Your friend snaps at his wife and anyone else who might look vaguely happy, while at the same time planning fun things for all of you to do. His wife, who snaps right back at her husband, is put out when you decide to make life easier for everyone by devising plans that don’t include them. The tension is as thick as English custard, and everyone becomes testy, except your children, who thankfully don’t notice the friction, possibly because these people fight in beautifully clipped accents, which sound very “Masterpiece Theatre” and civilized. Your children have a wonderful time boating on the Thames with other tourists and marveling over the inordinately luxe sandwiches at the local coffee houses.

Then you’re off to a brief stay in Amsterdam with your friend who is recovering from an unhappy divorce. You are all happy to be together for a short visit, and she offers you sumptuous lodgings in the attic room of her spacious house. The bald, six-foot-tall female performance artist who has been staying with your friend the previous week then decides that she needs to stay on for a few more days, but you aren’t put out because you are on vacation and its all part of the adventure. The performance artist turns out to have very human problems, despite her intimidating height and exotic garb; she pilfers gin from your friend’s liquor cabinet, discusses her troubled family relationships at great length, and frequently nods off in her soup. Your children take it all in stride, learn some interesting foreign accents, get to see Rembrandts and Van Goghs, and you get to answer the question, “Mom, what is a red light district?”

You then move on to another friend’s barge on the Seine for ten days, and except for the toxic fumes from the recent engine repainting, the aggressive French river mosquitoes, and the heat, you are in paradise. Your older son joins a pickup basketball game with a group of serious French players, while your younger son rides a scooter up and down the quay at high speeds. When it gets too hot, they go below deck and watch Laurel and Hardy, dubbed in French, while you enjoy plates of cheese and bottles of wine on the upper deck. You attempt to convince your spouse that there are no mosquitoes, and even if there are mosquitoes, the mosquitoes do not attack people who have imbibed really good French wine.