Trains, planes and automobiles. And ferries.

After eight happy years living in Asia, we had to make our departure something special, and this is it: a 13,000 kilometre overland odyssey by rail from our Singaporean home back to the UK, and a new adventure.

Jasper, Ben, Kitty and the two of us old enough to know better set off from Woodlands railway station in Singapore on July 1st bound for London’s Waterloo.

We’ll be catching sleeper trains, bullet trains, sleek trains and rickety trains; and will travel some of the world’s most storied routes including Vietnam’s Reunification Express and the awe-inspiring Trans-Siberian Railway.

It promises to be an eye-opening affair, criss-crossing a dozen countries and, so long as we don’t miss too many trains, one which will span 32 days.

Brave or foolhardy? Probably both… we‘ll find out on the Long Trip Home.

By the time we pull into Britain’s busiest railway station my guess is none of us will be left in any doubt we’ve been halfway round the world… watch this space — and wish us luck…

Zoe, Oss, Jasper, Ben and Kitty Shine x

Day 33 and the Invincibles limp into London

We DID IT!

HAVING RACED halfway round the world in a month, the foot was easing off the accelerator as we closed in on London and our last day on continental Europe started in the laziest of fashions.

Day 33 was heralded by snores, stretches and yawns with nobody awake in the Shine suite of the Luxembourg Parc hotel until gone 9am – except, of course, bionic Mrs S.

This tells its own tale of mental and physical exhaustion: apart from SuperMum, we are all dead beat.

 Yawn…stretch… do we really have to get up?

And as sure as eggs is eggs, hand-in-hand with exhaustion comes terrible behaviour. The punishing schedule of the Long Trip Home is to blame rather than the stolid Shinettes. Rules will have to be put firmly back in place once this adventure is finally over, but for now it is about getting through each day.  

Today’s breakfast was, pound-for-pound, just as chaotic as yesterday’s with Ben  winding everyone up and Kitty on super crotchety form.

We somehow got to the end of it with nobody sin-binned or red-carded and remarkably avoided clearing the restaurant with our noise, although a few minutes later found our kind, tolerant waiter sucking feverishly on a cigarette outside.

We had obviously made an impact on someone.

Ben’s favourite colour in Luxembourg Gardens

The highly charged nature of breakfast made a trip to the Luxembourg Gardens a necessity rather than a pleasant distraction before being cooped up again in yet another train carriage, and it was probably the highlight of our trip to Paris as far as the children were concerned.  They ran wild in the beautiful gardens and even wilder in the playground by the tennis courts which we’d had to pay to go into which stung a bit, but was well worth it in terms of fun and energy burnt off.

Kitty just took control of the situation, trying out every bit of equipment and bossing her brothers around. She was totally at home on the toy train (much to our amusement) and was so absorbed that she didn’t notice her brothers disappearing to play on the crazy winding flying fox.

All aboard…

All the children appeared back in the hotel room looking as if they had been down the mines or up the chimneys, so Mrs S showered them all and packed whilst I tweaked yesterday’s blog and fished out pictures for it.

Checking out and climbing into our taxi, Mrs S thanked the lovely proprietor of the hotel for our stay lavishing praise on her for the accommodation, apologising for the behaviour of the children (‘don’t worry, they are only young’) and promising to return. The proud smile of the owner turned into a rictus grin as she begrudgingly handed over a business card.  I have a feeling the Invincible Shines are not necessarily on her top ten wish list of returning guests.

We made it to the Eurostar with very little drama and thinking we had done our usual arriving at the station with rather too much time to spare, sauntered through an empty check-in and passport control… only to find the other travellers were already on the train.  Perhaps we have become too casual at the end of our trip.

Clambering aboard our final train
Emotions were running high, and the whole Gare du Nord experience was a pretty visceral one.

For me it was when we reached UK Immigration Control in Paris and were served by a lovely balding Englishman, full of good humour and welcome. It really felt like being welcomed home after a long time away – not just a 13,000km madcap adventure, but eight years of living as a foreigner in someone else’s land.

For Mrs S it was the sight of the Eurostar itself (well, she has become a total train spotter these days). Luckily, as usual, we had our fellow passengers to break the mawkishly sentimental spell.

As we were boarding we encountered the same couple with a little boy Kitty’s age, as we had run into at security.  We had been queuing behind them for the X-ray machine but ended up using the one next door since it had taken them nearly 10 minutes to strip down their pushchair and load more Mamas and Papas baby equipment onto the belt than I think it is possible to display in one store.

Mr MumsNet has a lot to do

When we first encountered MumsNet dad he was looking extremely stressed whilst his anxious wife cradled their precious 2-year-old boy.

When we bumped into them again they were waiting to get into our carriage on the train, with another couple with a 9-month-old.

“You’re very brave travelling with a child in the first year of its life,” Mrs MumsNet remarked to the non-plussed parents.

“We’re finding it hard enough with our 2-year-old,” Mr MumsNet pitched in. Mrs S, meanwhile, was finding it hard enough to keep her breakfast down at this point.

Perhaps we were this precious when we brought Jasper to Paris as a baby, but I don’t remember it that way.

We raced through the stunning French countryside: yellow wheat fields, green maize crops and small French villages.

“Hello – there’s a real world out there,” I reminded both boys as their noses got stuck into Minecraft, and the pair of them savoured their last glimpses of France and then the tunnel.

Their smiles when we reached the UK side of the tunnel were genuine and interested and that was lovely to see.

Back in the UK – yessssss…

And then we pulled into – what? NOT Waterloo??? St Pancras? Well, that tells you how long it has been since I got the Eurostar, and gives a hint at perhaps how we ended up in Mongolia without a visa and at the Russian border with no valid one.

Note to self – must check tickets and travel plans more carefully.

In any case it is too late now to change the blog from Woodlands-to-Waterloo to Singapore-to-St Pancras… what’s in a name, right?

We felt elated at realising we had made it back and were ‘home’ and this time with no time limit, sad goodbyes or long flights to endure at the end. 

It was a day we have all been looking forward to and one Mrs S has been feeling very emotional about, especially knowing how much it means to her mother too.

We were congratulating ourselves on the St Pancras platform platform that we had made it back to the UK in one piece. Snaking towards the front of the taxi queue we were snapped out of our reverie by the sound of Kitty faceplanting into a pillar and splitting her lip open. Lesson: don’t celebrate too soon.

Finally we made it to the Marriot hotel in Swiss Cottage where a major Ben and Kitty meltdown was narrowly averted and we popped round the corner to see ‘white granny’ for the first time all together in a year.

Seeing “white granny” again…

Shattered as they were, the children really pulled it out of the bag for their reunion with Granny and we had a lovely time together. Kitty was very chatty, Ben was keen to get Granny outside and Jasper sat and told white granny and Neeley tales of our trips including details I’d felt sure had been lost on him.

We had tea and cake and ice lollies and played football in the sun and then it was time to go.

Football in the sun

Suppertime shenanigans

Where’s my son gone? Is it too late to sign him up for Singaporean military service?

One last push through supper in Primrose Hill and then the boys collapsed into bed and Mrs S disappeared downstairs to see her great old friend Yael.

So this was it.

Back in London. Strange and, for now, comforting. Though whether things live up to expectations or wanderlust sets in again, who knows?

There will be one more post to follow when we have had time to digest and reflect on the last 33 days, but for today, it was a case of survival.

And we survived.

Would I do this again? 

That would be sheer MADNESS…

 

 

 

Day 32: The End of the Road… in so many ways

PERHAPS IT WAS just accumulated tiredness from the European late nights that we have adopted.  Perhaps it was the emotions associated with being nearly home. Perhaps it was the weariness associated with being on the road, without a home for more than a month. Whatever it was, Day 32 was not a good day for two of the Invincibles – the smallest two – and the rest of us felt it keenly.

The Invincibles in Paris…

We had slept like Kings (and Queens) in our beautiful Parisien hotel, and were feeling optimistic as we lay in bed mulling the trip so far, and the day ahead in our favourite city.

That was before we opened the adjoining doors between our room and the Shinettes.

Zut Alors!

The black circles under Kitty’s wild eyes along with her wild hair should have set alarm bells ringing. As should have Ben’s pale face, his glinting eyes and fleecy well and truly attached to his nose.

They were both watching the same universal cartoons they have enjoyed in each hotel dubbed into a range of languages.  It somehow seemed less annoying in French.

Jasper looked OK but when faced with the chance to benefit from the volatility of the other two, it wasn’t long before they were all winding each other up, faux wrestling on the bed which always ends in — yes, you have all heard it before and said it before — IN TEARS.

We hadn’t even made it to breakfast yet.  This didn’t bode well.

We did make it down eventually, all of us keenly anticipating the fresh croissants washed down with steaming hot chocolates and café crèmes which we had missed out on yesterday.  I was especially keen to taste a croissant, having been deprived by Ben on our first morning in Paris (No, I still haven’t forgotten or forgiven him entirely).

Perfect Peter at breakfast

Kitty provided the first explosion.

She didn’t want to sit down but she did want ‘ham’ on everything. Mrs S was about to fetch some of the cold cuts that Jasper is so keen on but the shouts of protest from the smallest member of our troop indicated that ‘ham’ actually meant ‘jam’.  Framboise to be precise, s’il te plaise.

This ‘ham’ was to go on everything: croissants, pains au chocolat, her face and her t-shirt. And anyone foolish enough to get in her way would be ‘toast’ (probably some on that too please…’NOW’).

When she was corrected by Ben waving his pink ham on a fork and telling her that this was ‘ham’ and that was ‘jam’ you could hear the fuse fizzing to light.

I then made the major mistake of asking her to sit down, attempting to preserve the serenity of a peaceful breakfast room.

BOOM. Off she went. I rapidly moved her outside for the standoff to commence. It was pleasant enough standing in the morning sun opposite the Luxembourg Gardens, but perhaps less so for Kitty who was trying so hard to really squeeze out the tears and make me feel bad. I was trying very hard not to let her ruin my morning.a

I am NOT in the mood for this…

She finally relented and I returned, only to find Jasper sitting alone, his breakfast plate piled high with everything from the buffet as usual. He informed me that Ben was not feeling well and that Mrs S had taken him up to the room in case he was sick all over our pristine linen table cloth (well not so where Kitty had been sitting). When Mrs S returned Kitty was determined to give her a taste of what she had been missing, so very quickly she was whisked away and deposited next to Ben in bed so the three of us left could enjoy our breakfast (though now it became a challenge to finish the lovingly prepared orange juices and hot chocolates abandoned by the other two and less of a leisurely breakfast).

We did eventually make it out mid morning to find a gorgeous summer’s day in Paris.  It was forecast to reach mid-30s but the lovely European dry heat and not the swampy conditions we have endured for the last 8 years.  The sky was azure-blue and there was a hot breeze.  Paris could not have looked more beautiful and we were determined to turn the day around. 

Wandering through St Sulpice and St Germain de Pres we stopped and looked in the windows of all the alluring boutiques making a mental note to come back on a shopping trip without the kids one day.  Another life and another budget was required!

The Invincibles window shopping…

Shopping ladies…

First stop was the Eiffel Tower as voted by the boys.  There was also interest in the Louvre principally to see the Mona Lisa since both boys have now done topics on Leonardo da Vinci and were keen to see his most famous picture in the flesh.  Having set off so late we thought that the queues for this would be a nightmare and aware that we had some very fragile and volatile members of our entourage, thought that the Eiffel Tower might be less stressful and more distracting than a crowded art gallery.  It would have to wait for another visit and perhaps a solo one with one or other of the boys.

We jumped on the Metro full of anticipation.  Nothing could have prepared us for the queues, not even the number of tour buses stacked up on every corner or the hoards at Notre Dame the night before.  It snaked around most of the four legs of the tower and wasn’t moving.  The boys took one look and decided it was a waste of time.  Mrs S and I were delighted that team Shine was so sensible and pragmatic (our expectations hasd been particularly low as you might imagine).  We had been expecting a tantrum from Kitty, a long sustained whining session from Ben or at least a silent but still just as effective sulk from Jasper.  No, they ‘didn’t want to waste the whole day in Paris in a queue like those crazy people, Daddy’.

Getting an eye-full…

The Shines at the Eiffel

So we took lots of obligatory photos requiring me to adopt some embarrassing, strange and downright uncomfortable positions to try to get the boys looking ‘taller than the tower, Daddy’, ‘does it look like I am holding it up daddy?’…Still I couldn’t complain.  They had made such a good call.

We unanimously decided to do what Mrs S and I both think Paris lends itself to best, and that is wandering about soaking up the sights and the sun.  We pottered along the Seine, jumped on a bus when the little legs looked to be giving up, ran about in the Tuilleries and made full use of the kids playground before finding a shady spot for a much needed drink and some lunch.

Bouncing fun at the Tuilleries

We rediscovered what all good parents know, and that is that lunch outside in a park is so much less stressful than trying to get wriggly, tired, hungry, over excited children to sit still and quietly in a restaurant where every protest and whinge echoes off the four walls.  After a delicious lunch of baguettes and croques we continued our wanderings to buy some more tourist tat, survey the pyramid at the Louvre (Jasper not keen, Ben and Kitty not fussed) and then wound our way through the streets back to the hotel with a sleeping Kitty in my arms and a fast fading Ben. Stopping only for some mouthwatering summer fruit and some presents for the folk back home, we cooled down in our hotel room with the punnet of strawberries and juicy peaches whilst Kitty continued her transforming snooze and the boys got back to their first love: their iPads.

Lunch in park

While the iPads performed their job to perfection, Kitty and I headed out for Le Retail Therapy and a quick whizz round the clothes shops of the 6eme.

“This one niiiiiiiiice, daddy. This one pretty,” Kitty cooed as assistants melted. “This one goooooooooooood,” she insisted, hanging on to a blue shirt in the Serge Blanco shop, and the look the shop assistant gave me indicated that a refusal to buy would be tantamount to child abuse.

Fortunately the shirt was at half-price – note to self, bring Kitty shopping again. We were on a roll and Kitty assisted me in buying a pair of red jeans so my French look was (almost) there. We failed to complete it with pristine white trainers, a fay scarf and straw trilby, but you can’t have everything…  

As we walked into the hotel room each with a beautiful stiff cardboard bag tied with ribbon, Kitty announced to a bemused Mrs S that “me buy daddy niiice pyjamas”… 

Daddy’s new look after shopping with the Kit-ster

It suddenly dawned on us that this was the last night of our Long Trip Home and we should mark it in some way. We had planned to take the boys up to Sacre Coeur for a view over Paris that they had missed at the Eiffel Tower and to revisit one of Mrs S’s favourite haunts. We decided to book a nice restaurant nearby for a celebration meal, and found one that prided itself on being delicious, reasonable and far enough away from the tourist melee of Monmatre. We duly booked it, showered, dressed and set off again on the metro up to Chateau Rouge.  Whether it is that I am getting old, or it is having the family with me, or it really has changed, but the area I remember as a little bit edgy but exciting seemed this time to be desolate a little depressing and a touch threatening.  There were empty beer cans and other rubbish discarded all over the street, and groups of men sitting or standing about on every street corner.  It was interesting but not especially pleasant and the boys began asking us when we would get to the ‘touristy bit’.

Sacre Couer

Befriended by a nice middle-aged Algerian man we wound our way up to the bottom of the steps to Sacre Coeur and made a mental note to cancel the dinner reservation having passed the restaurant on the way up and not keen to take the kids back to that part of town later at night.

Tourist tinsel town here we come.

We climbed up in searing heat, Mrs S carrying Kitty the whole way and me losing them all briefly, to be rescued by Jasper.  Ben was too tired and hungry to scale the dome and Kitty too heavy to carry so I volunteered in my smart and so far relatively unsweaty shirt to stay down with the little ones whilst Jasper raced up the dome followed by a panting Mrs S who did not remember it being as high or as steep in her 20s.  Apparently the view was spectacular.   I only have the photos as proof.

View from the top

Stopping for a much need drink in one of the twee cafés , Mrs S and Ben plumped for one of Richard’s favourite drinks, a citron pressé. Something Mrs S remembers fondly from her childhood holidays in France and something Ben thinks is the pinnacle of drinks because you can put as much sugar in as you like.  Jasper went for some of the minty mouthwash, whilst Kitty snaffled a bit of everyone’s.

Ignoring our backpacker acquaintances from the trip, and our exhausted wallets, we decided on a cheesy restaurant right in the middle of the square with lots going on so the kids would be distracted, there was plenty of ambient noise to drown out our three and plenty of taxis waiting to take home tired tourists.

Kitty and Ben vied for worst behaved children in the entire restaurant, if not Paris.  There was shrieking, singing, dancing, running about, pulling each other off chairs, stealing food from each other’s plates, winding each other up.  There were a few moments of peace and quiet when Kitty decided to play with her Brats pony (shout out to Freja for so generously donating them to the trip) and when Ben needed to recharge with some fleecy action and had to finally eat some food to qualify for an ice-cream.

Anaesthetic

Still it was fraught.  Mrs S and I decided to toast the final night with a glass of champagne, and a lovely bottle of wine.  We then decided to numb the pain with a final glass reflecting on whether there are blogs and diaries written across the world in the past month documenting lovely days, dinners, trips, sights, only ruined by this awful English family who couldn’t control their rowdy children.  Luckily we will never know and we can stick to our rose-tinted (rosé-tinted?) version of the Invincible Shines.

A day in Paris:

 

Day 31: Paris — a Japanese Invasion and an unexploded bomb

I NEARLY FELL OUT of my bed. Seriously. Not in a Mr Bean way, or a figure of speech way. I literally nearly fell out of bed when the hordes of Japanese tourists stormed our train at one o’clock in the morning, giggling and shouting and jostling and stamping and making so much bloody noise that I almost fell out of bed. It wasn’t the widest bed, but still.

I know the notice was not in Japanese, granted, but it was there in big blue and white signs and written in FOUR other different languages, to avoid just this situation.

“On night journeys, only for travellers with sleeping-car tickets. Please be quiet,” it read.

Please. Be. Quiet.

It would have been comical had I not been so enraged. Having managed to finally get to sleep on the plank of wood Deutsche Bahn laughingly considers a bed, I was shocked awake by a cacophony of young Japanese travellers raising merry hell in the middle of the night.

Mrs S sat bolt upright too. I won’t tell you exactly what I said to her, because there are many regions in the world where the inclusion of those words would place this winding tale on a banned list, but I was far from happy as the squeals and shrieks continued unabated outside.

It sounded for all the world like a five-year-old’s party that had got out of hand.

But – deep breath – trains are definitely the best way to meet ‘interesting’ people, right?

Best viewed without volume… 

Mrs S slid down from her bunk as I tried to regulate my breathing and she prepared to confront the source of our discomfort.

Still the noise continued, accompanied by the regular rattling of our door handle followed by more laughter or confused grunts.

Bravely putting her head into the squawk-zone she was assaulted not only by the din, but by a sea of red hair, pink hair, green hair and yellow. By scores of youngsters in outlandish costumes, in shoes designed to make walking all-but impossible, and all wheeling enormous, ungainly rigid suitcases upright on rollers – not one of them with a cat in hell’s chance of fitting these monsters into the mini-cabins we had been sleeping in.

There were swarms of people entirely oblivious to the discomfort they were causing and not one paid Mrs S a blind bit of notice when she went into the corridor.

But then loomed their teacher or tour guide. Now we would see some discipline, surely. But oh no… she just continued to speak at top volume, not necessarily bossily or aggressively but loudly and directly and totally oblivious to Mrs S’s disgruntled, ruffled, sleepy appearance in her pyjamas a couple of inches from her face.

The teacher disappeared with nary a sorry or a sheepish look, leaving Mrs S with a 6-person queue to use the tiny WC at the end of the carriage which was serving more than 60 people.  Mrs S was at this point seriously annoyed and also desperate to make use of the WC before trying to get back to sleep. 

Please. Will. You. Be. QUIET?

Unfortunately they seemed to be spending an average of 8 minutes each in the loo and that equalled an awful lot of time given the size of the queue.  Finally Mrs S gave up and had the brilliant idea of using the newly attached 1^st class carriage which had been shackled onto our carriage (formerly the end carriage as we pulled out of Hamburg).  With a hugely smug look at all the students who had so rudely interrupted our sleep, she snuck into the vastly superior lavatory and then stalked out head held high and climbed back into her bunk triumphantly.  Small things…

It felt like we had been asleep all of FIVE MINUTES when we were rudely woken from our semi-slumber by a repeating penetrating digital beep of 1980s-alarm-clock proportions. It was insistant and most unwelcome given the night we had not had. Looking at our watches incredulously and simultaneously, Mrs S and I learnt that it was 7.15am.  We were not sure what we were being woken for but given that we were arriving in Paris Est at 9.23am we thought it would herald a lovely breakfast and time to clean teeth and change before depositing us in gai Paris.  Ben, myself and Mrs S were all wide awake.  It turned out Kitty and Jasper were way smarter at this point. They slept on.

It turns out the Binatone-beep had been heralding our arrival into France, a milestone Ben was thrilled about.

“Mummy, now you can speak French to everyone,” a thrilled Ben told Mrs S in a statement of pure if misplaced loyalty.

He is of course too young to hear the full story of the Sorbonne Story.

8am came and no sign of breakfast or the outskirts of Paris.  8.30am, Kitty woke up and I went looking for some sustenance only to find some fairly rank coffee and 3 stale chocolate chip muffins.

So what’s the big deal about French food?

But that was OK.  We would be arriving in Paris in less than an hour.  Steaming café crème and fresh croissants beckoned.  Jasper finally awoke to reject the muffin.  Then came the announcement.  We were very un-Germanically late. An hour and a half to be precise. Our hearts sunk.  We wandered the corridors dreaming of breakfast and watching our fellow travellers curiously. It was interesting to observe our Japanese friends/enemies in the daylight.  They still seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time primping in the bathroom and loo.  Were they ‘re-dying their hair’ Mrs S asked?

The kids and even Mrs S resorted to electronic devices whilst I felt neglected and took refuge in a snooze (given I had spent much of the night awake trying to keep Kitty in her bed and blotting Japanese noise out of my head). 

Friendly family. Thanks for the support, guys…

When we finally pulled into Paris Est as the Germans called it, or Gare de l’Est en francais, we thought our troubles were over, only to realise that the Japanese tourists in our coach were multiplied by at least 5. And all had to travel within at least a foot of each other. Whilst impressed by the chivalry of the boys helping each of their mad-haired, femail companions off the train with their huge and unwieldly bags, it didn’t help our little party of 2 adults, 3 children and by now 9 bags, get off the train together without losing either luggage or children.

We then realised that no taxis in PC, health-and-safety-EU-regulated-Europe can take 2 adults and 3 children in a taxi unless it is a fully certified 7-seater, and they are few and far between.  Having realised this the slow way (ie asking weary taxi driver after weary taxi driver and watching our smug fellow travellers with smaller parties hopping in ‘our cab’ we decided to split up.

Obviously there was the usual squabbling over who went with whom.  Ben won the prize of Mrs S and they set off in the first cab. By the time I finally arrived with Jasper and Kitty, they were hanging out of the window in our gorgeous bijoux hotel opposite Luxembourg Gardens, waving us a smug ‘Bonjour’ in the searing summer heat, having settled in admirably.

L‘Hotel parfait… merci Mme Shine – quelle un choix excellent!

They’d paid 10 euro compared to out 20, arrived 15 minutes before us and neither bloody one came down to help us with the bags. Nor did they save any of les-miniature-croissant-snacks they’d been given – Ben wolfing the halves Mrs S saved for us. “They were so small they weren’t worth saving,” he assured my rumbling stomach.

After the quickest of showers (and turning our lovely 4 star hotel into a ‘chinese laundry with yet another hand wash – something we are now experts at) we charged down to the 6^th towards St Sulpice in search of a crepe or a croque or a dead rat or  anything to satisfy our hunger (NOT INCLUDING FULL-OF-CROISSANT-BEN). And by this time it is nearly 1pm and everyone is beginning to unravel.

Chinese laundry

Naturally, the first couple of places are either too bar-like (for them, not me) or had no space.  Everywhere looks as about child friendly as our Stockholm hotel.  We finally find a pancake place called Crepe Clown which looks friendly enough and seems distressingly apt. With luck , we’ll get some food quickly and avoid a total meltdown from everyone, mostly me.

Our waiter, though welcoming, has his own very definite way of serving, however, and it is not ‘our turn’ for quite some time. By this point Kitty has lost it.  Moaning, lying on her seat, on the floor, kicking her brothers before finally launching into a full-on tantrum. This is like dealing with an unexploded bomb for all of us and although it is something we have become used to, and is to some extent our fault (tiredness and hunger create a very volatile mixture in all of us, but particularly the two youngest) it doesn’t make it any less stressful when it happens, especially in lovely, sophisticated Paris.

Savoury and sweet crepes, a croque, some water and a long lingering look at the slightly cloudy cider that our fellow lunch guests were ploughing through, and we hoped that we had survived.

Paris strolls 

Unfortunately Kitty had one last tantrum up her sleeve related to her desire to push the table so far away from her that the table and its contents landed in my lap. She did not get her way but was instead hastily ushered out and home to bed with a rather grumpy Ben and a Daddy just relieved to avoid any more cross-cultural misunderstandings.

Unsurprisingly my little madam was sparko within seconds of being put to bed and I stayed in our hotel with the snorer and Ben while Jasper and Mrs S went to explore in the glorious sunshine.

Their report when they returned was of longing looks in chocolate shops, patisseries, boulongeries, fruit stalls, ice-cream stalls, crepe stands and the odd gadget and kitchen shop. Jasper had already fallen in love with Paris and Mrs S had done her best to indoctrinate him in the sights and tastes of our beloved city. They also came back with information about the round boat trip on the Seine which would take in all the major sights without the need for tired legs to walk more than a couple of hundred metres. I knew there was a reason to send them off.

So we bought our tickets, avec carte blanche naturellement so what could go wrong. Go on, ‘ave a guess…

“Sorry monsieur, did you buy these tickets ‘ere?” the young uniformed women asked me.

Honestly, this had to be some sort of joke.

But no… what is it with Les Invincibles?  If there is a ticket screw-up to be made, we nail it. So instead of boarding the bateaux in relaxed fashion, 4/5 of the Shines get on board while I sigh and huff and puff and insert my bloody card for a refund I don’t even want and then get reissued with more tickets (the ones I had asked for in the first place) and run to the boat before it pushed off.

I am met on the quayside by a Frenchman waggling his head, and waving his finger. “Not you, you cannot come on” he is saying, smiling. Franlky he had better bloody well watch himself my rising blood is rapidly telling me, before I see he is joking and asking Ben whether or not I should be allowed on…

It turns out he is a fantastic tour guide who had won over the Shinettes. He’d handed Ben the boat microphone but extracted only an excited giggle before

Jasper announced to the entire bemused fee-paying public ‘Bonjour! Je m’appelle Jas-piERRE…’ in the most Franglais accent since ‘Allo-Allo’.

The boat trip was a huge success and, as the Asians we have become (ahem), we ticked off most of the major landmarks whilst basking in wonderful sunshine and enjoying the slight breeze. We also took in some of the more peculiar sights such as the sunbathers in the skimpiest of swimming trunks on the banks of the river…one man in particular in what Mrs S informed me was ‘plough pose’…not that lovely a sight given the very small, tight, white speedos which made up his entire wardrobe.

We leapt off at Notre Dame but cancelled our plans to go in as the queues were gargantuan… but we took plenty of pictures to compare with the Hanoi Notre Dame we’d taken the children to just weeks earlier.

The Hunchbacks of Notre Dame

We enjoyed eye-wateringly expensive drinks in a lip-smacking patisserie but went for supper in a little place Jas-piERRE and Mrs S had found on their solo travels. The food was delicious and there was only one instance of a Kitty unexploded bomb which was dispelled by Jasp taking her and me on a trip to another of the finds of his trip with Mrs S – a chocolatier with copious free samples. That is called a win, and then it was home, happy to bed.

 

Day 30: Hamburg and the breakfast of kings

HE HAD WAITED the best part of a year for it, but the day had finally arrived. The high point of Jasper’s Long Trip Home, this apex of epicureanism was piled high for him in the form of speck and hams, salmon, rollmops and cheeses. Broken up only by breads of every hue, this meat, fish and dairy fest had been the focal point of Jasper’s journey and the reason he so often cited Germany as the country he was most looking forward to visiting.

“I am going to have 15 courses,” he said delightedly, his tongue lolling about and his eyes rolling, as he skipped to the lift.

And the Royal Meridien did not disappoint, with a fast-breaking feast on the ninth floor, set against the stunning vista of the Alster.

He was true to his word, too, and ate and ate and ate. In the end I had to prise him out of the breakfast bar with a croissant wrapped in a napkin as he looked longingly backwards at the Aladdin’s Cave of breakfast buffets…

Breakfast of Kings

 

All manner of fish and meat on display…

It was only after several false starts (mainly our hotel room safe malfunctioning and the poor maintenance man who was sent on multiple occasions to fix it, thinking we were seriously stupid.  Oh and Jasper needing one of his last minute ‘comfort breaks’ – more on that later) that we finally made it out of the hotel.

We walked along the beautiful banks of the Alster, watching all the sailing boats setting sail for the day, and made it on to our free ferry to the centre of town (FREE… such a beautiful four-letter ‘F’ word after the wallet shredding expense of Scandinavia).

Just as we eased into our window seats, Kitty decided she needed a ‘Jasper break’ too, and so poor Mrs S spent the entire scenic voyage wrestling with our pink child and her nappies in a very clean but extremely cramped WC on board.

We piped ourselves off when we reached the majestic Rathaus, and it was then we both realised that neither of us could remember or had appreciated how beautiful a city Hamburg was.

Jasper boards the Saselbek 

We looked around the Rathaus – what an apt name for a seat of government – and straight away spotted a water fountain gargoyle who looked as though he had just spent a couple of days paying Scandinavian prices too, before heading further south towards Wily-Brandt Straße.

The street’s name rather predictably caused much hilarity with the boys (“you said Wily… hahahaha).

A late 19th Century depiction of how I felt after receiving my Swedish restaurant bill

Catching the lift to the top of Nikolaikirche, the tallest building in the world from 1874 to 1876 and still the second-tallest building in Hamburg, popped Ben’s ears and blew the cobwebs away for the rest of us on a sunny but breezy day.

Blown apart by the Allies in World War II the state of the once-splendid Gothic structure serves as a cautionary tale against war, and there is a curious plaque at the top which explains how the Allies’ carpet-bombing of civilian areas had been in breach of international war and not the right tool to break the German masses’ loyalty to Hitler, but hastily added that the “fuse for the firestorm” had been lit in Germany by the raids on Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry and London.

Still, though, it was with a slight feeling of uneasy responsibility that I descended the 480ft building.

The boys’ favourite street name

 

 

 Fantastic view Sober reflection

After that sober reflection it was time for a little light relief and we headed to Miniatur Wunderland – three floors of model railways (we have a thing about trains, you may have noticed), towns, villages, airports, sea terminals and pretty much everything else you can think of.

The Wunderland was indeed Miniatur but from there on things got super-sized: from the queue, to the girth of the people, to the backpacks they were swinging around with gay abandon instead of checking them in at the entrance (as the signs and announcements repeatedly reminded…)

It was a strange crowd. There were, naturally enough, plenty of children, but alarmingly there were also healthy numbers of child-free adults, pushing and elbowing their way to the front of displays – often crushing children underfoot – to take photos of the models.

Not everything is small

Scrum time

The boys had a great time, though, and Kitty grabbed a nap on my shoulder so we all left refreshed and rejuvenated to head back to the Royal Meridien, another trip across the Alster which we could all enjoy this time and another slight disagreement over the hotel bill.

Even Mrs S got to enjoy the Alster on the way back… 

We had just enough time for a quick bite to eat before heading to the station and went to a small café at the end of Gurlittstraße which proved to be, despite a day of culture, high and popular, the talking point among the Shinettes.

Jasper went to do a Jasper. On his return he urged Ben to go to the loo with him. Straight away. They came back looking quite pleased with themselves, asking Mrs S to go with them. And also me.

I relented and before we got to the bottom of the steps was told to close my eyes.

“We will tell you when you can open them,” Jasper said.

“OK,” said Ben. “Open them.”

 
You can sometimes overthink these things…

Now, I kind of think I got the joke in its entirety, but, for the purpose of clarity, both boys decided to spell out just why this was hilarious.

“The man has got his legs closed, because otherwise you would see his willy,” Jasper explained earnestly.

“And the woman has her legs open to show she doesn’t have a willy,” Ben chipped in.

“Yes guys, I get that.”

“No daddy. Because if the woman had her legs closed you wouldn’t know if it was a woman or a man,” Ben added very seriously. “And you need to know which loo you can go into.”

“OK. Let’s go and finish supper, boys…”

We allowed plenty of time at the train station. And that was probably our first mistake. Catching sleeper trains in Europe is an entirely different experience to the Asian form.

In Asia it pays to get there a little early – almost always the train is waiting for you and you have time to board at leisure: a major plus when you are lugging eight bags and three children around.

The Hamburg to Paris City Night Line train pulled into Hamburg central station with five minutes to spare and I was still panting for breath, stretching my shoulders and flexing my neck from side to side to relieve the pain of hauling overstuffed bags up the steps, when it slowly pulled away again, rocking down the rails towards Paris.

It was 26 years ago almost to the day that I last caught a sleeper train in Europe. On that occasion it was from Marseille to Paris and I was the sixth occupant to climb into my bunk – the top one on the left hand side – and for the duration of the journey my five French cabin mates took turns to stay awake, staring at me with their dark eyes, waiting for me to fall asleep, or so I imagined. Of course I spent that night lying awake as we chugged northwards for hour after hour.

I am not sure what I had been imaging this time round, but can report that the trains are no different now than they were then.

The cabins are more cramped than their Asian cousins – there are six berths crammed into the space where four fit back East.

Not even really room for a small one

Plenty of room up top though

Snug  

The beds are hard and they are thin, you cannot roll over and there is very little room between your nose and the mattress above.

And no room at all on the floor once you’ve dragged your bags on from the corridor.

I tried to type a little once the children were dressed for bed and sitting up top, but was unable to even sit upright, the mattress above my bunk was so close.

The children had no such concerns, sprawled out to share some iPad viewing, and it was the 1987 scene played out again, only this time I was the one down below staring up until they finally went to sleep.

 
No room to even sit upright

 

Day 29: Kolding to Hamburg… man the hunter

MAN THE HUNTER. There is something primeval and hugely satisfying about battling nature to provide sustenance for the family.

Man against the elements.

And so it was — armed with only thousands of Euros worth of hi-tech boat, sonar equipment, and state-of-the-art carbon rods — that we set off to the Little Belt to provide lunch.

Claus had put the proceeds from the Danish furniture business he’d launched in Singapore into a boat, which he’d aptly named Sentosa, and if Carlsberg did fishing trips, they would have gone something like this.

Claus on Sentosa once again… 

The Little Belt was as flat as a millpond, the sun was beating down and sparkling off the water, Claus prepared the rods and Ben, the master fisherman of the Shines, took first cast – letting the line out over the side of the boat and down 25-30 metres before snapping the reel arm back in place.

Within minutes there was a twitch, then a tug and when Ben hoisted his line in he had caught a small cod – too small to keep, but it was a fantastic start.

I took over and the very next cast felt I had hooked a big one. The monster fish of my imagination turned out to be five small cod on five hooks, all of whom were returned to fight another day.

Little Belt

Claus caught more small cod, and Mads hooked several fish which he let Jasper and Ben reel in. All the cod we put back.

We fished on as a porpoise surfaced no more than five metres from our boat, its sleek back arching out of the water before it submerged again, only to reappear about two metres from us. We were alerted to another just as close by the noise of its blow-hole spraying water into the air.

We basked in an idyllic seascape as our rods twitched and the porpoises played in the sunshine.

After 15 minutes or so Ben had another fish on his line – this time a mackerel. That was one for the pot. We caught two more, and countless cod, and the time flew by.

Mackerel man 

After almost three hours on the water Captain Kitty sailed the good ship Sentosa back to harour sitting proudly on Mads’ knee, where we gutted and cleaned the fish and set off back for lunch.

Bente and Mette had been busy again and had baked cheese and ham muffins and made cauliflower salad and an old Danish pudding which translates as “cold bowl” – a delicious thin yoghurty, custardy soup-like liquid made with egg and buttermilk and lime juice and chopped up strawberries.

Another feast was prepared to set us on our way to Hamburg and Claus set up his hot-smoking box to cook the mackerel.

Lunch is up…

Lunch was truly remarkable and then the Dyrings loaded up their cars to take us back to Kolding station. I could scarcely believe we had only been with Claus and Bente for just a day but had fitted so much in – and we are now determined to visit Denmark again, properly this time. And to host the Dyrings, although Mrs S might need to start planning the menus already to rival Bente’s prowess.  Our hosts were generous to a tee, spoilt us with an amazing taste of their blessed lives in Denmark – close-knit village, beautiful countryside, lovely coastline, homely house, delicious food, great company and genuine fun and kindness.  We missed them all as soon as the train drew out of the station.

Our trip to Kolding, although short, proved powerful and the boys both decided that it was time to get home. We’re having a trip of a lifetime, more than 13,000km by rail from Singapore to London, but we are all now missing a base, somewhere to call home. 

Another Kolding feast…

There was little time to spare once we’d arrived at the station – just enough time for Jasper and Ben to goose about play-fighting and whining and embarrassing us in front of our bemused friends, and then we were back on the Danish rail network, this time bound for Hamburg.

We joined a three-quarters full carriage, the children and Mrs S inhabiting four seats around a table, while I plopped myself down opposite a fastidiously dressed young man reading a heavyweight tome.

It was after only a few minutes of sitting in the still carriage air that I noticed the fishy, smoky smell. It seemed to be emanating from me, and the dandy opposite noticed it mere seconds after I had.

He looked up from his book, and I looked away. He was looking at me when I next stole a glance, and wrinkled his nose.

The children continued to squawk and squabble and our friend seemed unable to decide if he was more appalled by my smell or the behaviour of my children. It was hardly a win-win.

After around 20 minutes of growing tension, Kitty broke the deadlock with the most enormous, long, creaky fart while watching her iPad. She had her headphones on and her eyes never left the screen.

I could hardly believe my ears. I looked at her – nothing. I looked at Mrs S, who looked back alarmed. Jasper guffawed and looked at me wide-eyed. I looked at the man and, like Kitty, his eyes had not left his book. But a smile had spread across his face.

What a disgusting smell…

I wouldn’t say we became friends over the next couple of hours, but the trip was certainly less tense as a result of Kitty and her trumpeting skills.

But while she gives with one hand (or bum) she takes away with the other, it seems, and I was stung for a five-euro surcharge by our Hamburg taxi driver for the “fifth person”.

Our check-in into the Royal Meridien on the Alster, my favourite spot in one of my favourite European cities (although Jasper was not impressed by my local knowledge and accused me of ‘showing off’!), was seamless and we were put in a monster room with three beds and a cot – this was going to be a cosy night.

Spaghetti, scampi, lasagne, pizza and rosé sent us to bed happy, to prepare for a day’s exploring in Hamburg.

 

 

The one that got away was THIS BIG

Surveying the Alster…

…beautiful Hamburg

Day 28: Copenhagen to Kolding: Seeing great friends and old beetroot’s volte face…

“MUMMY, SHOULD I fall asleep so they feel sorry for us again?” Jasper asked.

“He won’t feel sorry for us Jasper, he is fed up with us. He thinks we are idiots, doesn’t really want us on this train and we may well be getting off in a minute, so don’t settle down and make yourself too comfortable,” said I.

And so began one of the most remarkable turnarounds seen on this, or any, adventure.

The main players in this are the Invincible Shines, Mr Beetroot-face of the Danish Railway network and his only slightly less exasperated colleague, Mrs Harumph.

We’d climbed aboard the Copenhagen to Kolding train to factor in a visit to Claus and Bente – great friends in Singapore with whom we’ve kept in touch since they moved back to Denmark.

Great behaviour on the Kolding Express…

It was a sunny day, we were up bright and early, looking forward to visiting our old friends and their lovely children. It had all the makings of a great day.

“But this ticket is not valid.”

That all-too familiar feeling worked its way into my guts.

“I’m sorry,” I asked Beetroot-face, raising my eyebrows. We really didn’t need this.

“Where is your ticket. This is a supplement, it is not a ticket,” he insisted, rendering the piece of paper I had been nursing so carefully for the past few hours instantly worthless.

The you-have-got-to-be-bloody-well-JOKING look passed across my face before I had even realised it, and we were stuck at an impasse.

I didn’t have a clue what he was going on about and he clearly thought I was an idiot with an invalid ticket (and to be fair, we have displayed a bit of form in that regard on this trip).

Kitty squawked, Ben rolled around and put his feet on the chair, and beetroot-face pulled out his phone.

Mrs S suddenly twigged and it seems we should have stamped or activated our Eurail Pass before starting to travel.

This is not a valid ticket!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Swedes hadn’t noticed (or had been too cool to mention it) and nobody on the way into Copehagen had remarked, but Mr Beetroot-face wasn’t going to let this go. Or make it easy.

“The Germans will never let you travel with this,” he spluttered, after seeing our future destination was Hamburg. As if it was a German rail worker and not HIM creating the fuss.

I kept quiet. I didn’t need the lecture, I just needed old beetroot to fix this not carry on tutting at us.

“It is very expensive to get this stamped on the train,” he said.

Here we go, I thought, a shakedown, in Denmark of all places. But no, it was clearly just another angle from which to berate me for my stupidity. Another tool to poke into my side to heap on the discomfort.

He sighed. He shook his head. He went to find a colleague.

Mrs Harumph turned up a couple of minutes later.

“You haven’t got them stamped?”

“No we haven’t got them stamped.”

She shook her head. These two should enter the synchronized head-shaking world championships.

Once she’d tired of shaking her head, she checked the tickets, checked our passports.

“Where is the baby?” she asked, looking at the picture of baby Kitty in her passport.

“Here she is. She’s grown up a bit,” Mrs S said.

“That’s good,” said Harumph, who then told us some breakfast would be on its way, included in the ticket.

No more than three minutes passed before old beetroot was back.

“Can I see your tickets, please,” he asked.

I unzipped my bag and took out my tickets. Again. And handed them to him.

“They have not been stamped,” he said. “You know it is really, really expensive to have them stamped on the train.”

Was this some kind of joke?  “No, you know they have not been stamped. You’ve just seen them.”

Mrs S was thinking on her feet. “Can we get them stamped at Kolding?” she asked.

“There is no ticket office at Kolding. You will have to get off at Odense. But then you must get off the train because you must go to the ticket office.”

“But we have friends collecting us at Kolding,:” Mrs S said to his big beetrooty ‘so-what?’ face.

He shook his head again and disappeared, only reappearing to dump a wire basket of bread rolls and jams on our table. “It’s for you,” he mouthed with his mobile-phone clamped to his ear.

We debated our options while sending an email to Claus to inform him we had hit a spot of bother. His unshakeable optimism (“Don’t worry, we will fix it this end”) made us feel much better and I went to find beetroot.

I spotted him in a little cubby-hole near the loos, whispering to Harumph.

“Hi there, do you think we could get an earlier train tomorrow to the next station after Kolding on the way to Hamburg and get it stamped there before joining our train?” I asked him, outlining Mrs S’s clever plan.

“DO NOT WORRY,” old Beetroot shouted.

“WE ARE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN FOR YOUR FAMILY. BUT TODAY IS SUNDAY AND MANY OFFICE ARE CLOSED. BUT DO NOT WORRY,” he added.

WE WILL DO ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING FOR YOU! 

I was more than a little thrown by the 180-degree change of heart and attitude, and returned to our seats to share the news.

No more than five minutes later, the beetrooty one himself was there.

“I have found a very friendly woman in Odense,” he told us, puffing up with pride. “She will come down from the ticket office in Odense and wait on the platform and she will stamp it for you. So, I need your tickets.”

This seemed too good to be true, but sure enough he had called in some favours or pulled some strings and that is precisely what happened.

“People just want to get rid of us,” Mrs S remarked drily.  “Just get them off our train… just get them out of our country… get out of our lives… it is a powerful tool,” she laughed.

She might have been reading the mind of the young woman sharing our carriage. She had been twisting and turning in her seat, contorting herself to get away from the noise the excited Shinettes had been making.

Mrs S apologised to her. “Don’t worry I have got my earplugs,” she barked back. Lucky her.

“This is the best adventure,” said Jasper, proudly wearing the white and green hat he had been given at a Tivoli Gardens restaurant. “My Mum and Dad are in the ditch” the writing on it read in Danish.

The sour woman sqeezing her head into her seat with bits of foam rammed into her lug-holes could not dampen our spririts, though, and the Invincibles had done it again.

We piled off the train at the little town of Kolding and Claus, Bente, Freja (now 14) and Mads (a whopping 20) were on hand to pick us up and load us into their cars for the short drive back to their house. If Tivoli was heaven in Copenhagen, the Dyrings house was heaven in Kolding – with a sun-bathed garden, rabbits, chickens, a dog and CHILDREN.

Bente and Mrs S catching up in Kolding… 

The great thing about good friends is that it doesn’t seem to matter how much time goes by between visits and so it was with Claus and Bente.

Mette, 10-years-old when we first met her in Singapore and now 18, had stayed at home and greeted the weary travellers when they arrived home.

The family had been in Spain with 40 or so friends and family to celebrate Claus’s impending 50^th birthday (“I’m still nearer zero than 100,” he proudly pointed out at supper. “For a few more days anyway.”) and he had brought back the entire hind leg of a giant pig along with some Spanish beer and we feasted at lunchtime in the garden, catching up on all our news while the children chattered down one end of the table.

It was still astounding how lovely their ‘children’ are, now 20, 18 and 14 and how much time they have always had for our little ones.  From looking after Jasper and Ben aged 4 and 2 on the beach in Sentosa during one of our legendary Sunday night BBQs or entertaining our 8,7 and 2 year old with painted nails, swinging in the hammock, playing with them in the playground or transfixing them with Top Gear and super-complex space ship building games on the computer, they were as kind, patient and interested as they were when we first met them…and most importantly afforded us some ‘grown up time’ which has been so missing on this trip!

Metta and Freja have Mads in a spin as Jasper and Ben look on…

Claus had been slow-cooking his famous pulled-pork recipe and he transported it from the oven to the barbecue for the final few hours as we dined on his monster pig-leg, prawns, black bread, white bread and various other marvels Bente had rustled up in the kitchen.

We walked off lunch with a tour of their village and a visit to the playground where the children ran amok and  then it was time for Claus’s pulled pork and Bente’s homemade buns followed by homemade ice cream. To say they were a triumph would be a major understatement and everybody dipped in for seconds and thirds as we talked deep into the night, exchanging Trans-Siberian stories – Bente has done the journey twice – and ending with the foreigners trying to bend their mouths round the most unpronounceable Danish words and phrases our hosts could think of.

Claus’s famous pulled pork…

The Shinettes nodded off one by one and were transported into their beds until only the olds were left.

And then there were none.

  

 

 

Day 27: Sweden to Denmark (from the sublime to the ridiculous)…

IT WAS DEBATABLE whether the humming, running, singing, playing, squabbling Shine crew could blot their copybook further with the supercool Swedes of the Rival Hotel but naturally enough we managed one final tweak of their upturned noses by arriving at breakfast half an hour before opening hours and while the muesli mountain sculptors were still sipping their mandarin pulp.

Our boisterous bums were already on the suedette seats before the man with the fighter pilot looks could tell us they weren’t “ready” for us.

I resisted the temptation of telling him they could never be “ready for us” and instead gave him the “what-can-I-do-about-it-smile” and waved at the boys as they were harvesting pastries like Biblical locusts.

Glorious, wonderful, child-friendly Tivoli

Back in our European comfort zone we are happy to handle getting transport to and from stations ourselves now, bypassing the ludicrously expensive hotel cars or unscrupulous taxis with their “tourist surcharges”…

We manhandled our bags down to the Mariatorget metro station, after a brief yes-it-is-no-it-isn’t chat with charcoal-shirted Björn about whether or not our hotel had already been paid for (it had!) and we scooted over to central station to catch our train to Copenhagen.

Where first class train travel had been necessary in Asia, it is no longer so, but regardless we are travelling first class, and the look on the faces of businessmen and solo travellers is priceless when the brood bustles into their seats.

It is a sad, but inalienable fact, that the further west we travel, the harder it is to travel with children. Fellow travellers are less tolerant, less patient, less understanding and it is a far more stressful experience for a parent. It is a lesson well learnt and I will try – really try – not to sigh or roll my eyes next time a noisy brat busts into my quiet-time… I can’t say I will succeed though.

Hey good looking…

Fortunately ours were engrossed in iPads which kept them suitably quiet and sedated for the duration of the journey: one which was delayed 15 minutes by a problem with the brakes – our first mechanical issue since setting off a month ago.

Food was served and Ben displayed Tetrapak skills to rival my own when he sloshed a carton or orange juice down himself which Mrs S managed to clean and artfully disguise.

The cappuccino and Early Grey linen tea-bags were a far cry from the paper cups we eeked out six days’ use from on the Trans-Siberian.

Meanwhile we sliced through wide open fields of crops, broadleaf woodland, dark red and white wooden houses, stud farms, fir forests and beautiful glassy green lakes.

And then Copenhagen, the city of gastronomy, Little Mermaids and Hans Christian Andersen.

If Stockholm was sexy but snooty, this was child heaven.

 

It helped that we stayed at the Tivoli Hotel, a large hotel just 10 minute walk from the station, featuring an enormous bouncy castle in the foyer, staff dressed in harlequin outfits, toy solider statues dotted around the place and pictures of clowns on the pillows.

We arrived in the afternoon but crammed in a swim and lunch before walking back down to the station and Tivoli Gardens.

My kinda joint…

It was around 30 years ago I last went to Tivoli Gardens – back then it was a school trip during which somebody’s dad told me a mildly inappropriate joke I still tell today (after the trip to the Tuborg brewery I guess) – and I have raved about it ever since.

But memory can have a nasty habit of playing tricks.

Not this time, however. It is a fantastic take on a theme park. Not too commercial nor tacky, and without the constant yacking soundtrack of music and cheesy cartoon voices that kids love but that drives adults insane.

We’d managed to borrow a pushchair from the Tivoli Hotel and so, for the first time in four weeks, Kitty was not hanging off Mrs S like a particularly clingy koala. We arrived at four in the afternoon and the time simply flew. We soared high, spun around, plunged to earth at stomach churning speeds, pulled Gs in spinning capsules, ate seafood, drank slurpies and before we knew it, it was 10pm.

We all fell into bed, exhausted.

“Do we have any other child-friendly hotels,” Ben asked, before nodding off.

 

Day 26: Stockholm, and the Invincibles rock the Rival

Mamma mia, here I go again; My my, how can I resist you? 
Mamma mia, does it show again?; My my, just how much I’ve missed you

WE COULD hardly put it any better than Benny Andersson, Abba superstar, Swedish captain of industry and our B&B host at the magical Rival Hotel – our Stockholm love affair is well and truly on.

It seems we are in the Soho of Sweden’s capital; a short walk from Gamla Stan – the Old Town – and in the centre of an enclave of art shops, designer boutiques, chi-chi bars and restaurants. The perfect place for three marauding children in other words.

 

Beautiful Stockholm at dusk…

And so, we took it on ourselves to well and truly kick the wheels of Benny’s place in terms of kid-friendliness.

I am not sure the super-cool staff-in-black will ever recover.

A Swedish version of the Groucho Club, the Rival is more funky ‘70s lighting, pop-art décor than croissant-squished-into-carpet. Or, should I say, it was until we swept through the restaurant.

All the staff have been impeccably mannered and unfailingly friendly, its just that they, well, couldn’t quite work us out. Given that prior to our invasion the youngest resident they had entertained was Justin Bieber (I guess) everyone seemed to be wondering what was the deal with these slightly incongruous, louche latecomers?

Who were these people who went to laundrettes while the rest of the guests went to the Royal Palace? What manner of people were these five who washed their pants and socks in the sink and bought new clothes to replace the ones they couldn’t clean? They say they have come on the train from Singapore – that can’t be right…!

This hotel is Kool and the Gang

Jasper skidded into the breakfast room to reload, against a backdrop of restrained chatter – Rival Hotel residents are way too cool to raise their voices, or get too excited about anything – and the five of us piled into a booth as far away from the other guests as possible.

An impossibly beautiful blonde waitress took our order: poached eggs, scrambled eggs, pancakes and French Toast (our order was so uncool it was über-cool…) and Jasper raced to the island to plunder the pastries and salmon.

As the breakfast room mumbled away in charcoal clothing, man-bags draped across shoulders, Lucky Strike cigarette packs sitting conspicuously next to Porsche key fobs, the Shines emanated a different vibe.

A way cooler one.

Jasper cut a dash in his “This is how I roll!” Fred Flintstone tee-shirt and skinny jeans, Ben exuded effortless elan with red combat shorts and fleecy dangling round his neck on a black ribbon – think a better looking, less try-hard Morten Harket – and Kitty had a rock chick thing going on with leggings under a dress and some serious attitude. Plus a hair-do like the guy from Slade. The one with the really bad hair-do.

This is how I roll…

I busted some moves with my ironically heterosexual look and aviator shades (at all times), while the impeccably turned out Mrs S looked as though she had been kidnapped by this Krazy Krew and was only along for the ride.

We ate croissants and black bread and white bread and brown bread and yoghurt and fruit and eggs and gravlax and rollmops and macaroons and pains au chocolate and pastries and meat. Then croissants again. With blueberries and blackberries and strawberries and raspberries and cranberries and lingonberries. It was “goooooooooooooood,” Kitty said. We all agreed.

And it was on such a feast, looking like ageing music producers and boyband members and emo singers and kidnapped aristocracy, that we took a vote on what we should do on Day 26 of the Long Trip Home.

Surprisingly the Royal Palace failed to get one vote – sorry Gustav – as Ben eschewed the crown jewels and Jasper turned his nose up at the changing of the guard to instead head to the outside Museum Svenska.

We waved goodbye to the clipped beards and charcoal-shirts on reception and headed down to the water.

The line-up…

Our magical blue plastic cards did indeed work on the ferries and so we boarded one in Gamla Stan, sitting outside to enjoy the cool breeze on a blisteringly hot day.

The museum was a fascinating journey into Sweden of the past. Not the Sweden of the 1970s, though, that was our hotel. This was the Sweden of the 18^th and 19^th century. We wandered around a village containing olde shoppes, a glass blowing workshop, furniture makers, a pottery, old farmhouse and an animal enclosure featuring reindeer, elk, wolves, lynx and other Scandinavian fauna.

It was a beautifully clear and warm day. Mrs S was delighted after the cold, grey and rainy Russia and a chilly Finland, and the children were absorbed in the innocent pastimes of hoop-and-stick, and stilt walking. I could have saved myself a fortune on Apple product had I only known the allure of a twig and length of aluminium.

Swedish fun

The Shinettes played and ran and fought and played and ran – it was a huge hit and, as Kitty flagged, we chose to stay put and have lunch in a shaded country courtyard where we bought some mouth-watering prawn sandwiches on black bread, and delicious rhubarb crumble.

“This is the best day ever,” beamed Mrs S as the sunshine twinkled on the water and the Shinettes played among the rose garden.

It was a tired and hot but happy gang who caught the ferry back to Gamla Stan and strolled up the hill to Mariatorget.

 
I do declare, this is the BEST DAY EVER

 Our Rival hosts were thrilled to see us again, especially when Ben did a triple fly-by in the revolving door (that’s how he rolls, baby) and we zipped upstairs for some showers, pikey clothes-washing and an impromptu Abba session (Benny has rather immodestly ensured that every room of the hotel has an Abba Gold album in the blue ray player).

Several platinum-selling tracks later we’d turned the army around and, after a quick polish of the aviators, headed back down to Gamla Stan for supper.  Kitty was fading fast, becoming increasingly heavy in my arms and by the time we sat down for supper she was sparko, snoozing on the bench-seat next to me.

The little rock-chick has been a superstar this trip, but she does suck up a lot of oxygen, and as she slept the four upright Shines chatted and reminisced and planned for the future.

Check out those revolving door, baby…

The more we are surrounded and absorbed by western culture, the more eager we are to get back to the UK and start our new lives ourselves after this cultural kaleidoscope of a journey.

The trip has been exciting but also at times exhausting, both physically and emotionally. It has served as a cathartic and very welcome escape from the sheer hard work and emotion of packing up our Singapore lives and planning for life in the UK. Now the reality of our new lives, work, school and home looms, and we are gripped by a combination of anticipation, excitement and dread. The boys are very excited, which is great, but that said, we are not finished with our holidays yet.

So, Jasper and Ben ordered Swedish meatballs for supper while I plumped for reindeer (medium rare, no red-nose please) and the boys illustrated, using the medium of mime, what I was eating. Yum.

Look what daddy’s eating

Kitty woke just in time to help Ben out with his meatballs and polish off some of my potato before we popped to an ice-cream parlour for enormous cones of Scandinavian goodness.

The night was such a success I softened on the tat-front and Jasper walked back to funkytown with a furry wolf (“I am calling him Fang”) while Kitty was clutching a reindeer in a Swedish hoodie (I am calling him supper). Ben, the only true businessman of this family, negotiated well as always, and instead carries an impressive credit to Copenhagen.

We strolled back at sunset, hot air balloons floating and drifting over this enchanting city and, not for the first time, I found myself wistfully considering a move to Scandinavia. We all loved Sweden and its friendly people, its relaxed lifestyle and its liveable, manageable capital.

It may be one for the Lottery win, but never say never. As Jasper says, after making a life for ourselves in Asia, the Invincibles can do anything…

Day 25: Stockholm… you beautiful, sunny su-pa-pa troop-pa-pa…

Money, money, money; Must be funny; In the rich man’s world
Money, money, money; Always sunny; In the rich man’s world
Aha-ahaaa
All the things I could do; If I had a little money; It’s a rich man’s world…

IT CHOSE NOT to adopt the Euro, but Sweden very much remains a member state of the European Union. And do you know what? I think I have a sneaking suspicion I know where the EU’s butter mountain has gone. The wine lake and the milk lake too.

On Sweden’s hips, arse and stomach.

What happened to this nation of svelte Bjorn Borg-underpant wearing hipsters and Abba lip-syncing blondes I remember so fondly? I mean everybody looked so, well…. ENGLISH, frankly.

When our Helsinki to Stockholm ferry tipped us out at the Swedish capital this morning, I had to check that we hadn’t scooted back to Russia overnight. Or bypassed the western-European leg of our Long Trip Home and gone straight to Harwich.

Beautiful Sweden. But why don’t the people look Swedish?

Maybe it is having spent so long in Asia, and perhaps I haven’t noticed the warning signs in Europe beyond the scaremongering stat-based health stories in the Daily Mail, but Swedes seem to have ballooned since I last set foot here.

I can well understand why, mind. The food is snesational. In fact were we not having to ration ourselves to two meals shared between the five of us each mealtime due to the crippling cost of, well everything, we’d be piling on the pounds too.

The Swedes seem to be making good use of all this extra flesh, too – as a canvas for ink-work. They have become simply obsessed by tattoos. I could count on one hand today the number of people I saw with no visible sign of ink. There were Celtic arm-hoops, Asian symbols, Maori markings, Sanskrit script, olde-worlde anchors and botched DIY green ink affairs. Mums on the metro, dads in the park, teenagers with sleeves and young women with crosses on their ring fingers.

Ink-tastic…

“We’re just getting old,” Mrs S told me. It wasn’t an entirely comforting thought.

The discomfort was probably rooted in the realisation she has a point.

I felt old today. Weary. We have been on the road for 25 days with too little sleep and too little rest.

And although our travel is getting easier now, in some respects the journey is getting harder. As our surroundings get more familiar I notice we are becoming less inclined to pull together – there are fewer challenges or fears to unite us. I’ve certainly become more irascible and grumpy, and need a big last push to get over the line now. This team needs whipping back into shape – starting with yours truly.

Schisms appeared at breakfast on the ferry when the boys couldn’t agree what to have. I made the decision for them by marching them back to our room with nothing. It was only a temporary solution and soon they were bickering and fighting again – an exhausting pattern which lasted most of the day.

“Ridiculous boys, squabbling again… and that’s you too, daddy…”

 By the time they had become friends again in the evening, Mrs S and I were exhausted and disillusioned with the whole shooting party.

“This has been the worst day for me,” she said.

I sincerely hope tomorrow is a marked improvement because we are haemoraging cash on this brief leg of the trip – Sweden is without doubt the most expensive city I have been to in a long, long, long time.

We could have flown to Athens for the price of our cab-ride from the ferry to Mariatorget. I paid more for our laundry bill than I did for my first car (true story) and the price of our 24-hour metro passes would get you round London for a week.  

What a beautiful city, though, and I guess you get what you pay for. Although that may not have been the mantra in the minds of the other guests at the Rival Hotel (www.rival.se) when they ambled down to breakfast this morning to find the Shines had arrived.

Our rooms not yet ready, we had decamped in the foyer and were sifting through our nine pieces of luggage, removing dirty laundry and adding it to a large red-and-white plastic sack, the likes of which you see at Heathrow airport, generally belonging to people receiving a grilling from immigration.

 Suds up, dudes

 Put plainly, this is not why people pay good money to stay in this gorgeous boutique hotel owned by Abba legend Benny Andersson.

A very friendly but increasingly stressed bearded man (it wasn’t Benny. Or Bjorn) surveyed the scene with barely disguised horror, but we are beyond shame at this point, and really, really needed some clean clothes.

We managed to find respectable duds for everyone (even if it meant Jasper squeezing into a pair of Ben’s shorts, Freddie Mercury-style) and lugged the rest of it to the only city centre laundrette we could find some five or six Metro stops away.

In fact it was the perfect disguise and pickpocket deterrent. We looked like tourists, we were carrying a map and we clearly didn’t know where we were going, that much was true. But what kind of tourist carries an enormous bag of stinking clothes round Stockholm on a gloriously hot and sunny day, right?

You’re following this so far, yes? Infighting, crippling prices and back-breaking (and wallet-breaking) laundry loads, all in the first hour or so. I trust I am setting the tone. Added to all this is the fact that Mrs S is still aching and feeling ill, and somebody has obviously mistakenly advised Kitty that she is the boss of this family.

 
“Off to lunch, things always seem better after lunch…”

The intrepid Shines are not to be cowed, however, and we push on through, deciding to recalibrate the day at lunch.

We ask the achingly hip reception staff for a recommendation for lunch “somewhere cheap and good for kids” I think Mrs S might have said.

We are directed to somewhere called the Blå Dörren down by the waterfront, so I take another million pounds out of the ATM and we head off there.

Now, if I had been in any way unsure what sort of impression we had made on the hotel staff earlier in the day, when we arrived at our lunch venue I was in doubt no more.

They had steered us past literally dozens of bistros, cafés and neighbourhood restaurants all looking to be serving delicious Swedish fare.

The Blue Door, which coincided with the big blue cross on our tourist map, was basically a Harvester Inn.

There were some tables outside, and one of them was not yet occupied by heavily-tatooed, heavy-smoking, heavier-drinking denizens of downtown Stockholm, so we leapt in there.

The food was actually okay, but it wasn’t the rollmops and gravlax experience I had been anticipating for our introduction to Swedish cuisine.

A sea-faring nation…

 Suitably fortified by our salad-bar-and-pasta experience, we decided to jump on a ferry and visit the Vasa Museum.

We hadn’t realised we could use our 24-hour travel passes on the ferry, thus ensuring they retained their most-expensive-piece-of-plastic-we’ve-ever-had-in-our-pockets status 

The Vasa Museum offers “a unique insight into early 17^th–century Sweden” the blurb promises.

Cutting a long story short, the pride of Sweden’s military fleet, the beautifully ornate and heavily armed Vasa sunk on its maiden voyage in Stockholm Harbour due to basic errors of design. It was salvaged in 1961 after 333 years under the sea. The brackish water had preserved almost everything and it now sits in the Vasa Museum, 98 percent original.

There are displays of its weaponry, re-enactments of its sinking and films depicting life aboard the great vessel. Goblets, barrels, cannoballs and nit-combs are displayed in all their glory.

Having absorbed one such display of all the ornate carving and decoration of the vessel’s stern, Ben hit the nail squarely on the head with the pithiest of comments.

“They should have paid more attention to making it float than making it look pretty,” he announced flatly.

Very pretty, but will it float?

I couldn’t have put it better myself, and wanted to carry him from the place on top of my shoulders. He had redeemed himself from the doghouse he was in for taekwondo kicking Jasper earlier, and we left the museum in finer fettle than we’d arrived.

Old hands at the Swedish transport system by now we jumped aboard a tram to admire some more tattoos and to head back to the old town, stopping off along the way to buy Jasper some new shorts and allow him to escape Ben’s pair.

He settled on some striking green ones and loved them so much he wanted to wear them out of the shop. This meant climbing up onto the counter in front of the till and writhing around while the sales assistant clipped the tag from his trousers.

As I say, it had been one of those days…

“Hold still, we’re almost there…”

Images of Day 25: