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side·track (sīd´trăk): n. 1. A diversion from the main course. 2. A detour taken with children that you would never, ever take without them.
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Who:
Michelle Duffy (a.k.a. Wandermom), her husband, and her 8 and 12-year-old kids.

What and Where:
The Tintin Shop.  Covent Garden, London, England.

Why:
Because we stopped at Covent Garden for lunch and happened to pass The Tintin Shop on the way to eat. With much parental cajoling, our eager Tintin readers were convinced that ‘food first’ was a good idea but only with promises of returning directly to the store after we’d eaten. And so we did, to wait, in this tiny store while every book, toy and miscellaneous other tchotchke was picked up, examined and longingly considered as an end-of-vacation purchase.

The Low Point:
From the diminutive size of this store, you’d think a child could only spend at maximum 10, maybe 15 minutes inside. Not so. It took dire warnings of potentially missing our flight back to Seattle to coach these fans out of the store after at least an hour of browsing.

The Kids’ Take:
“Mom, I can’t get this Tintin Special Edition in Seattle. Can we come back here every time we go through London?”

The Bottom Line:
I can’t really complain about my children being fascinated by reading – even if it’s Tintin. We had a long layover between a morning flight from Rome and an evening flight to Seattle. Lunch in the Covent Garden area with world class musicians busking* to serenade us was worth the price of an hour in a shop devoted to a pint-sized Belgian reporter.

*Busking: The practice of performing in public places for tips and gratuities.

February 25th, 2009 | by Michelle Duffy 2 comments