The narrow window between winter vacation and spring break was clearly the best time for us – it’s hardly a celebration of the childless life if you set out during school vacation. Since we live in Brussels, we knew that by late February we would be desperate for sun and a little warmth, so our plan was to hop on a train at Brussels Midi Station and head as far south as we could get. Italy. We would start with Bologna to break up the trip, then head on to Naples and the Amalfi Coast before coming back north to Florence and heading home.
With a brief stop in Paris, of course. There is something so luxurious about high-speed trains – waking up in Brussels and then arriving in Paris in time for breakfast. It’s hard not to feel like a jet-setter. There is a chain of French bakeries called “Paul” that I look for as soon as I get off a train in France. Breakfast was croissants, perfectly flaky and delicious the way they can only be made in France for some reason, while we waited for our next connection.
The weekend we set out was the last weekend of winter vacation, and the stations were crowded with families and school groups returning from ski trips in France and Switzerland. One thing I had noticed since finding out we were having a baby is that once you’re on the baby wavelength, you see children EVERYWHERE. It was like for the first time in my adult life I was suddenly aware that there was this other kind of person out there – a little person – and that they weren’t always entirely awful. More than that though, it was like they were seeking me out too, like every time I noticed one of them, he or she would be looking back at me as well. It seemed like we were surrounded by families, babies, small children, strollers, stuffed animals…
But that wasn’t why we were going – we were on the road to get away from that, the last hurrah for the childless travelers. We smiled to ourselves knowing that the crowds were all heading home; by the time the train climbed through the alps and into Italy, it was almost totally empty.
