Day 6, Brighton

I feel like the air has been let out of my balloon. I woke up this morning to a very stressed out husband. He had been up since 6am surfing the web, reading about the latest eruptions from the volcano. He was sputtering something about wanting to call Austrian Airlines. Maybe we could get a flight from Vienna to Albania. I had to talk him down again, try to get him to relax. Of course, I don't know what the best path is, I just wasn't ready to stress out yet. I was just waking up to what I thought was going to be a nice relaxing day, not that we were out of the city. We woke up Nathan to go to breakfast, and he was in a very contrary mood. After the first couple of hours of the day, I'd had it with trying to deal with everyone else's negativity. It's just too hard. Instead of cheering them up, they bring me down.

We're in an Internet Cafe again, which is a welcome respite from the cold wind. We had an OK day. Most of the day Nathan was pushing us on, bored with whatever we were doing. We did spend some time at the pebbly ocean, and even found a little sand when the tide was out. We played mini-golf ("crazy golf"), which surprisingly involved a lot of grumbling. We went to a royal palace (10 minute walk from the hotel) that looked similar to the Taj Mahal, because its architect was Indian. We didn't pay to go inside, because Nathan was driving me crazy anyways with his boredom, so I knew I wouldn't enjoy it. We did sit on the grass in the courtyard, though, along with hundreds of other people enjoying the nice day. There was a young guy playing a guitar. The kids found a tree to climb, so Genci and I had some time to relax and just be.

Nathan really wanted us to find a bike rental place. The tourist office gave us a list of places, so we set off to another pier to find the closest place. On the way we saw lots of shops along the boardwalk and lots of people. We sat and watched some people play beach volleyball on a court that had sand. The bike shop was closed, but we found a playground. The kids were fully involved with that, and we could have stayed there all day, but the wind got too cold, so we were off again.

That's it. That was our day.

I've been thinking today about traveling. It seems that it doesn't really matter where you are. If you're with people that you like & that are having fun, you have a good time. If you're with people that are miserable, it takes a lot of energy to block that out and have fun. It doesn't really matter if you're in a historic place or in your backyard. Kids will have fun if they have a ball to throw or a tree to climb, but especially if they have other kids to play with. So, I don't know how much good travel does for kids. They do notice things, and maybe those things sink in a little and provide a little background info for them as they make sense of the world. But they really just want to play. And it's hard to play when you're always in other people's spaces, like restaurants, hotels, public areas. You can play, but you can't touch as much and you have to be respectful of other people (not too loud, not hop around unpredictably so you might bump into people, etc.)

Right now we're back in the hotel. We were all cold & tired, and just want to be mushballs. We picked up some snacks, used videos and a bottle of wine. We're hoping to watch a movie & snuggle. It's nice that this hotel room is big enough that this will be fun, not crowded.

I'm sorry today's post was a bit of a downer. It was one of those days that makes you wonder why you do things. And it also was one of those days in which I was very aware of the personalities around me. It reminded my of the title of the book - "Wherever You Go, There You Are". For us, the You is the whole family. I found myself wishing I were alone today, so I could explore things without responding to everyone's needs. But near the end of the day, when I was cold and the kids were finally happy (playing at the playground), I found it very convenient and cozy to warm up by snuggling with Genci. I guess there are times where being alone would be nice, and times where it's nice to have the people you love with you.