Sunday, June 25, 2006

Arrena Can Cannes



My international girl now has more stamps in her passport than most of my friends! Yep, Arrena and I went to the Cannes Film Festival! Even though I've been there before, I always notice the beauty of the place. Amazingly, I don't think it was lost on my girl either. We would take walks along the boardwalk of the Mediterranean, looking at all the yachts. Lovely.

Still, it was a WORK trip, so it wasn't just long walks on the beach. We spent most of our time at our "office on the beach", the American Pavilion tent. There, my boss and I put together a program of meetings and celebrity events. Fun. I thought I'd take a bunch of pictures of Arrena with various stars, but it's just too difficult (and I didn't bring a camera - I thought my boss was bringing the company camera but he wussed out). Anyhow, she immediately met Faye Dunaway - but that woman is a bit looney so we kept our distance. We managed to go to one yacht party. That's right, Arrena was on a yacht. She looked around like she had been there a million times before. The kid thinks that she is 'to the manor born', and I hate to burst her bubble (that she's to the rented duplex born). But, she did meet Samuel L. Jackson on board. She liked his Kangol. All in all, I had to be SuperMom, slaving away for "the man" and giving my time to my child 24/7. I can't tell you how hard I worked!

The thing about being in France is that things happen later. As in, dinner, which happense somewhere around 8-9pm. So her schedule was "adjusted". She got up every morning around 8:30am, which wasn't bad for me. The real problem is that our favorite apartment where we stayed is near a bunch of restaurants and clubs. This trip, the club decided it would be cool to have a DRUM CIRCLE perform or practice every night around midnight until, like, 2 am! Ugh! I could barely sleep, and Arrena would randomly wake up, look around and grimace at the noise, before falling asleep on her face again. I thought ahead enough to ship a guard rail for my bed, so she slept between me and the rail. At least I didn't have to worry about her falling out of bed.

As for the actual flights over the pond, Arrena was a champ. She slept a lot on the flight over. The airline provided a bassinet that locks onto the wall, so she slept for about 6 hours!!! On the way back, our flight from Nice to London was delayed, so we missed our connecting flight from London to LAX. We had to spend the night in a London airport hotel. Again, she handled it really well. I hated the English food, and others were still made about missing the flight, but Arrena took it all in stride. So we came home, 12 days after we left, having stayed in 2 countries and seen countless stars, and the best part was seeing Daddy come through the door after work! Arrena even went to sleep around her normal bedtime, woke up a little early the first morning, less early the next morning, and was back on schedule by 3 days.

Isn't she amazing!!!