Paris - the traumatic

Well! We're over 10 weeks into this wild ride that is "sabbatical", and just completed the first of what we hope will be a few excursions into other parts of Europe. Destination one, as I assume you've all seen on instagram, was Paris! Meg had her heart set on Paris for no reason in particular, and it was one of the main cities I hoped to take the family, second only to Rome (which we'll do in the Spring, we hope). I did most of the travel planning in mid-September, lining up flights on Europe's super cheap airline, RyanAir, for a song, even after you added on the cost of the bus from Stockholm to the further-away airport RyanAir uses, and the Super Shuttle from the equally distant airport in France to the suburb of Paris we were staying in. I found accommodations on AirBnB. It was my first time using AirBnB, and I was a little nervous, but found an apartment with several good reviews that suited our family size and was quite affordable. So much so, that when I went to book the RyanAir flight and discovered prices had changed so it would be much cheaper for us to fly back two days later, the cost of lodging was low enough that I tacked on the extra time! In retrospect, I am SO GLAD we had those extra days! Because...

Well, I hardly know where to begin. We checked into the apartment and it was... fine. Really, it was a nice enough space for our needs. The neighborhood was, um, okay. Not great, but okay. But when we searched for groceries and restaurants to find some lunch (we'd been up since 3am, you'll recall, and we checked in around noon), they were all a pretty serious hike away. Through a park. Which sounds nice, until it turns out the walk through the park is lovely but is not actually real paths, and they're not lit, so my mind is racing with the fact that if we're coming home from Paris at night it's not a walk I'd want to make. But we're keeping our cheer up, and plotting our path to the "nearby" train station (per the ad) and figuring things out. We walked back after lunch along the road, rather than through the park, and it was loooonnng, and the road was sort of secluded and I was a little anxious about that at night as well. So I figured out some options for buses from a different train stop and we were still keeping our moods up and making our plans and Nathaniel was talking me down from feeling like maybe I'd failed at this whole planning thing. The kids were having fun playing with the huge playmobil collections in one room, then playing at the playground while I made some dinner and then we started getting everyone into bed.

After kids were settled, we talked through some plans for morning, and I took a quick look into the bathroom, mentally planning what time I'd get up to shower before we left. I saw a small bug in the tub and nearly ignored it. I'd seen cockroach poison under the sink, and while I hate the nasty things, this one was small and I get that they live in the world, you know? And in a big apartment building like this... it would be tough to avoid entirely. After a moment of hesitation, I went to get some tissue (the toilet was in a separate room from the bath and sink) and killed the bug. Then, on a whim and a funny feeling, I took it in and said to Nathaniel, "there was a cockroach in the tub. I killed it. It is a cockroach right, and not a bed bug or something? ha ha ha!" and showed it to him.

And that, my friends, is when the whole night went haywire.

Because it WAS a bed bug. In the bath tub.

Which, honestly, I consider a straight up gift from God to save us from so much potential additional trouble had we not spotted one so early.

Nathaniel was my hero through the entirety of this story. He took one look at the flat smashed bug on the tissue, said, "I think that is a bed bug.", hit up the image on google and was up moving in a flash. (Quick back story, because everyone we've told this story to so far says, "Wait. How did you know what a bed bug looks like?" A few years ago, there was a weird incident where Nathaniel found a bug in office at work that he thought was a bed bug. The university took it very seriously, sent the bug to UNL's entomology department, and it turned out to be a bat bug, which looks identical except under a microscope. Since there are bats in Nathaniel's building, that made sense. And Nathaniel is now very familiar with the look of a bed bug.) We grabbed a flashlight from my suitcase and headed into the little kids' room. It had a bunk bed and a trundle. We checked Rachel's bed on the trundle first, because it was easiest, and didn't see any bugs. Taking a deep breath, feeling relieved, we moved to Meg's top bunk. I cannot even express how awful this got you guys... We spotted one on the bed, then one in the indention where a screw head is set into the wood in the frame of the bed,

then another on the other side, then Nathaniel spotted one ON THE WALL. Not even on the bed, y'all. What's it doing on the WALL?! At that point, Nathaniel's grabbing Meg out of the bed and carrying her to the big sofa/bed in the living room where I'm trying to comfort this recently woken girl, and one FALLS OFF HER NIGHTGOWN onto the sheet on the sofa bed. So I'm stripping Meg to get her in clean clothes while Nathaniel's bringing the other littles in and waking the big girls to get them out of their bed. He killed several that had already, um, fed. Which is so gross to think about. And we're gathering clothes and shaking every little thing out. We didn't see any in the sofa bed in the living room or the bed in the older girls' room. They seemed primarily to be in the little kid room, but there were SO MANY. At very first we'd considered how we'd sleep everyone in other rooms till morning, but after what we were seeing we knew we just could not.

I texted the owner at 10:50pm for the first time, letting him know about this problem and that we were figuring out what to do. Nathaniel and I set to looking for hotels nearby that we could move to without blowing our entire budget. Nathaniel made calls to a few we found, and never did I know I'd be so incredibly grateful for the French he learned from his grandparents and during high school. Every where he called, they spoke only French (or at least, did not speak English) so he was having to strain to communicate, but he was able to get his message across. This became an even bigger issue once we had found a hotel with two open rooms (because of course none of them had rooms large enough to accommodate all seven of us in one) and he moved on to trying to find a taxi service. At this point it was midnight. He started calling taxis companies, asking for a van. But we're so far out of the city that no company wants to send a car that far for the short trip to the hotel without charging us loads extra to begin the trip. One company said no problem, but he had to input the request online. He did so, got a confirmation that it was all set, then 10 minutes later got a call saying nevermind, they couldn't find a driver after all.

While Nathaniel was making calls, the kids were all sitting up playing around on tablets and eating leftover baguette from dinner, whatever I could do to keep them calm. I was gathering all our belongings, shaking them out, looking them over for any sign of anything that might move. Everyone had changed out of their pajamas, and I tied up all the dirties and everything that had been in the littles' room in trash bags into one suitcase to be washed asap. We combed out everyone's hair and looked over bodies. I was beside myself. Not just for US but for the hotel we were headed to, for the owners of our flat in Stockholm. For a million reasons I was NOT going to take any hitchhikers with us from this apartment. Oh, and then I coached the kids on how they absolutely could NOT mention the words "bed bugs" where anyone else could hear it once we left the apartment. I could totally envision hotels denying us service if they knew why we were moving in the middle of the night.

In the end, after literally hours of calls and waiting, one cab company sent one car that took Nathaniel and three of the kids, then came back for me and the other two. By the time we got the hotel, figured out their automated check in system, and were able to rest our heads on pillows, it was 3:15am. We had been up nearly nonstop for over 24 hours.

And the fun didn't stop there. We still had to form a plan for the rest of our stay in Paris. If we were going to pay hotel prices, this was not the part of town I wanted to stay in - it turned out the hotel we'd found was in an air park or some kind of industrial area, as well as being in a fairly far out suburb. After a few hours of sleep, Nathaniel in one room with the three littles, me in another room with Marianne and Ruth, we reconvened in the breakfast nook to talk options. The gentleman running the desk was incredibly kind and chatted with us in broken English, helping us figure out how to get to the bus to the nearest train when we needed, etc. I hunted expedia and other sites for last minute hotel deals. Thankfully, I managed to find one in a different suburb that turned out to be so much better suited to us. We booked it, and by about noon we were waiting on a bus to a train to our third living space in Paris.

Of course, through all of this, I was also exchanging communications with our AirBnB host. I will say that he was courteous through all of it, and I feel for him, having to deal with this, but I was obviously frustrated as well. He admittedly openly, immediately, when I mentioned the problem, that he knew they'd had issues before, but that he'd paid a company to take care of it was very sorry to hear they were still there. Somewhat unbelievably to me, he held throughout the whole ordeal that we could continue to stay in the apartment, that the bugs were only in the one room, and he would have the company back first thing in the morning, and by the time we were done sight-seeing in Paris that day, the bugs would be gone and we could be safely back in?! I can't even wrap my head around that. Who would have magically laundered all the bedding? How would we have any assurance that more wouldn't show up?! Is it even theoretically possible that an apartment could be rid of bed bugs during a four hour extermination period?

I told him we would definitely make other arrangements and he agreed to refund all of the cost "except the AirBnB fee and cleaning fee", but by then I'd reported the issue to AirBnB as well, just to be safe, and they refunded me 100% of what I had paid almost immediately. The only lingering issue now is a 100 euro key deposit we paid at the time of check in, but he has agreed to wire that money as well, so I'm hopeful we'll end up with all our money back. I have not yet written a review on AirBnB and I'm torn... of course part of me wants to write a review, explaining how nice the host was but that THERE WERE BED BUGS. Because heaven knows if I'd read that I'd never have booked it. But then part of me hears him saying, "We thought it was taken care of. The woman who cleaned it the day prior saw nothing. We'll take care of it." and "Bed bugs, unfortunately, are epidemic in the Paris area". And I don't want to ruin his AirBnB career forever. Because it would, wouldn't it? I mean, how would he ever rent it again with a "bed bug" review on the link? I hope for his sake and his children's that he HAS gotten it taken care of... and I'd like him to be able to find renters once he has. Nathaniel says I'm being entirely too nice.

Throughout the whole crazy night and next day - and even the day after that when I was finally able to open my hermetically sealed, trash-bagged suitcase of clothes, shake them all out again and wash them on HOT, examining every tiny crevice of the suitcase, just in case - we were able to laugh. Because THIS! This will be a story that will go down in family lore. This will be a forever joke. "Remember the bed bugs in Paris?!?!"

"Good night, sleep tight, don't let..." "NO! I can't even say it now!"

This was memories in the making, for better and worse.

Do I wish we hadn't had the whole ordeal? OF COURSE. But, part of me thinks it was a godsend. The hotel we moved to was so much better for us! I didn't realize till we arrived that the hotel room that "sleeps 8" was actually an apartment in a long-term stay type hotel. It had three bedrooms on two floors, a living and dining area, a small (ill equipped but functional) kitchen, two baths/showers and two toilets. It was an easy five minute walk around the corner, on well lit streets, to the commuter train station. The trains were fancy double decker things, because it was a busy line (that ended at Disneyland Paris, though we never went that far), so the kids thought it was cushy and fun, and a nice 20 minutes to play games on their tablets at the start and end of each day. There was laundry on site. We even had a little gated yard in front of the apartment that the kids used daily to blow off steam, picking "poison berries" from the bushes and pelting each other with them.

So. Well. There you have it. The first two days of the trip were a bit of a nightmare. But by the second evening, we were standing in front of the Eiffel Tower watching it sparkle and we were back on track to enjoy our vacation. We got back all of our initial housing money, and though we spent more on the place we settled, it was much better suited to our needs. I have washed all the clothes and inspected everything we took with us. I take some comfort that we stayed two places between the infested apartment and our home-away-from-home in Stockholm, just for a little extra security. None of the kids who'd slept in the nasty room ever showed signs of bites. And since we'd extended out trip for cheaper airfare, we ended up with enough time still to make a good, long visit. I honestly can see God's hand in every step of the story, from the longer trip, to the inexplicable bug in the bath tub, to the nicer neighborhood/hotel. And now, we'll always have (bed bugs in) Paris!

We'll also always henceforth join the ranks of the paranoid - checking every hotel/AirBnB mattress before we lie down on it. We used to chuckle at our fastidious family members, who worried about bed bugs at every turn. But now... we get it! We're on board!

Coming up soon, the more upbeat stories from the trip.