French apartment renovations, Days 257-258: 11 kids, 2 trains, & Tende...and a baby

I was gone all day yesterday at Tende. Even though the forecast was gloomy (rain all afternoon), we decided to brave the weather and hope for the best. We ended up with a good crowd: 11 children and 4 adults.

It turned into a gorgeous day, mostly or partly sunny for much of the afternoon. We had a few drops of rain at the end, but nothing to even warrant taking out our umbrellas.

After a 2hr 20min train ride, we arrived and immediately headed to the river. One of the adults has gone several times before and has a favorite spot, to we followed him about 1 km out of town.

This village was heavily hit by tempête Alex, a huge winter storm last year that wiped out roads, bridges, and houses. Even where we were playing, you could see large areas carved out by the flooding.

I really, really wanted to do a hike with the kids. But when we arrived at Tende, I looked up more information about the hike. It turns out to be fairly dangerous and is intended to be done with climbing equipment. So I had to cancel that plan!

It's the hike to the Chapelle Saint-Sauveur overlooking Tende. Part of it goes over a suspended bridge, which you can see in my video if you look closely. Or for fun, you can watch this drone video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsEhzmr0xt0

We spent the entire day at the river, and the kids still didn't want to leave. It was amazing. Just hours and hours of playing in the stream, throwing rocks into the water, building a little fort, wandering around the countryside, peeing in the bushes. You know, good old-fashioned fun.



We got back to Nice around 8:20 pm. I was totally wiped out. Kaput. Then of course I slept terribly last night so was even more wiped out this morning. But that's okay. I took it easy and had a little nap.

This afternoon, I went and visited the family who had their baby almost 2 weeks ago. It was fun to see their little boy and see how he has grown. They were really interested in elimination communication, which I did with all 4 kids. I showed them how I did it and their baby even did a pee for me right away!

Then I took the bus home since we had a picnic on the beach for dinner. We ate with the family that we house/dog sat for two weeks ago. The dad was telling us all of these stories about the family he works for as a private chef. He had just come back from a 7-star resort Turkey, invited by the family so he could learn fancy culinary techniques such as putting real gold on food...because apparently that's what rich people do. I didn't even know 7-star resorts existed!