I’ve been home from Europe for a week now. The jet lag is finally worn off; I am down to waking up only two or three times a night wondering how I fell asleep in my hotel room with the door open and panicked because certainly someone’s stolen my suitcase and don’t I need to catch a train? I’ve made a cursory pass through my photographs and I’ve sorted out my souvenirs (mostly post cards of my favorite paintings from the many museums we went to) and put away all of my travel gear—except for my suitcase which is still by my bedroom door.

(Maybe I should put it away and then I could sleep through the night.)

(Outside the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Yes, I totally wore trail runners and skirts.)

People keep asking me how the trip went, and I have to be honest: I have some conflicted feelings about it. There were some really, really good moments: when Haley and I first saw our hotel room in London, and it felt like the very best kind of shabby British establishment. Braiding Haley’s hair for her before we left for the day, and the next day when I tried to fishtail it and it was a big fat mess. Eating fish & chips (for Haley) and chips (for me) in our room on the second night, thoroughly exhausted from all our walking. The moment it stopped raining and the sun came out in London. Walking across so many bridges. Belgian waffles (more than one!) in Brussels, shopping for souvenirs in little shops, a cruise of the river Seine, a meal in the late Paris twilight. There were tears of many sorts, and wet shoes, many wrong turns and not a few wrong buses. There were three distinct miracles—four, really—and one near disaster.

I learned many things, about myself and about Haley and about our relationship. I learned how to get around on a metro. I learned I don’t only get anxious about missing air plans, but about missing trains, too. I learned there are bathrooms that are dirtier than the filthiest Ragnar honeybucket. I learned that the keyboard on French computers are different from English ones, and then I laughed to realize I’d never thought about keyboards in other languages. I learned that even with wrong turns, stops closed because of construction, and a language barrier, I can figure out how to get around in an unfamiliar city. I learned I can survive for quite a while without eating anything much at all. I learned you should always bring a back-up credit card, photograph your passport, and print your boarding passes from home.

I learned I am quite the museum crier.

The museums! The art. That was my favorite part. Not seeing a painting in a book, or a print on someone’s wall, but the real, actual painting touched by the person who created it: that is, to me, an amazing thing. It’s sort of a time travel mechanism; the artist is gone but his (usually!) art is still here, a way to sort of experience the artist, except in some sense you know more about his (or, rarely, her) life than he did. I adored visiting the museums.

But it was hard to be the tour guide. It’s different to experience a city in real life, as opposed to plotting out your route on Google maps. Well, obviously, and of course I knew that, but I felt overwhelmed the entire time, and like I had to hide my overwhelmed feeling so the trip could feel smooth for my traveling companions. I had a moment at Heathrow, when we’d gotten our luggage and it was real: I had to get us from the airport to our hotel, which was luckily a straight trip from Heathrow to St. Pancras station on the tube. I wasn’t ready for transferring trains yet. I almost panicked right there, but then I took a deep breath, tried to remember what I learned from all the guide books I read, and followed the signs to the Tube station. Our Oyster cards worked, we could only go one way on the train, and we made it to the hotel (eventually…I had forgotten my umbrella and it was pouring rain, so I stopped at a random shop and bought one, but then I was trying to pull my suitcase, keep my carry-on bag on my shoulder, hold my umbrella up, and follow the navigation app on my phone).

And needing to be on time for four different trains really did give me a constant, low-level anxiety that ran underneath everything.

It was difficult for me to decide where to eat, between trying to keep a reasonable budget and feeding vegetarians.

And I think I was thirsty 90% of the time.

Still, it was a week in Europe with my daughter and her friend. I got to see a Van Gogh almost every day. I got to go running in Amsterdam and Paris. I walked all over London and sat in underappreciated churches in Brussels and walked through the red light district in Amsterdam. I got brave asking “parlez-vous anglais?” in Paris. I saw priceless, ancient statues in the Louvre and the British Museum; I bought fabric at Liberty of London and a used book at a bookshop on Charing Cross Road. I recounted British history and I bought a small (and likely not authentic) piece of Delft pottery and I wandered around the Grand Place in Brussels.

How was my trip? It’s hard to sum up. I keep thinking about how to blog about it, and I think I will have to break it down into very small parts. It wasn’t a relaxing trip by any means. But it was an adventure, one I will think about a remember for my entire life; one that made me hope for other European experiences (hopefully not so rushed next time); one that I was glad to share with my daughter.