7 legs

This morning my alarm woke me up at 5:30am in London - we had to leave for the first bus at 6. Dani was already up as the baby had been feeding at 4am and it’s hard to get back to sleep sometimes. The bags needed a final packing, some food had to be rocked down and two children had to be woken, dressed and hustled out the door.

Leg one: The walk to the bust stop usually takes 10 minutes. With 3 weeks worth of luggage, a sleepy four year old, a baby in a carrier and a vague idea of where we were going it was likely to be longer. We left at 6:05 and were late for the bus. On the other side of the travel scales was our hosts, who are the most helpful and engaged friends to stay with. John ‘Fred’ Chop caught up to us with the bag of snacks we’d forgotten and helped carry the big bag to the bus stop. Dani played ‘fast tiger, fast leopard, rocket” with Pan and we made it with a couple of minutes to spare.

Leg two: the number 8 local bus was a double decker. It was a quarter past 6 and the front row was available. The ride through East London was brilliant.

Leg three: the express train to Stansted left from Liverpool station which is just a little bit grand. We had a pretty good fall on the escalator as someone insisted we line up in correct Ninja Turtle order then sat down on the rapidly shrinking metal steps. The only real casualties were a couple of rice rusks and 4 precious minutes. Dani started to buy the tickets 6 minutes before the train was due to depart. We ran into the platform - bags, baby and all after another trip and fall through the ticket barrier from a partially awake boy. The helpful staff member offered “first five carriages only, you better hurry”, we then legitimately started to run. We burst into the rear door and literally collapsed into a pile with 45 seconds to spare. “You did so great Pan,” said Dani. “That was not great,” he yelled in reply.

Leg four: the flight was only an hour and 45. The airport halloumi and avocado English muffins we’re pretty good. There was an actor from Bridgerton in our row, the staff said “it’s nice to have the Viscount onboard.” Lion smiled at him, he smiled back.

Leg five: it is twice as hot in Southern France than in England. We got the coach from the airport to the train station. It was the wrong train station so we fudged a modified ticket arrangement. The train ride along the coast was superb.

Leg six: to much consternation the Airbnb host confirmed (curtesy of multiple French message the night before - worlds best London friends) that the 67 bus we needed to get from the Hyères train station to the accomodation didn’t run on Sundays. Of course the next day when the 67 came around the corner we climbed on with the other holiday types and cruised down. I spoke to a priest for most of it.

Leg seven: we waited on the stoop for an hour for the Airbnb host. We read Harry Potter. The view from the place is incredible. It was a great day.