e drove south, stopping at Carcassonne, a walled, medieval city with moats, stone walls and slate-roofed turrets. I figured the kids would love it, but they were more interested in buying plastic turtles and eating ice cream than in the architecture.

 

However, the boys’ faces lit up when they saw a shop full of medieval weapons. There were swords, maces, chain mail, shields, spears. They spotted two large wooden swords. They had to buy them. I wavered. Who knew what international incidents they’d provoke? In the end, I caved. I wanted them to leave France with good memories. We barely managed to stuff the swords into our over-packed Renault.

 

Then we headed south to Collioure, a small port city surrounded by an ancient stone fort, groves of olive trees, and endless views of the wine dark Mediterranean. The kids could swim, explore the old fort, and skip rocks in the sea without worrying about being out of line. That was the idea.

 

We booked rooms in the Hôtel des Templiers, a former hangout of Matisse and Picasso, a rambling, four-story hotel right off the waterfront. The walls were hung with canvasses by artists who had stayed there over the years, exchanging works of art for the hotel bill. There were no Matisses or Picassos, but plenty of wonderful paintings.

 

The hotel reception was located in a bar on the ground floor, far from our fourth floor rooms overlooking the harbor. When the children ran down the halls, they didn’t seem to bother anyone, but we reprimanded them anyway, anxious to avoid repeating the experience back in St. Emilion.

 

We ate at tourist restaurants at first. We kept it simple; the kids ordered steak and fries or chicken. We ordered duck confit or salade niçoise draped with the tangy local sardines. They gobbled their dinner and went outside to play on the beach while we lingered over a bottle of chilled rosé.

 

I watched how the French children behaved at the restaurants. They ate with their parents, but they threw no tantrums. There was no pouting. No loud complaining. They were welcome as long as they behaved. If they did not, they were removed. There were no exceptions. There was less tolerance of misbehavior from kids than from dogs. Over the next few days, we began to get the hang of things. We stuck to the noisy, informal cafés, eating breakfast on the hotel’s terrace. Danny complained about having to eat croissants instead of corn flakes, but took it no further than that. He sensed the rules were different here.

 

The kids enjoyed themselves, savoring trips to the ice cream stand, swimming in the sea, exploring the tide pools, and diving down to see the schools of fish. Outside, they could yell and scream as much as they wanted; but inside the restaurants, they had to keep a lid on it.

 

The intense sun and relaxed attitude of southern France took hold; the tension in the hotel at St. Emilion was mostly forgotten. For our last night in Collioure, I booked a reservation at La Neptune, an elegant restaurant perched on a headland overlooking the harbor. I knew I was taking a chance, but I didn’t want to eat in a cheap café.

 

We arrived early, hoping to avoid the dinner rush. The waiter, a slim, dark-haired blade of man, moved with skill and deftness around the outdoor deck. He smiled warmly and guided us to our table. There were no other children in the place, even though the restaurant had a children’s menu. The other diners were older French couples.

 

He sat us at a table with a panoramic view of the harbor and the old fort. We ordered steak-frites (steak and fries) for the kids, along with Coca Cola, and crème glacée (ice cream) for dessert. Lisa and I looked at each other and hoped for the best. The waiter brought us a bottle of rosé in a glass bucket of ice. The evening sun caught the bottle, turning it into a lovely shade of crimson. I began to let down my guard, relaxing into the moment.

 

Marie drew pictures of cats on a piece of paper. Danny read a book about submarines. Nicky paged through a comic book.

 

The first course arrived without incident. For me, local sardines with oil streaked so that they looked like a Matisse still life. For Lisa, a cool gazpacho soup. For the kids, small tenderloin steaks and fries.

 

“Is this a snack?” Nicky asked sarcastically, but didn’t push it.

 

The children ate their dinners quickly, digging into the potatoes fried in duck fat, a feature of French cooking they’d come to crave.

 

Then the main course appeared-tuna steaks-with a bottle of Collioure red. The steaks were perfect, charred on the outside, red on the inside. The wine was rich and robust and slightly cool, just the way I like it. The kids left the table to play in the tide pools below. There was no yelling. No shrieks of disapproval.

 

Lisa and I reminisced about the trip, joking about the incident in St. Emilion from the distance of a week. When the sundaes arrived, we called the children back to the table. The children all said, “merci,” to the waiter. They quickly lost themselves in lapping up the ice cream. Lisa and I shared a café crème.

 

The older couples glanced wistfully at our table, perhaps remembering fondly their own years of raising children, the decades having erased the unpleasant aspects of the job.

 

As we got up to leave, an older French couple beamed at us and beckoned us over.

 

“Elle apprend le Français,” the husband said pointing to Marie: she’s learning French.

 

“Oui, monsieur,” I said, touching him on the shoulder with gratitude. We left the restaurant with lights shimmering on the harbor, the sun disappearing behind the Pyrenees, and the other couples talking and laughing over their dinners. As we walked back to our hotel, I reveled in the afterglow of it all: les enfants terribles no longer, our kids had finally become les enfants français.