It couldn't have been a better day for a visit to this Château. The weather was beautiful, no home works... But we had to work hard in order to make it a memorable day...First, the website provides you with wrong information to how to get there (the navette bus leaving hourly from rue de Rivoli? It's a scam! It just links you to a tour operator that organizes expensive day trip to the site). So my friend and I decided to meet at the metro station and go by train. It would have been a good idea...but the boys decided that they couldn't spend 25 minutes on the train without playing video games on our mobile phones ("We're getting bored! There's nothing to do, nothing to talk about, nothing to see", and so on). Somehow we survived this first whining episode. Only to find out that, once you arrive at the train station in Fontainbleau, the navette bus to the Château runs only once every hour. So we had to wait a long time. That's when the second whining scene happened, with both kids starting together as a choir: "Why are we here? Another chateau? Can't we go back to Paris and stay home?". Relax, take a breath, don't react.
After about an hour we finally reached our destination but we decided to make a deal with the kids: we would stop in the gardens first, have a quick lunch and then go to the castle. That was a good idea, since we enjoyed almost half hour of no-complains.
The paradox is that they actually loved the visit to the castle, as much as we adults did. All the weapons, the furniture, the paintings, the rooms with the tapestries! The carved ceilings and the galleries...it was just gorgeous!
It was early afternoon when we moved to the great gardens where the Canal and once again, after a short time, both the boys started again asking to go back to Paris.
We gave up, we started to walk back and agreed on a playdate (as if they weren't spending time together....) but immediately turned down the offer when we found out that they only wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon in front of a videogame. Can't they just play without thinking obsessively at the latest game version? Whatever! They are both smart, lovely and great kids. Just do the right thing!
Before going back we sat down at a coffe-shop and ordered some ice-cream....wrong!
As soon as Josh asked for a personalized version of their offers in the menu, the waiter (obviously non American!) answered him, rudely:" No, you can't have it. It's Sunday, it's 5 pm, there's hundreds of people here and I can't have everyone doing their own variation on the menu. Perhaps, if it was a week-day, I could think about it. But today is a no!".
OK, we get the point. We are just customers, we are foreigners, you don't like us, you don't appreciate our effort to order you in French, we don't have any right to be treated nicely. Just give us the quickest ice-cream and stop with your sermon!
We had the ice-creams, which were really good. Then when we paid (my friend was almost tempted to give him a tip, when I stopped her), Josh, obviously forgetting about the previous preach, asked the waiter if he could have one more decorative umbrella. The one they put on top of the ice-cream.
It would have been to easy to answer "yes" or "sure, no problem". This is not the right country. Again he started:" Kid, don't you have already one? Why do you want more? Don't you see I'm busy? I can't waste time with your request....".
Gone. Before he even finished his second telling-off, we were gone. I had it for the day. Enough with people complaining. Having to deal with boys who occasionally complain is one thing...by the way, those are our boys and it's part of the deal that they whine and we control ourselves. But a waiter? Forget it. I'm out of here!
Of course we had to wait another 30 minutes for the navette bus to take us back to the train station but it was fine. Also this inexplicable lack of organization between the trains and the buses was a small problem at this time of the day. We were happy for what we saw, tired because of the long day, happy that the kids didn't fight but seemed to enjoy their time together. All's well that ends well.
Tomorrow, Canal St Martin? Perhaps. Why not?
