You wanna plan my vacation?

You know how sometimes you go on vacation, but you come back more tired than when you left?  Well, I'm tired just from trying to plan some upcoming vacations.

In France, May is like the holy grail of bank holidays.  There are three of them:  

Labor Day/May Day (May 1), WWII Victory Day (May 8) and Ascension Day (May 21).  Technically, every now and then there were four of them when Whit Monday fell in May, but a few years ago, I think it was in 2003 after a large number of the elderly died in a heat wave, it became a non-pay work day for most workers.  When the bank holidays fall on a Monday or Friday, then you have at least two three-day weekends and a possible four-day weekend if Ascension Day falls on a Tuesday or Thursday and you take the Monday or Friday off.  Confused yet?

This year is one of those perfect storm years and Lee and I have been trying to plan vacations during the long weekends.  But it has become a bit of a comedy of errors.  First, we were having a hard time finding a B&B or an apartment that we could rent just for the long weekends.  Because these places are all operated by the owner, they prefer to rent the suites (Sofia wakes up when we share a room with her, so we try to avoid it if we can, hence the need for a suite instead of a single room) or apartments by the week.  We found a few nice hotels with suites, but this isn't ideal as we would be stuck in the hotel pretty early in the evening.  We could always get a babysitter, but it kind of freaks us out to leave her with somebody we don't know in a place we don't know, etc.  As Lee wisely put it: remember Madeleine?

To complicate things further, Lee and I shockingly don't see eye to eye on what kind of accommodation to rent.  He wants a really nice place and I don't want to travel for hours and hours with a baby just for a long weekend.  But, after lots and lots and lots and lots of searching, we found a few nice B&Bs with family suites that rent just for two nights.  Many calls later, Lee makes reservations at two places that miraculously happen not to be booked yet.

Well, it turns out there is a reason these two places aren't full.  For starters, it is impossible to rent a car at the train stations where we would be arriving.  Why you ask?  Because this is France and nothing is open on Sunday (the day we would leave to come back) or bank holidays.  Why in the world a car rental company would close at all during what would probably be one of their most profitable months, I have no freaking idea. The other option is to rent a car in Paris and drive all the way, but the traffic is bumper to bumper on these long weekends and neither Lee nor I want to sit through hours and hours of traffic.

Not to mention that one of these B&Bs is not ideal because it is a three hour train ride away, plus a two hour car ride just to get to a house in the middle of nowhere.  And while I'm sure the house is lovely and the countryside is beautiful, there is no freaking way I'm going on a five hour trip, plus the time it takes to get to the train station, plus the time it takes to rent the car, with a kid who has rarely ever used a car seat and screams bloody murder after being in one for 15 minutes, just for two days.

So, how will we be spending the month of May, during which there are about as many days off as there are working days?  Right here in Paris baby!  Anybody wanna come visit?