water, not the other way around.

Rogé decides this is a moment for illustration. He asks a young woman with a yellow knit cap who is sitting in the front row to stand up and lift the bench that is next to her. She does so, and is only able to lift one side. Then Rogé steps in, grabs the other side and together they smoothly lift the bench.

“What can you do to help us do this?” he says to the audience.

Next steps toward a well

Although there are still people who don’t seem to fully understand the finer points of sanitation, the meeting moves on. Because Niva is farther a long in the process of building a well than Belanjé, the community will actually be discussing costs, rules, and well hours. To raise money for well maintenance, Haiti Outreach requires that the people who use it pay an initial subscription fee as well as a monthly usage fee. Anyone who does not subscribe has to pay for water by the bucket and also has a more limited time to access the well. Thirty nine of the sixty one houses in Niva have paid for a subscription thus far.

It’s obvious that the notion of paying routinely to use the well is a bit of a tough sell, and so Rogé launches into a long list of all the costs associated with maintaining the well and making sure that it works properly, explaining that the initial subscription fee for each household does not come near to covering these costs.

Another important point that the committee and community must decide is what the well’s hours will be and who will be its guard. The well house and pump will be locked most of the time to prevent theft. The guard is paid according to the number of subscribers or the number of by-the-bucket refills and therefore (it is clearly hoped) has no motivation to give water away for free.

By the end of this meeting, it has been decided that the head teacher in the community’s school will serve as the well’s guard, daily hours have been established for well usage, and the monthly fee of 35 gourdes (there are 40 gourdes in a U.S. dollar) has been set. It has been made clear that if more people in the community subscribe to the well, the monthly fee will go down, and it has also been stated explicitly that the people in attendance need to make sure that as many people as possible dig latrines in their homes.

Exploring Niva

It is a lovely evening; the punishing heat of midday has given way to a more gentle warmth that is punctuated with a soft breeze. Golden light illuminates the landscape, rendering everything molten, beautiful. Nicole from Water.org tells me that school had to be ended early that day because there wasn’t enough water to give the children but that we are going to get to see the classroom. I look at the surrounding buildings and wonder which one is the school. It becomes clear a few minutes later when we are led not inside one of the structures, but into a tent that’s set up behind one of them.

We wander the area around the meeting space. We can see evidence here that people have some food: Bunches of bananas hang on one of the trees, a pig roots about in the undergrowth, and turkeys and chickens roam, pecking for insects and grubs. Nicole and I speculate as to whether a lean-to made of broad boards is a barn or someone’s house; later I will learn that it is neither, but houses a still where sugarcane liquor is produced. Our driver will bring a bottle of it to the table when we are finished with our dinner and Laura, Nicole, and I will each sample a small cup, the clean, sharp flavor burning our tongues.

There are homes, one with weathered sides and a cheerful yellow door, and I know that pictures of it will be gorgeous and artistic. But all I can think as I look at it is about the many cracks in walls and roof, its precarious perch on the side of a hill, the fact that all cooking has to happen out in front over a charcoal fire. (The next day I will ask Natasha, the Haitian woman working for Water.org, if mud slides are a problem during the rainy season and she will look at me as I were a fool and reply “Of course they are!”).

We head down the hill through trash-strewn fields. A small boy comes walking toward us balancing a large bucket on his head. He waits patiently while Kevin prepares to film him and then continues on his way, I’m sure eager to finish his evening chores.

Descending into a stand of trees, the air becomes cooler and pleasant. With the exception of the palm trees that line its banks, this creek looks almost exactly like the one in my suburban neighborhood in Delaware, the one where I send my children to play only to have them return thoroughly sandy, wet, and happy. In fact, when I go home Tommy will look at the pictures and say the same thing, before declaring “I wouldn’t want to have to drink that water though!” But the people of Niva do drink this water; they also wash their clothes and bathe in it.

Children splash next to the piling of an old bridge and are lathered by their mother. Another group of women works to gather water in various containers.

Melissa appears from behind us. I have mentally nicknamed her Miss Fabulous for her wide smile, sassy laugh, and passionate declarations to the community that they must subscribe to have a well and am therefore only this much surprised when she whips off her shirt and, wearing only her skirt and bra, does a little shimmy before strolling into the water, headed downstream away from the crowd of us gathered on the shore.

I feel suddenly as if I’m in someone’s bathroom while they are washing up and turn away from this peaceful place. In the lovely twilight, it would be easy to romanticize, but it occurs to me that despite the hard work of discussion and decision, no one at the meeting we attended had anything to eat or drink during the hours that we sat there. I think of how at a meeting like this in the United States, everyone would have their own personal water or soda bottle and that someone would surely have brought snacks to share. I think of how we have already made these hard decisions about collective good and hygiene. I think of how I can offer my children snacks and clean water every time they walk through the door.

And then I think of the contrast between this community and that in Belanjé – how far they have come, how much closer they are to having purified water and a process in place to care for it. And I understand all the more clearly just what Haiti Outreach and Water.org are trying to help people here do and why so much time must be spent in discussion at every stage of the process. On my way back up to the van, I pass an abandoned well house that was built for this community in the past by an NGO, presumably without the kind of work that we saw being done this afternoon. It sits locked and useless because someone stole the pump.

Although I’ve only been here for a day, so much has become clearer to me. I think of Rogé and Melissa and the lifted bench and how they only have two-thirds of the community subscribing to the well and how I had expected to come here and simply see people using the wells we had helped to fund. I’m utterly humbled and inspired by how hard these people are working to come together and change their circumstances – and I can also see why it is necessary to have faith and patience in the process.

In the next installment of the story, we’ll visit the community of Jenbal for the inauguration of their well.

The city ends abruptly. It seems like one minute we are passing ramshackle rows of cinderblock buildings, women balancing baskets of dried plantains on their heads, and dogs sniffing at dirty puddles, and the next we are in the middle of a plain, headed toward mountains, with dump trucks lumbering up their sides toward Haiti’s Central Plateau. Arid, flat space stretches on either side of us, broken in the distance by a stand of roofless buildings painted bright tropical colors, yellow, pink, lime green.

“Those are meant to be homes for people displaced by the earthquake,” says Natasha, a Haitian woman who works for the charity Water.org. “They are being constructed by the government and were supposed to be finished last spring.” Although front loaders and bulldozers surround the buildings, there is no obvious movement. They look like children’s toys, abandoned in the middle of an otherwise lifeless landscape. I mention that these buildings seem like they are far from the city – and pretty much anything else. Natasha shrugs – who knows why they built them here? It is clear from her body language that she thinks little of her government’s efforts.

I am riding with Natasha and two of her American colleagues from Water.org Nicole and Laura as well as my fellow blogger and Passports With Purpose co-founder Beth Whitman. In addition to our driver, we are also accompanied by “the two Kevins” as we’ve already come to call the cameraman and director (both so named) who will be making a video about the inauguration of a well in water-poor Mirebalais about 65 kilometers from Port au Prince and the site of the two wells that the Passports With Purpose raised funds to build at the end of 2012. Our trip has been largely paid for by Passports With Purpose sponsor Expedia.

I’ve been in Haiti less than 24 hours and its contrasts have already confounded me. Women pick their way carefully through rubble and mud on the streets of Port au Prince wearing polished high-heeled shoes. Broken cement is piled everywhere but the lobby of our hotel was decorated with row after row of what I’ve come to think of as “Voodoo bottles” – artfully sequined containers meant to hold spirits or spells. And although we have been greeted most places with smiles, my phone was snatched from my hands in the street the previous afternoon as I went to take a photograph.

I am rattled, expectant, having difficulty imagining what comes next. I want to see one of the wells, to know that it is making a difference.

First things first

But our schedule for the day does not include the viewing of any wells. Instead, in a carefully drawn up agenda, it lists meetings – first at the Hotel Wozo Plaza where we will be staying in Mirabelais, then at a community named Belanjé, and finally at another community named Niva. There are words like “review of by-laws” in the agenda and it is obvious that we are operating on Haitian time, since we haven’t yet made it to the first meeting yet and are already several hours late. I look at the mountains and palm trees out the window, marvel at how open this part of the country is after the crowded chaos of the capital city.

The hotel is surrounded by a wall and guarded by men with guns. Low white bungalows have charming porches and are draped in hot pink flowers. We convene for breakfast next to an empty swimming pool. Peacocks roam the paths, adding their cries to the hot air.

After we have checked into our rooms and eaten breakfast we are introduced to a large group of people, including the mayor of Mirabelais, various other officials, and a large number of young men with backpacks and cell phones. These are the “animators.” This is the Haitian word for the aid workers who help the various communities as they seek to build and establish wells. This name for them seems doubly appropriate given the tendency here to say that “water is life.” A smiling young man named Ben who has trained as an animator will serve as our translator.

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Leading the proceedings is Rogé Michel, a tall community development officer for Haiti Outreach, the local organization that Water.org partners with in Haiti. I will learn that Rogé is many things: orator, preacher, comedian, and activist, to say nothing of mentor to this generation of animators. A bottle of hand sanitizer is always clipped to his belt with a carabiner. He launches into a passionate description of the process Haiti Outreach uses to choose which communities will receive wells, a process, he repeatedly reminds us, that is driven by four key words: Transparency, responsibility, authority, and accountability. These four words are clearly Rogé’s personal mantra.

It hadn’t really occurred to me that there would have to be a selection process for the wells, but of course there is – Passports With Purpose raised enough to build two wells and Water.org is supporting the construction or rehabilitation of additional wells in 90 communities, but there are hundreds of communities in this area and the rest of the Central Plateau that need access to clean water. While peacocks squawk in the background, Rogé carefully details the first steps in what is a three-month process for a community to be eligible to receive a well. They must form a committee and write a letter of request. The letter doesn’t need to be written “on fancy paper with beautiful ink” as he puts it but must come from a variety of diverse people in the community (as opposed to one person or family). Then the officials from the various communities must meet with Haiti Outreach staff and review all the letters. Once communities have been selected, each must form a provisional committee of both men and women that is responsible for conducting a census and a sanitation survey to see how many households have latrines. An initial meeting is convened with Haiti Outreach to discuss these findings and for the organization to determine if the community is a good candidate for a well. We will be attending one of these meetings today in Belanjé.

“These communities will do whatever it takes to complete the technical aspects of the well,” Rogé says in his deliberate Creole. “The difficulty is getting the community to understand that this is just a start.”

Looking at Rogé’s serious face I realize how little I know about the work that is happening in Haiti, and I’m ashamed of my own impatience to see a well. I’m like the villagers that Rogé describes, focusing solely on the technical aspects of the water: We provide money, a well is built, the water problem is solved. The reality is that Water.org and Haiti Outreach are working not just to build wells but to change the communities the wells are built for so that they can start to elevate themselves above subsistence living. Over the next several days I will be repeatedly humbled by both the enormity of the task and the optimism and energy with which Rogé and his coworkers are undertaking it.

Belanjé: Seeking a well

We finally leave for Belanjé, our bus even more crowded now that Rogé and a number of his colleagues have joined us; others speed alongside two to a motorbike. After about ten minutes we pull up to a small stone building that turns out to be a church. About 30 people sit expectantly on narrow benches under a corrugated tin roof – with no phone to tell time on I’m not sure how long they’ve waited, but I believe we are several hours late. There are more introductions and a speech by the mayor that closely replicates the one he gave us back at the hotel expressing his gratitude to Haiti Outreach and reminding all present that he has been working with them closely.

We are presented with the committee’s simple report: The community of 254 people has 54 households, 21 of which do not have latrines. They seem to have little information beyond this.

I’m surprised when Rogé stands up and starts calling on people in the audience like a teacher of recalcitrant students. What have they learned? How many of their neighbors have latrines? Who washes their hands? Who uses soap? When one young woman starts to answer in a whisper, he interrupts her and imitates her low voice, cupping his hands to his ear as if in an exaggerated attempt to hear what she is saying. He seems dissatisfied with the answers he receives and starts talking about “caca” (Ben embarrassedly translate this as “poop”) and points out that in households with five people and no latrine there may be as many as ten piles of human excrement created each day. “Ten piles of poop on the ground!” he says. He talks about the need to wear shoes to the well house, to use clean buckets. He waves his arms, raises his eyebrows, now making the crowd laugh, now wagging his finger at them accusingly.

It turns out that this is as much part of the process as the geological survey and construction of the well house. Rogé asks questions and seeks answers to make sure that one person is not answering for the entire community, that the community as a whole has a vested interest in the construction of a well.

As Rogé continues his animated questions and jokes, I feel the need to seek a bit of air outside, although when I emerge I realize just how close we are to the equator and how little shade there is anywhere. A group of children surrounds me and I also remember that I have stickers in my bag for them. They crowd around, the older ones making sure that the little ones get their fair share.

Natasha and I talk to one of the girls who, just as my children would have done, has plastered the stickers I handed out all over her face. Her name is Jesila and she is 14 years old. I tell Natasha to ask her if she is responsible for getting water for her family. She indicates that she, and her brother who is standing next to her must get water from a spring every day. How far is it for her to walk? Natasha asks. Two hours round trip is the reply. Ask her if she ever misses school we tell Natasha, and the response is dismaying: She is late for school, unless she leaves at four in the morning on her errand. It goes without saying that the water she brings home so painstakingly is not clean and will not even be boiled before it is consumed.

I go back inside where the meeting is wrapping up. Hours have certainly passed since our arrival, and the people sit patiently as Rogé expresses doubt about their readiness for a well. He tells them that they need to get the members of their community who have no latrines to come to the next meeting, that they must work on their neighbors to get them to dig latrines. No one looks surprised or dismayed by this.

One of the provisional committee members comes up to me and Nicole, smiling. She is wearing a black and white shirt and a white headscarf glows against her dark skin. She begins to speak and Ben translates, “I am so glad you have come and I will be praying for blessings for your safe journey from here to back to your home. I will be praying for you, for blessings to you and your family.” Her lined face is so open and kind, her posture so dignified, her smile so generous, that I almost begin to weep. She looks to be at least 60 if she is a day and she has been sitting in that hot room for hours with no drink or food, just the hope that her community will finally have access to clean water.

I feel like I have been turned inside out by this place, by the beauty of people who want such a simple and practical thing and must learn such basic skills and information to get it. My phone was taken from me, yes, but if I could at this moment I would hand out phones and food and water to everyone I see. I would invite them to stand on my lawn while I threw my belongings out the window for them to catch. Although, of course, that isn’t what Rogé wants. He doesn’t want to hand this community anything they aren’t prepared to own and care for. He wants to provide them not only with the gift of a well but also with the skills they need to maintain that well so that it will last “pour tous temps” – for all time. What a privilege to be shown just how water and education will be shared with these people so that both things are their own.

In the next installment of the story, I describe Niva, a community further along in the process of getting a well and also share what I saw of how people in these places live, drink, and bathe before the wells are built.

Do I feel incredibly privileged? You bet. I know that with only two days to visit I’ll get a mere glimpse of what life there is like, but it’s my hope that even a glimpse will allow me to understand the country and culture in at least a small way. And for the first time since, I don’t know the Paelolithic Era maybe, I’m not bringing a computer or even an iPad on this trip. I’m hoping to be just fully in the moment, recording my impressions the old-school way with pencil and paper (and of course the more modern approach of taking photos with my phone).

If you have any questions that you’d like answered about Water.org or the work they are doing in Haiti I hope you’ll share them in the comments here, on the Passports With Purpose Facebook page, or on Twitter using the hashtag #PWPHaiti. Many, many, many thanks are due to Expedia for sponsoring both the fundraiser and the Passports With Purpose trip to Haiti.

I know I haven’t been around here much this week, and the first half of next week will be a bit more of the same. But when I come back from Haiti, I’ll be sharing all the details from my trip, finishing up my Parisian stories, and also offering a wealth of ideas and stories for summer travel, including a return to Chincoteague and a preview of what we’ll be up to in July and August.

But for now: I’m going to Haiti to see, listen, and learn.

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I’m going to be completely honest: Although I was a political science major in college with a focus on international relations in the 20^th century and its attendant armed conflicts I’ve never been much of one for visiting military museums. That is why despite the fact that I’ve spent a total of 14 months of my life in Paris, my visit to the Musée de l’Armée at Invalides in 2012 was my first.

We had all become intrigued by Invalides on our bike tour earlier in the week, when our guide told vivid stories of its construction, appropriation during the French Revolution, and role in the military life of Napoleon whose ashes lie in state there. A visit to satisfy our curiosity seemed imperative.

I had it on good authority (from no less than travel expert Wendy Perrin) that the audio guide at Invalides was worth the money. This proved to be the case, especially because there are areas of the museum that don’t have much in the way of explanatory panels. The guide offers an age-appropriate version for kids with scavenger hunts and other visuals, but 10-year-old Tommy who is always in a hurry to grow up insisted that what he wanted to listen to was the adult version. The nice thing is that it’s actually easy enough to do both, since you use the same device.

We started our visit inside the Dome Church, which is the building most people associate with this museum, although the entire complex also includes a series of long buildings arranged in a rectangle around a large courtyard. For centuries, these buildings have housed a military hospital/retirement home for soldiers (if you ever read the book Madeline as a child, you would recognize it from the picture where the girls are “very sad” about an injured solider in that courtyard with the church’s dome visible in the background).

The church was built by Louis the XIV and reflects all the splendor of both the Sun King himself and also the French military, which it now memorializes. Napoleon was laid to his final rest here in 1861, forty years after his death. The audio guide tells the story of the return of his ashes to France and his state funeral in 1840, which was followed by a tremendous excavation underneath the dome to create a space glorious enough to celebrate him. And celebrate it does; not only are his ashes encased in no fewer than 6 coffins, the surrounding floor and sculptures are memorials to his great military victories.

There’s nothing subtle here, except perhaps the light, which enters through the domes windows and plays magnificently across the ornate décor.

Also buried in the Dome Church is Napoleon’s son as well as his brothers and a number of other French military heroes including Marshal Foch, who helped to achieve the armistice at the end of World War I.

When we finished our tour of the church, we walked back into the courtyard and made our way to the extensive exhibit describing France’s role in both the world wars of the twentieth century. The exhibit actually starts in 1871 and shows the evolution of everything from uniforms to weaponry to tactics. I always find it interesting to explore the history of the world wars from the perspective of European cultures who experienced both of them so differently and especially France, which was of course complicit with the Germans in World War II.

Tommy, who is a history buff, spent over an hour in this area of the museum (and given the chance, I could have done the same). He wanted to visit every stop on the audio guide and read many of the panels, most of which are displayed in English as well as French.

Seven-year-old Teddy lost interest in the contemporary exhibit long before Tommy was finished, so we explored the canons that line the courtyard and made our way over to the exhibit displaying armor and weaponry from the 13^th  through the 18^th century.

There are certainly enough suits of armor and canons here to satisfy the biggest knights and castles buff; one of the most interesting rooms has been set up as the royal armory once would have been with row upon row of helmets, breastplates, and swords.

I was surprised by how beautiful Invalides is. Although it is meant to be a celebration of French military might, as is typical in France, it has a great deal of aesthetic flair. So whether or not you have an abiding interest in military history, I recommend putting this lovely museum on your Paris with kids itinerary.

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So the first thing you need to know is that while I consider myself an adventurer, I don’t actually have tons of evidence to prove that this is true other than the simple fact that I’ve gone a bunch of places with my kids. Sure I’ll get up and go at a moment’s notice, and yes, I did travel with a one-year-old for 13 months but our peregrinations were to the safe confines of places like Austin and New Haven. We never spent a night without running water or even in a country with a culture markedly different from our own. And although we love to hike and bicycle, we aren’t a big camping family. My husband Matt prefers the comfort of a bed to sleeping in a tent and up until now I’ve been too lazy to borrow all the gear we’d need to spend a night sleeping under the stars.

Before you cry “poser” I’d like to say that I believe that adventure is in the eye of the beholder. For me, a critical criterion that makes an trip an adventure is at least a little bit of fear – of the unknown, of danger, or perhaps simply of flying insects. This means stepping outside of your comfort zone into a place you’ve never been before emotionally, even if you have experienced it physically. And so it was that I discovered my own adventure on a Vermont mountain that I’d hiked many times before I had children.

Camel’s Hump was a day hike, but it certainly felt like an adventure to 10-year-old Tommy and 7-year-old Teddy. Although we’ve been climbing mountains with the kids since they were babies, this was the longest and hardest hike we’d ever attempted with them: About 12 miles round trip, with some steep climbs on the way up. It was a warm day and the forest wore its late summer green and we met a few friends on the way up including this satisfyingly fat, chartreuse fellow.

The reason Camel’s Hump is a well-known mountain in Vermont is that the top is above the treeline and has the distinctive dromedary-like shape. There’s rare arctic vegetation on clinging to the rock here and a National Park Service ranger is perched there all summer long to warn people off walking on it. It is very popular because of the 360-degree views that it offers, and can feel a bit like a parking lot on summer weekends.

But the day we were there, only a couple of other groups joined us and we had it mostly to ourselves in the company of the bearded ranger and a renegade chipmunk.

I had forgotten just how exposed the top is, how it has edges that one can walk to, peer over, and, hypothetically, fall off of. I was surprised to feel my chest clench as we wound our way up the last bit of path. Alarms were going off in my brain, telling me to get the boys down off that mountain, pronto. Of course, having worked so hard to reach the peak, all they wanted to do was get as far away from me and as close to the edge as they possibly could.

Trying to look casual, I glanced at Matt. He didn’t seem bothered in the least. But I couldn’t stop myself. “Teddy!” I called out sharply. “Come away from there, back toward the middle. Stay on the painted rock, that’s the trail.” My voice sounded strange and thin to me, and Teddy looked surprised before obeying – sort of. He changed his course and headed for a different edge, this one a bit further away.

For the next twenty minutes I found myself haranguing the boys and Matt as I like to think I’ve never done before, calling them both back from the edge until they all started to mock me by standing or sitting deliberately close to it.

An unreasoning fear had me in its grip and I felt taunted, alone. I snapped some photographs, yelled some more at the boys. Matt looked at me wonderingly and I could tell that he had no idea why I was so frightened. Had he asked, I’m not sure I could have told him. I tried to breathe, to enjoy the view, but it was impossible.

I almost cried with relief when we started our descent.

The return hike seemed twice as long. Tommy became convinced halfway down that we’d someone gotten onto the wrong trail despite the fact that we were going down the same way we came up. At some point we stopped for a break and to make some headbands out of bark. We drank water, and the boys danced around in their funny headdresses.

I realized that without any real discussion, they had all forgiven me for my primal lapse.

I also realized that this was probably the first of many times I will watch in utter panic from behind as my children approach the edge and peer over. “Don’t you think you should come back?” I’ll call to them “It’s not safe.” And they will laugh and say, “But that’s what makes it an adventure Mom!” And they will be right.

Like this post? You might also enjoy our Celebrate Travel carnival from last month, when we honored National Umbrella Day.

Before we visited the Cité des Enfants I had never spent time in the 19^th arrondissement of Paris before, which is why I planned something of an exploring expedition the day we were there. The Parc de Villette in which the museum is located is bisected by the Canal de l’Ourcq, and we followed it south and west toward the center of the city, stopping for lunch at La Bastide, a neighborhood bistro on the quay of what is called the “Bassin de la Villette” – a wider body of water that connects the Canal de l’Ourcq with the Canal Saint Martin.

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We crossed the Bassin on a footbridge after our meal and stopped to watch the bridge at one end rise to let a ship through. It’s not a drawbridge; the entire bottom raises and lowers using hydraulics.

The whole area here is leafy and quiet – there are some small playgrounds on the quays and many of the pleasure boats dock here, so it makes a great spot to watch marine traffic.

We strolled on through the neighborhood until we reached Le Parc des Buttes Chaumont. This undomesticated 19^th-century park is utterly different from its more refined cousin the Luxembourg Gardens. For one thing, it has a belvedere. I don’t know about you, but I much prefer that romantic name to “temple” or “cupola” or “gazebo”.

In more prosaic terms a belvedere is simply a building that is constructed to command a view. In this case Le Temple de la Sybille is perched on a sculpted island in the middle of a man-made lake. And a view it does offer.

The statue of Sybil seems to have gone missing, so Matt decided to take up the duty.

The boys loved climbing on the rocks around the temple, which I’ll admit made me nervous (and which is probably why it was so much fun).

We wandered back across the bridge in search of the park’s puppet theatre, which, as it turns out, was closed. But immediately across the path we found the “Pirates of the 19^th” – site of duck fishing and a big game hunt. The opportunity to shoot at lions and zebras isn’t something one general finds in American parks, so the boys were pretty excited especially since they both won prizes.

Tommy and Matt immediately had to play with the paddle and ball set. One big difference in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont as opposed to some other French parks is that lolling on the grass is not forbidden.

Which is why you’ll find people relaxing, playing, and even juggling.

Although this park is of utterly human origin including all of the streams and the lake it has a slightly feral quality that my kids responded to immediately. It’s not scary precisely, but you don’t know what’s going to turn up around each corner.

For example, perhaps you’ll find a grotto with a large waterfall.

Or someone watching you.

It feels like a place to run wild in, to play games and go adventuring.

We’re not a family that automatically visits children’s museums when we go to a new city, but when we were preparing for our trip to France in 2012, I invited ten-year-old Tommy to explore my City Walks with Kids: Paris Adventures on Foot deck of cards and choose some attractions he’d like to see. He immediately latched onto card number 25, which describes the museums of La Villette, a contemporary park in far northeast Paris that is home to a science museum, a children’s museum, a music museum and an IMAX theatre.

After consulting with seven-year-old Teddy, we decided that the Cité des Enfants, which as the name suggests is designed specifically for children and offers multi-lingual exhibits, would make a great destination for anyone visiting Paris with kids.

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We started our visit in the water play area where kids can manipulate water in a variety of ways, seeing for example what happens when it is blocked while moving downhill.

Or using water as a balancing tool or to send plastic balls flying through a tube.

In the communications area, some of the exhibits didn’t work, and others were either challenging to figure out or do. But we did really like the chance to practice writing in Arabic and Chinese characters.

The garden was full of creepy crawlies, including a large ant farm that kids can climb inside.

The different areas are labeled, including this place for the less fortunate ants.

I liked the greenhouse, which in addition to some lovely hibiscus contained a variety of butterflies and moths, some in their cocoons.

Without a doubt, the children’s favorite area (and the one where they spent the most time) was the television studio, where kids can pretend to be in a band, “film” themselves riding in a car, or make a news broadcast. Teddy in particular loved seeing himself onscreen.

Then it was on to check out various aspects of our bodies. Tommy could have spent the entire time racing against himself on the small track.

Teddy got caught up in a video showing the lifecycle of a human baby from conception to birth (much to Matt’s chagrin). We also had fun playing with the tool that allowed us to create “new looks” for ourselves and another that had us looking inside our bodies.

We had just a few minutes to try to generate some power in the factor portion of the museum and then the staff turned off the exhibits and ushered us out.

After we had to leave the Cité des Enfants, we took another hour to visit the Light and Shadow exhibit next door. This magical display, which was originally created for and housed in the Centre Pompidou, pretends to be the home of Archibald Ombre (ombre means shadow in French) a dreamer, poet, and “shadow collector”. Moving through different rooms, you are invited to read Archibald’s scrapbooks and to play over and over again with light and shadow using both your own body and series of objects.

While the exhibits in the Cité des Enfants were more typical of the kind of thing you’ll find at a children’s museum in the United States, the Light and Shadow exhibit seemed very French to me – mixing science, philosophy, and mysticism in a way that you don’t often see on this side of the Atlantic.

After we finished, it was getting to be lunchtime so we left for a stroll along the Canal de l’Ourcq to a neighborhood bistro, followed by a long explore of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. But it would be easy to spend the entire day in the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie museum complex and adjacent Parc de Villette. Of course, this is not an outing where you learn a lot about French history or culture, and it’s certainly not Parisian per se. But sometimes it’s nice for kids to get this kind of break on a European vacation – a day where they can just play with a lot of other children around them.

Paris is not an overwhelming city – in fact, I’d argue that it is very human and easy to negotiate. But when you’ve been playing tourist in Paris with kids for days, sometimes what you need is a quiet spot where you can read your Tintin book in peace and sip a cool beverage.

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Perhaps a spot with a lovely fountain.

And some fabulous dahlias.

A place to stroll in the cool shade of some perfectly manicured trees.

Would you believe me if I told you that this spot not only exists, it is a five-minute walk from the permanent hustle that surrounds the Louvre? The Jardin du Palais-Royal is tucked back away from the street and lined with arcades full of the most chic and expensive of shops that I probably wouldn’t dare enter even without my children in tow. But there are also a few garden-side cafes full of equally chic patrons and fonctionnaires on break from the Ministry of Culture housed nearby.

It’s the perfect place to relax, right in the middle of Paris.

Once you’ve refreshed yourself, pay a visit to Daniel Buren’s striped columns in the front part of the square where the garden is housed near the Comédie Française. You may want to sit here for a bit and reflect on your day.

Or maybe you’ll discover you have enough energy for a game of tag after all.

Like this post? You might also want to check out Paris in its proper order if you’re interested in a chronological list of posts from my family’s July 2008 trip to Paris, or visit my Paris page, which lists all of my stories and tips about my favorite city.

And whether you’re reading this post using my RSS feed or are a first-time visitor, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to the Mother of all Trips via email, as the demise of Google Reader and Feedburner mean that in a couple of months my feed url is either going to change or go away completely. Signing up for email updates means you’ll never miss a post (and next week I’ll be sharing stories of some famous Parisian museums plus my top Paris restaurant recommendations with and without kids).

If you know me at all, you know I love food, French food in particular. But in my experience, France can be a challenging country to dine in with children, unlike Italy, whose national dishes are pizza and pasta, or Great Britain, where the major cities tend to offer not only pub food but a wide range of kid-friendly ethnic options like noodle shops.

French food is specific and can be uncompromising, which some would argue is the secret to its greatness. But that greatness can be obscured when it’s 5 p.m. in Paris and you’ve got a hungry child on your hands. And as is true in many places these days, even France, it’s possible to get truly awful food in Paris even in the type of simple places in the student quarters that used to offer reliably decent cheap meals a mere decade ago. Throw in a language barrier and the famous hauteur of Parisian waiters and it’s easy to be intimidated by the prospect of eating in Paris with kids.

I know I was. The first time I visited Paris with kids in 2008, my children were 3 and 6 and I brought an au pair with me for the express purpose of being able to go out to eat.

(I’d like to add here that this sounds much fancier and more complicated than it was – my “au pair” was the daughter of my priest, I’d known her since childhood, and her “pay” was a plane ticket to Paris, purchased with miles and food and lodging during our stay. I offer more details of just how that worked in my post about bringing help to Paris.)

But even on that first family Parisian visit I ended up dining out with my children a few times (once, disastrously). And I learned a thing or two then, and on our subsequent visit in 2012, about the best way to enjoy a variety of good meals during a family trip to Paris, some of them in restaurants.

Here are my top tips for eating in Paris with kids:

Parisian markets are your friends. I have something of a friendly standing argument with my friend Amie of the website Ciao Bambino! about whether it’s best to rent an apartment or a hotel room in Paris. I contend that an apartment with a kitchen is the best option, especially when visiting with kids; she’s a huge fan of kid-friendly hotels, especially those with wonderful restaurants (and if you want tips on which ones to pick, you won’t do any better to check her recommendations for family-friendly hotels in France).

Obviously, if you have an apartment with a kitchen, you have the ability to cook, and since there are numerous weekly markets in Paris, to say nothing of an abundance small butchers, grocers, traiteurs (purveyors of prepared foods like pâtés and terrines), bakeries, and supermarkets (I’m a huge fan of Monoprix and Picard Surgelés) that will keep you provisioned with excellent produce and meat that you can prepare any way that you like. I would contend that this is the best option for families with very young children, children with food allergies, or very picky eaters.

But even if you are staying in a hotel and only have access to a refrigerator in your room, markets are a great way for traveling families to learn about what the French cook in their homes, to purchase the freshest produce and dairy products for snacks, and to find some prepared foods – especially those of other ethnicities. My kids’ favorite breakfast food in Paris is a samosa purchased from a North African vendor at the Place Monge market.

Picnic! (In French it’s a verb). Venture into any park in Paris at lunchtime and you’ll see plenty of French people enjoying their food on benches or the ubiquitous green metal chairs that the French so considerately place in many of their lovely public spots. As I described above, there are about a hundred ways to provision for a picnic in Paris. We pack our Swiss Army knife and then grab a couple of baguettes, some cheese, some sausage, fruit, and bottled water. Or, if you like your sandwiches ready-made, many bakeries sell them that way.

And if you don’t feel like carrying a picnic with you, many parks have cafés where you can enjoy a casual meal with kids at any point in the afternoon. My favorite aspect of this type of dining is that since it’s France, you can always get a glass of wine while the kids can tear around without anyone looking askance.

Eat dessert first. Dinner tends to be later in Paris than it is in the United States. Some restaurants don’t start serving until 7 p.m. Happily, Paris is also full of bakeries and ice cream shops. I’ve found that a late-afternoon sweet treat goes a long way toward extending my children’s ability to wait for dinner.

Dining out? Dress for it. If you go to a restaurant in Paris and aren’t French, you aren’t going to be able to hide the fact that you aren’t French. But that doesn’t mean you can’t act the part. Parisians would no more go out to eat in sneakers and t-shirts than they would drink milk with their meal. And French children are generally more dressed up than their American counterparts, which means that while I don’t worry too much about attire when we’re playing in the Jardin de Luxembourg, I do always make sure that my children are wearing collared shirts and respectable shoes when we dine out. (And I don’t know about your kids, but mine tend to sit up a little straighter and behave when I’ve made them dress for dinner.)

Find the French dish that your child likes. One thing that makes French food a little bit easier to figure out is that you’ll find many dishes repeated (with slight variations in preparation) at multiple restaurants. Certain classic dishes like steak and fries and sole meunière are easy to find and are great for kids since the preparations tend to be simple. On our 2012 trip to France, 10-year-old Tommy discovered an abiding love for duck confit that he was easily able to satisfy. And Teddy never met a lamb chop he didn’t like.

Note that if your child is a fan of soup or salad or cheese and you’d like to order only that course for him or her, you may have some difficulty convincing the wait staff to bring what they consider to be the first or final course at the same time as your main meal. In those instances, I’d just go with the flow and make sure you have some books or drawing materials for your kids to use while you are enjoying your food.

Don’t expect the staff to be happy to see you. But don’t worry about it either. No one is going to congratulate you for bringing your child out to eat; they probably won’t do so when you try to order in French either. But if your child is well behaved and orders off the menu, you’ve completed your end of the social contract and shouldn’t let any froideur on the part of the restaurant staff put a damper on your good time.

And now it’s your turn. Have you dined with kids in Paris? What are your tips? Please feel free to share in the comments below.

Like this post? You might also want to check out Paris in its proper order if you’re interested in a chronological list of posts from my family’s July 2008 trip to Paris, or visit my Paris page, which lists all of my stories and tips about my favorite city.

And whether you’re reading this post using my RSS feed or are a first-time visitor, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to the Mother of all Trips via email, as the demise of Google Reader and Feedburner mean that in a couple of months my feed url is either going to change or go away completely. Signing up for email updates means you’ll never miss a post (and next week I’ll be sharing my top Paris restaurant recommendations with and without kids).

I share this post as part of Wanderfood Wednesday at Wanderlust and Lipstick; be sure to check out the other yummy links you’ll find there.