I was 19, had a 7 month-old baby and a husband in the navy deployed in Mediterranean for six months.
Fearing my son would forget who his father was, I haphazardly planned a trip for the two of us to meet up with his father who was going to be pulling into port in Marseille, France.
Armed with two PanAm tickets (right after the bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland...that sure made for a scary flight!), a very large and heavy suitcase, one large and clunky baby stroller and one chunky 7 month-old, off we went.
In hindsight, I guess it would have been a good idea to find accomodations and a better idea of how to get from point A (point A being Nice, France) and point B (Marseille) but this was 1989, long before home computers and internet. I knew that getting to Marseille would involve taking a train but didn't have any plans beyond that. Having never travelled anywhere significant and especially not ever with a baby, I was very ill-prepared. It never really crossed my mind that I might have difficulty managing all my luggage and baby by myself and never realized that I might have to lug these up flights of stairs and through the narrow doorways of the trains. Luckily, very kind strangers took pity on me and gave me a hand. I started to wonder what I had gotten myself into but I'd made it that far so I had to keep going!
Once I arrived via train in Marseille, I was once again helped with my luggage by a very kind business man from Texas and then a porter took over who flagged down a cab for me, took all my luggage for me (including my open bag with my wallet on top) and loaded it into the trunk of the cab even though I tried to tell him that I needed my wallet from the bag. That was the last time I ever saw that wallet and all the money I had to my name...
The Texas business man, probably realizing that I was in a bit over my head, had wisely instructed the cab driver to take me to the US consulate in Marseille. Thank goodness for his last act of kindness and wisdom before we parted ways because once I exited the cab and to my absolute horror, discovered that my wallet was gone, if I had been anywhere else and not able to speak any useful French, I (we) would have been in so, so much trouble.
Things became a bit crazy after that. I ended up in the consulate, calling home to have money wired to me, trying to figure out where to go, how to get there with no money and how to contact my husband who was still not off the ship yet.
I was put in touch with a naval officer and his wife and was taken to a nice, small hotel where they were staying. They made arrangements with the hotel manager for paying my bill later once I had the money wired to me and they also escorted me to the local police station so that I could report the theft. Things got really strange (although oddly exciting) at this point. The naval officer (I really wish I knew this kind man's name so I could properly thank him) sat out in the waiting room of the police station with my infant son, feeding him a bottle while I was escorted into the detectives private office on the ground floor of an old building. once the door was shut behind me, the detective had me take a seat and wrote down all the details of the theft. After we finished, I stood up and walked towards the door where the detective then stopped me and then to my complete dismay, wrapped his arms around me started kissing me, on the mouth, in front of an audience of street maintenace workers right outside the window who were cheering the detective on. He asked to see me that evening, he wanted to take me to dinner. I was in shock. I remember stammering on about being married and there to see my husband and then I walked out the door of his office, shaking and my legs feeling like Jello-O. The officer looked up and asked me what was wrong. After telling him what took place behind the closed doors, I was told that was common practice for French men. I have never been fond of the French men since then and have always taken pitty on their poor wives. I noticed the way they all looked at me during my stay; they seemed to be oblivious to the fact that their wives were sitting just inches away and the look on the wives faces made me very sad.
After that bit of excitement in the police station, I then had the priviledge of driving from Marseille to Nice in a tiny little French car with no car seat for my son, a ton of traffic and at what seemed to me to be very high speeds. My shrieks of fear seemed to humor the detective but he at least remained professional during our search for the train porter (who we found!). He was brought in for questioning and of course denied having any knowedge of the missing wallet. The cab driver was never found and it was thought that maybe the two of them were in cahoots. To this day, I cannot believe the great lengths this detective took to find the perpetrator. Maybe it was in hope of me taking him up on his offer of dinner, maybe they are just super dedicated to crime fighting there in Marseille; I'll never know but I appreciate the crazy memories he's left me with.
The next day, my parents wired money to me, my husband was able to get his hands on some emergency funds and get off the ship to meet us. Things were looking up and I could finally get to experience the more "normal" side of vacationing in a foreign country. I had my first experience with a bidet, I learned that the very hot water from the cappucino machine in the hotel was safe for mixing baby formula with but that you really needed to let it cool down priot to mixing it or it did very bad things to your bottles. I experienced having a beer at breakfast at the mall along with the best submarine type sandwich I had ever eaten. I wandered around Marseille soaking up all the sights, the incredible architecture, the seedier side of the city with vendors selling some sort of animal head (with sharp teeth) cooking in some sort of rotisserie. I distinctly remember watching them go around and around and every time this head turned upside down, the eyeballs would ooze out of the sockets. I was so absolutely disgusted. I could here dogs, many dogs barking incessantly in a nearby building. I learned from the vendor that these barking dogs were what I was watching go around and around on the rotisserie. My disgust made the vendor chuckle and made me move on to find something a little less exotic to eat.
Eventually, my husband had to return to the ship and my flight home wasn't for several more days. The naval officer who'd helped me out when I first arrived had to leave as well and his very sweet and wonderful wife offered to take me exploring a bit before my flight home. We boarded another train and made our way down the coast to Cannes. She had spent time in the area before and showed me the spot where Princess Grace died after crashing her car, she took us to the beach (which happened to be a nude beach) but the only one who was nude on that cold February day was my son during a quick diaper change! She took me into the most opulant buildings and restaurants I have ever seen and encouraged me to try new foods I never would have tried on my own. She was such an amazing woman and she will never know how very grateful I am for all that she and her husband did for me and how they contributed to the most interesting and special of all my vacation stories (and I've had quite a few!).
You'd think after all that had happened to me during that trip, including missing my connecting flight home,being awake for over 24 hours and sleep deprived, walking around muttering to myself with people staring at me like I was crazy and having to carry my son everywhere because his stroller was checked in baggage, that I'd never want to go anywhere (at least overseas) again. That happens to be far from the truth. That trip left me with such strong feelings of excitement and wonder and I am always seeking new ways to capture just a bit of that to share with my boys. That has led on some pretty intersting journies which I will share with you later. People are always amazed at the things we do with our boys and ask how we manage to do all these things that they'd be terrified to attempt and I'll retell the tale of my first trip and tell them that if I can survive that all alone with an infant, I can survive about anything and that I'll always find special memories to keep with me forever even if things don't go quite as planned.
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