Date: June 24, 1990
Age: 13
Today we walked to just about every place on this card, from the bottom of the hill to the top of the steeple.
Love, Dad
This was the 17-day vacation from hell that made me skip out on next summer's trip to Italy. The previous summer was a 10-day trip to England. I was sick of extended vacations with my parents who I was embarrassed to be around. Partially that's just because of my age--late puberty/early adolescence is such a horrific time. But I'm not letting my parents off the hook either, with their declarations of my first period and making us all wear fanny packs, sized as if we were The Three Bears.
I had been to France before, when I was ten, on a student exchange program (far too young of an age for me to have done that, in my opinion. I was homesick beyond belief, even if some of these entries read as if I was all too ready to get away from my dad at any opportunity). While hitting all the tourist hotspots are usually worth seeing, when you're visiting during the height of tourist season, you're just like a herd of cattle being prodded through one site to another, and that's what our time spent in Paris felt like. My mother looks back on Paris as ugly and too crazy, but I think this one and only trip clouded her judgment, and I'm sure if she visited today, she would feel differently.
Later on in the trip we headed to Nice, which I remember all of us enjoying, to a degree; we were getting a little cranky by then, especially when you make high-speed, whirlwind day trips to Monaco, Italy, Cannes... What I do not remember having ever done, which I would have loved, was going to the beach and frolicking around in the Mediterranean. I do remember one of my parents telling me that the beaches were not sand there, but instead, pebbles. I guess this was their way of saying "no." But, Christ, people still laze about on a pebble beach, don't they?
My dad always had a hard time just relaxing and doing nothing on vacations--you have to get up early to make the most of the day! While my preferred vacations are those visiting cities with a lot of stuff to see, I make sure I don't get worn out to the point of no longer enjoying myself or what I see. But it took a long time for me to stop feeling guilty about skipping certain things. In fact, a few years ago I was in Ireland by myself, in a small town called Kinsale in January, and enjoyed my lazy strolls and writing in pubs so much that I wanted to change my inventory and stay a second night, to do more of the same. I spent far too much time deliberating whether I should do this, until I realized, fuck it, this is my vacation, I can do whatever I want!
I had been to France before, when I was ten, on a student exchange program (far too young of an age for me to have done that, in my opinion. I was homesick beyond belief, even if some of these entries read as if I was all too ready to get away from my dad at any opportunity). While hitting all the tourist hotspots are usually worth seeing, when you're visiting during the height of tourist season, you're just like a herd of cattle being prodded through one site to another, and that's what our time spent in Paris felt like. My mother looks back on Paris as ugly and too crazy, but I think this one and only trip clouded her judgment, and I'm sure if she visited today, she would feel differently.
Later on in the trip we headed to Nice, which I remember all of us enjoying, to a degree; we were getting a little cranky by then, especially when you make high-speed, whirlwind day trips to Monaco, Italy, Cannes... What I do not remember having ever done, which I would have loved, was going to the beach and frolicking around in the Mediterranean. I do remember one of my parents telling me that the beaches were not sand there, but instead, pebbles. I guess this was their way of saying "no." But, Christ, people still laze about on a pebble beach, don't they?
My dad always had a hard time just relaxing and doing nothing on vacations--you have to get up early to make the most of the day! While my preferred vacations are those visiting cities with a lot of stuff to see, I make sure I don't get worn out to the point of no longer enjoying myself or what I see. But it took a long time for me to stop feeling guilty about skipping certain things. In fact, a few years ago I was in Ireland by myself, in a small town called Kinsale in January, and enjoyed my lazy strolls and writing in pubs so much that I wanted to change my inventory and stay a second night, to do more of the same. I spent far too much time deliberating whether I should do this, until I realized, fuck it, this is my vacation, I can do whatever I want!
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1 comments:
I don't even think your parents were right that the beaches are pebbled, at least not all. They certainly aren't around Cassis or La Ciotat, but that's quite a way from Cannes. My son lives in Monaco and tells me it's tiny pebbles.
I'm just about to do a week's worth of Paris cards, but looking at this one of yours reminds me that I must have mislaid one of Sacré-Coeur. I know I had one somewhere. My father was anything but systematic about his filing.
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