Amusing Challenges When Traveling

Little challenges always pop up for us when traveling to a foreign country and staying in a rental apartment.  Amusing little challenges that you don't really think about when you're at home.  For us, there seems to be a recurring theme over the past four trips to Paris, Barcelona, Paris again, now Madrid, and I'm sure in Vung Tau.

1.  Finding the building's trash bin.  For some reason, the property managers/landlords seem never to know where to put the rubbish.  We've been in Madrid for almost 2 weeks and just found the trash bin last night.  No more illegal dumping for us.

2.  Where is the nearest grocery store?  Paris was a little easier this year because I became familiar with the names of the stores over last year's trip so a search on Google Maps was possible.  Also, Nana Ruthie Pooh was a big help doing reconnaissance around our new apartment before we arrived.  Our Madrid property manager gave us a book with information about the area, but unfortunately, it was useless.  So we kept an eye out for stores as we walked the kids to school and found a couple of express stores a few blocks away.  Little did we know that there was a bigger (according to European standards) store just one block away.  In Europe, it's a big deal to find the nearest store because everything you buy, you have to carry back.  That includes heavy items such as water, milk, etc.

3.  Sleep configuration.  We haven't had much luck finding three bedroom apartments for this year's three month vacation to Paris, Madrid, and Vung Tau in our desired neighborhoods, so we've opted for two bedrooms.  That always poses to be a bit challenging since Rocky-girl and I are both light sleepers.  We've tried putting the kids together, but Rocky gets so excited she won't stop talking to her brother.  We've tried giving Rocky her own room and Peanut sleeps on the floor in our room, but I can't sleep because I hear Peanut moving around all night.  Our third try was to put me and Rocky in one room with the white noise machine and the deep sleepers in the other.  We usually get the mix right by the time we leave for our next destination.

4.  Dinner time ... not!  We eat dinner at 7:00 PM, which apparently is extremely early according to the French and Spanish.  We thought we had it bad last June when we were searching for restaurants that opened by 7:30 PM for dinner in Paris.  Then we got a taste of Spanish eating times in December when we were in Barcelona, but lucked out when we found a great Pakistani restaurant that served all day.  Since we've been in Madrid, J and I have poured over Yelp and the web to find decent restaurants that serve dinner, not just tapas, before 8:30 PM since Madrileños don't start dinner until 10:00 PM.  We're still looking.

Walking to school in Madrid, Spain

One surprise discovery is the kids have become great walkers.  Thinking back to Paris, we hoofed it for 1 hour across the city from the south end of the 15th arrondissment to Notre Dame, which is about 3 miles, with Peanut and Rocky walking beside us.  We'd walk around and play for a while, then walked back.

In Madrid, we walk 20 minutes uphill to school every day, crossing one very big intersection.  I think the kids are getting used to walking everywhere as the whining is kept to a very tolerable level.