How cow, 2018 was a fun year for us in terms of travel! And an eventful one. We may have gone a little crazier than normal on trips since we had a bit of a carpe diem attitude (“gotta go now, Owen starts school in the fall!” and “let’s go before we have another baby” and “what if we never see fares this low again?!”). But, absolutely no regrets!

This year brought us to Belgium in February, Florence/Tuscany/Rome with my in-laws in April, Berlin and Scotland in May/June, Slovenia in June/July, Malta in August/September, Berlin (again) in October and Frankfurt and Strasbourg for Christmas markets in November/December. In March, I had spent my first days away from the kids since they were born spending four days in Paris with my bestie. Chris had a bunch of work trips, including going to Ireland and the US in April, plus he and his brother had an impromptu trip to Paris themselves in October.

If you are wondering whether it is lost on us how insanely lucky we are to have this opportunity right now: it isn’t. We are grateful every day.

Our favorite places of 2018, according to each of us:

Fiona’s favorite country: Malta
Fiona’s favorite city: Also Malta. (She would not consider selecting an actual city)

Owen’s favorite country: Scotland
Owen’s favorite city: Berlin (worth noting: he had his birthday in Berlin, and Fi had hers in Malta)

Chris’ favorite country: Slovenia
Chris’ favorite city: Bruges

Yours truly’s favorite country: Slovenia
My favorite city: Edinburgh. Just barely — I went back and forth between Berlin and Edinburgh as my favorite.

Some recurring themes from our 2018

1. Castles on giant cliffs. 

Castles are always a big thing for us anywhere we visit (one of our favorite trips all-time was seeing castles in the Loire Valley), but this year it was all about castles perched on cliffs. We saw these all over the place, particularly in Scotland and Slovenia. Inside some were more exciting than others, but the view never gets old.

1. 

   

   2. Unexpected favorites

   This year, we found ourselves surprised by some of our favorites! Obviously we wouldn’t go somewhere we weren’t at least somewhat interested in, but in some cases it was the side-trips we added as a whim that turned out to the be the best. For the Belgium trip, it was the day we spent in Bastogne and Orval Abbey that blew us away, especially the amazing WWII museum in Bastogne. For Florence/Tuscany, it was a day in Greve in Chianti (despite the bus misadventure). Scotland? The town of Pitlochry,  originally chosen largely for convenience. And in Slovenia — where we went specifically to go to the Lake Bled tree house — it was falling in love with the unspellable city of Ljubljana!

   

   

3. Visitors!

This year was especially great because so many friends and family came to spend time with us! My friend Shaina spent several days with us in April after our Paris trip, my aunt and her significant other came out in May, my parents were here in August, our friends April and Josh and their daughter visited in October, and my mother-in-law and her husband were here in November. We love showing our island to the people we love!

4. Mythical creatures

Once again, I’m not sure what it was about this year but mythical creatures seemed to be a theme. In Scotland, it was seeing unicorns everywhere (in art, sadly, not in real life. Though Fi and I aren’t entirely giving up hope!). In Slovenia, it was DRAGONS. Next up: finding more countries with badass mascots for next year.

5. Paris with friends

This year, Chris and I each sneaked away for a visit to Paris with friends! (Well, technically Chris went with his brother, but they are also besties so …). Each of us had been there before more than once, but our travel companions hadn’t. We each had a great time seeing sights both old and new to us! Paris will never get old to me.

Some things about our flights this year

This section brought to you entirely by the fact that I am a nerd, and that also a few weeks ago I decided to put off my actual work in favor of the obviously urgent task of determining what the average costs of our flights were this year.

See also: this post about our accommodations this year!

1. Direct flights only. This year, we did not take any flights that required a stopover anywhere. It started off somewhat incidental, then as the year went on we realized we really liked wasting less time in airport. I hope this trend will continue in 2019, though obviously not for a trip back to the States because that does not exist.
2. Low-budget airlines. With the exception of Chris’ work flights, our travels were entirely on RyanAir, EasyJet and Volotea. Low budget carriers all, but hey — can’t beat a $40 flight to Belgium! Next year we are trying out a new one, WizzAir, to get to Budapest.
3. No bags. Well, no checked bags, that is. We’ve grown increasingly efficient with our packing and made it through each trip with just one or two small carry-on suitcases. The only time this was slightly problematic was our 12-day Berlin/Scotland trip; we booked an AirBnB with a washing machine so we could do laundry, but it didn’t occur to us that it wouldn’t come with a dryer. And it turns out things don’t air-dry as quickly as you might hope in a damp and chilly place like Edinburgh. Lesson learned.
4. The cost? For the eight round-trip flights we took as a family (I’ve excluded our individual trips and work trips), we paid an average of $72 a ticket. That’s actually a smidge higher than I expected, given some of the crazy deals we had this year, but not bad at all for going all over Europe!

   

Some other big developments from 2018

1. We moved! At the time it was the most stressful thing in the world — massive drama, house hunting, packing, etc. But you know what? I could seriously not be more happy with the way things worked out! Our not-so-new apartment is half the size of our former villa (though still 2,400 sf, so still pretty large!) but actually feels like more space because it is just much more functional. We now have five real bedrooms all on the same level, which is perfect since our new baby will have a room of his own and we’ll still have a guest room. We “only” have two bathrooms instead of five, but amazingly we can use both showers at the same time! Even if the washer and dishwasher are running! Even better, the power isn’t constantly going out. You’d have to have stayed in our old house to know how remarkable these things seemed when we first moved in. Most importantly, our landlords are the absolute BEST! They could not be sweeter or kinder or more thoughtful. We love them! 
2. Owen started kindergarten! And Fi started a new preschool! These kids are growing up so incredibly fast, it is just blowing my mind. Both are absolutely thriving in their new school environment and learning so much. Owen is starting to read and loves math, and Fiona is constantly coming home with new Italian words as well. It is amazing that now they have these whole social lives outside of me — we go to base and each of them invariably sees friends they have to run over and greet. Sniff, sniff. 
3. We’re having another baby! Woohoo! Our baby boy is due March 23. That’s only about 12 weeks away — crazy! Next up: working on a nursery. Well, I’d say that about does it for this year’s recap. Next up: all the posts I meant to write, but never did. Well, about a paragraph about each location I didn’t write about because I was tired/busy/pregnant/insert other excuse here. Because #realistic.

Can’t wait to see what 2019 brings! What are your travel plans for next year? 

The post 2018 in review: Highlights of our year! first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post 2018 in review: Highlights of our year! appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

10 reasons to plan a family holiday in Sicily

It’s been more than 18 months since we moved to Sicily, but I remain astonished by how much this island has to offer. Despite having spent a considerable amount of time daydreaming about possible vacation destinations in the years before moving here, the thought of planning a family holiday in Sicily never crossed my mind. I’m betting a lot of people looking for that perfect family vacation destination are in the same boat, but – no worries, folks – I’m here to help.

So, why plan a family holiday in Sicily? Because there is something for everyone at every age. We’re talking beaches, mountains, hiking, dining, relaxing, history, outdoor sports and much more. To top it off? It’s budget-friendly. Can’t beat that!

10 Reasons to Choose a Family Holiday in Sicily

1. It’s all about that beach.

Sicily boasts what I firmly believe are some of the most gorgeous beaches in the world. They vary considerably depending on your location — rocky in some areas, sandy in others, and with black sand in places on the Aeolian Islands — but just about everywhere you go you’ll find that warm, gemstone-colored Mediterranean Sea.

On the eastern coast you’ll find rocky beaches near Taormina, while you’ll want to venture just south of Siracusa to Fontane Bianche, San Lorenzo or Avola for some sand. On the west coast, San Vito Lo Capo and Favignana Island are the places to go. To the north, try one of Sicilians’ favorite summer spots, the town of Cefalu. We spent two weekends in Cefalu last summer;  if you go, we’d suggest staying at the Royal Sea House.

2. History buffs will love a family holiday in Sicily

Sicily has a rich and tumultuous history of being claimed throughout the centuries by the dominant forces of the era. At various points it was under the control of the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs and the Normans (to name a few), and its cities reflect this fascinating mix. For instance, in  70 BC, the Roman orator Cicero referred to the Sicilian city of Siracusa as “the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all.” If you visit Siracusa today you can walk past an ancient temple to Apollo (who was believed to be born there) and into the iconic Duomo di Siracusa, a structure built on the site of a Greek temple, repurposed as a church, transitioned into a mosque and ultimately changed back into a church.

History lovers can visit ancient structures like the Temple of Concordia in Agrigento’s Valley of the Temples, or enormous Greek and Roman theaters in Taormina and Siracusa. Those who are interested in more recent history can tour sights relevant to the Allied Invasion of Sicily in 1943.

3. Sicily is home to one of Europe’s largest volcanoes

Mount Vesuvius might be the best-known of Italy’s three volcanoes, but it is dwarfed by Sicily’s Mount Etna, which is 2-and-a-half times larger. Mount Etna also happens to be one of the most active volcanoes in the world and is almost constantly smoking, with occasional visible lava. According to Greek mythology, Hephaestus’ forges were located within Mount Etna’s depths. Polyphemus, the Cyclops blinded by Odysseus in the Odyssey, also hailed from Etna and the rocks he chucked at the escaping hero can now be found in the stunning seaside town of Aci Trezza.

It’s been almost a year and a half, and I still haven’t tired of gazing at Mount Etna. If you opt for a family holiday in Sicily, I’d suggest taking the opportunity to visit Etna, either on a tour or solo. We’ve enjoyed hiking on Mount Etna several times, but if hiking isn’t necessarily your speed there are cable cars that can take you up the mountain or various tours (include by mountain bike or quad!) to get you to the top. Every member of the family is bound to get a thrill out of seeing Etna smoke, picking up chunks of lava rock and learning about eruptions of years past.

4. There are plenty of ways to spend time outdoors on a family holiday to Sicily

If laying on a beach isn’t necessarily your speed, there’s plenty of other opportunities for fun in the sun! Across this country you’ll find places to fish, rent boats, go horseback riding or simply enjoy dining al fresco and people-watching. Mount Etna is a natural choice to hike, but in Sicily you’ll find plenty of other places to walk as well, with varying level of difficulty for the kids. Parco Monte Serra in Viagrande is a nice place to take a walk, check out a butterfly house or try your land at land-tubing. The Alcantara Gorge (Gole Alcantara) is also a fabulous place to cool off in the summer, albeit better suited for older children rather than toddlers.

I’d also suggest checking out local farmer’s markets while in Sicily, especially if you are with kids. Spotting fresh-caught fish, still-living crabs and all the fruit they can eat is always amusing for my crew, and a good place to pick up a snack as well. Try the Catania fish market (every morning except Sunday) or the Siracusa market near Apollo’s Temple.

5. The food is incredible.

Seafood. Pasta. Arancini. Granita. And did I say pasta yet?

Sicilian food is both delicious and, in many ways, different than you’ll find anywhere else in Italy. While you’re on your family holiday in Sicily, you’ll want to be sure to try some of the island’s specialties, such as arancini — fried rice balls flavored with fillings like ragu, spinach, pistacchio — and pasta al Norma, noodles with a tomato-based sauce with eggplant and salted ricotta. Anything with pistachio is always a good bet, whether it is on a cannoli or a pizza. I personally never pass up a ravioli con pistacchio. As you might expect on an island, fresh seafood is a big deal here as well — you can get fabulous options in restaurants or even just on the side of the road.

Kids and adults will love granita, a Sicilian frozen specialty best described as being somewhere between Italian ice and a slushie in consistency, served almost exclusively in the warmer months. Common flavors are fruit when in season, pistachio, coffee, almond and chocolate. I recommend raspberry or lemon. Top it with panna (cream) and eat it with a brioche. Here’s a secret: the best granita is in eastern Sicily, and the best granita in eastern Sicily is at Taormina’s Bam Bar. Don’t miss it!

6. The wine is cheap, delicious and plentiful

Need I say much more than the headline, here? Volcanoes make for fertile soil, and that soil grows some delicious grapes. We aren’t wine experts by any means, but we’ve found the house wines here to by typically very tasty and very cheap. If you are spending a family holiday in Sicily (or any holiday), I’d suggest checking out an winery/agriturismo for a combined wine tasting and expansive, farm-to-table meal that lasts hours. Murgo Winery or Gambino Winery are both great choices for this. We love Sunday lunch at Murgo, where there is plenty of room for the kids to run around while the adults sample wine.

7. Family holidays in Sicily are cheap(ish).

Finding a European holiday that isn’t going to bust your budget is always tricky, but if you are looking to spend time in western Europe, Sicily is going to be a cost-effective choice — particularly if you travel any time other than July and August. We’ve had several friends come visit here after being elsewhere in Europe, and they always remark upon how much cheaper everything is on this island. Prices can be somewhat higher at tourist-heavy locations, but in general you can expect to pay less than 1 euro for an espresso in a cafe, or about 5 euro for a “individual” cheese pizza that is more than enough for two kids.

8. Sicily is family friendly.

Walking around Sicily with kids is basically like being a celebrity. People are plenty nice to me when I’m alone, but Sicily with kids? Whole different ball game. Cashiers and waiters regularly hand my kids special treats when we are out and about, and everyone from the teenagers to the little old nonni (grandfathers) ends up smiling at them, patting their head or trying to talk to them. Usually this is accompanied by them commenting on them being bionde (blondes). Women I’ve met with newborns tell me wait staff will frequently offer to hold the baby while they eat.

Sicilians also have a remarkably indulgent attitude toward children. Unlike some places we’ve been (I’m looking at you, Paris), they seem to expect kids to, well, behave like kids. Everything is always va bene. 

9. Sicily is (somewhat) off the beaten track

Don’t love waiting in lines at every attraction? Consider a family holiday in Sicily. While I certainly would never claim there are no tourists – Sicily is a hotspot for European beach-seekers in July and August – most of the year you won’t be fighting the crowds to get into local attractions. As a result, the place has a more authentic feel and prices to match.

10. The people are the best

Sicilians are an incredibly warm and welcoming people (albeit fiery when you get them worked up, ha!). I’ve never yet had a problem that people weren’t immediately coming to my aid. When my car wouldn’t start and I was stranded at the park? About 12 different people rallied to try jumping it and helped me get a new battery. When I was lost in a sea of incomprehensible Italian at the post office? Someone patiently came over to help me translate. And I’ve already talked about how they like to indulge my children!

While there are certainly jerks everywhere and Sicily is no exception, we’ve found the vast majority of Sicilians to be exceptionally kind. And that’s something you can’t put a price on.

Planning a family holiday in Sicily: the bottom line

Whether you are looking for a relaxing beach holiday, an active, outdoorsy vacation or a journey through historic sites, chances are Sicily has something for you. It has an old-world, almost exotic feel to it — hello, sheep in the road! — but at the same time it has the modern comforts you crave. Such as a phone app that lets you order food and drinks to be delivered to you beach chair. What more can you ask for?

Enjoy this post? Sharing is caring! And if you have not already joined us on my Facebook page at Babies With Backpacks, please do.

The post 10 reasons to plan a family holiday in SICILY first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post 10 reasons to plan a family holiday in SICILY appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

If you are planning a long plane ride with your toddlers or preschoolers, chances are you are stressing out about it. Hell, we’ve done this at least five times now and it still stresses me out! That said, you can make things easier on yourselves by packing strategically. You don’t need to bring the kitchen sink (and remember, anything you pack has to be hauled through the airport at the same time you are keeping track of your kids!), but packing these long-haul flight essentials will help make your life easier if you on a plane ride with young kids. So, what do you need? Take a look:

Taking a long-haul flight with kids: A packing list for parents of preschoolers and toddlers

1. A car seat for your toddler. If yours is bulky or heavy, I’d suggest investing in a cheap, lightweight option to use for trips. We have the Evenflow Tribute LX Convertible Car Seat, which cost less than $50 on Amazon and is much less bulky than the one we have for her in the car.
2. Car seat travel cart. I talk about this here, but this has become an essential for us.
3. iPad/Kindle/Tablet/Phone. If you are crossing the ocean, you’ll probably have a built-in entertainment system. Still, it is better not to bank on it as we had one situation where Owen’s was broken. I’d suggest downloading movies or shows on the iPad/Kindle/whatever ahead of time — as well as kid-friendly games — so that you aren’t depending on having wifi available.
4. Headphones. Don’t count on using the ear buds provided by the airline; kids’ ears are too small to use them comfortably. We have the Nenos brand ones and have been really happy with them — they link together so if there is only one device you both kids can hear — but I have a friend who swears by a V-Tech brand as well.
5. Change of clothes. Because kids are going to dump stuff on themselves. I’d suggest bringing the clothes that you can roll up as small as possible, such as leggings. For this last flights I packed stretchy Halloween leggings and a Halloween shirt on the theory that either child could wear it in an emergency. If you have a baby with you, obviously pack several outfits and a couple of shirts for yourself.
6. Suckers. These are specifically for take-off and landing, they help the kids deal with the ear pressure. We used to use Dum-Dums but they were crunching through them too fast, so now we are on to Tootsie Roll Pops.
7. Snacks and food. I’ve talked about this at length in my other post, but for real — lots and lots of food.
8. Baby wipes. Even if your kids are past diapers, these are good for wiping up the mess when the airline decides to give them ice cream for some godforsaken reason.
9. Wad of paper towels. Because when your kids dumps his entire meal into the aisle and everyone else is pretending they don’t see it, you don’t want to be trying to clean it up with the pitiful airline napkins. Again, ask me how I know. 
10. Two large Ziplock bags. For messes or for play-dough storage — just trust me, they’ll come in handy.
11. Medicine. We’ve never given our kids Benadryl or anything before a flight so I can’t speak to that, but I would absolutely pack some children’s medicine in case they start feeling sick on the plane. If old enough, tablets are better than liquid.
12. TOYS. Ah yes, toys. I have a bunch of recommendations on this, so I’m actually going to break it off to a separate category.

Our Plane Toy Recommendations

So, in my opinion the most important characteristics for toys to play with on planes are small, relatively new to the kid and easily replaceable. Don’t bring any super-special gifts from Grandma because you don’t want to be frantically reaching under people’s seats looking for them when the kid inevitably drops them. These are our tried-and-true best toys for planes.

1. Plus Plus. I’ve talked about these before, but we love these little Danish plastic bricks and they keep the kids occupied for a long time. We try to save them for planes or restaurants so they don’t lose their appeal.
2. Coloring books and crayons. This was counter-intuitive for me this last flight because I figured it would be annoying when they kept dropping the crayons. Turns out, Owen is very responsible and Fiona’s car seat kept them contained. This kept them entertained for a surprising amount of time.
3. Sticky creatures. A friend gave Owen a box of rubbery, gummy frogs and lizards (like these) more than a year ago and he’s still playing with them. They work well for planes because they don’t roll away.
4. Blind bags. These usually contain kind of dumb toys, but the novelty of it being new and also unknown means we get a lot of mileage out of them. For those not in the know, “blind bags” are just small plastic bags that contain an unknown toy, usually one requiring the kid to put a few pieces together to construct it. They are very cheap and there’s one for practically every cartoon or fad out there.
5. Play-doh. The miniature ones (like you’d get for a party favors) so they don’t take up much room. I will warn that there is an outside chance that security will confiscate these; they are NOT banned, but it is up to the discretion of the the TSA agent apparently. We haven’t had a problem, but I pack them in my own carry-on and make no promises about them in case it gets taken away.

   

   Owen with Plus Plus and his coloring stuff. 

I’d like to hear from you! What are your personal must-haves when packing for a flight with kids?

The post Surviving a long plane ride with toddlers and preschoolers: A Packing List first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Surviving a long plane ride with toddlers and preschoolers: A Packing List appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Headed on a plane ride with your babies, toddlers or perschoolers soon? Let’s start by saying it probably isn’t going to be as rough as you think! With a little preparation and the right attitude, surviving a long plane ride with young children can be easier than you think.

*This post contains affiliate links.

To hear a lot of people tell it, the ultimate nightmare scenario of plane travel (short of the plane actually going down) is getting stuck next to an incessantly crying child.

Those people, however, are wrong.

The absolute worst thing is being the parents of the incessantly-crying child and feeling super self-conscious about not being able to get your kid to stop crying. Ask me how I know. 

In the past 13 months, our kids have made five flights across the Atlantic Ocean and I won’t pretend that everything has gone 100 percent smoothly. However, they’ve done a surprisingly good job handling flights and along the way we’ve picked up a few tricks to help save our own sanity. Now I’d like to share those with you. I’d also suggest you check out this post, which has a packing list for your flight with toddlers/preschoolers!

Note: most of my advice is geared toward toddlers/preschoolers, because we haven’t yet traveled with an infant. For more advice on managing you lap baby, I’d suggest you checking out my blogging friend Diana’s post here. 

SURVIVING A LONG PLANE RIDE WITH YOUNG CHILDREN: Your essential guide.

1. Bring a car seat. 

   At least, if your kid is younger. Chris and I go back and forth about this every trip because it really is fairly annoying to drag it through the airport — especially in Europe where it is much, much less common than in the United States — but every time we do I’m glad. Not only is it safer for the kid, but it is less stressful for me because I’m not constantly correcting Fiona or trying to make her sit right so the seat belt stays across her lap. I also know that if I nod off she won’t be able to crawl out of her seat and go visit the pilots without me. I’ve had a couple people tell me they don’t think their kid would stay in the car seat on the plane anyway, but honestly Fiona is much more accepting of her lot when she is in the car seat because the expectation is already there that she won’t leave it. Worth noting: If your car seat is heavy or bulky, buying a cheap, light car seat can save you a little hassle. We got the Evenflow Tribute LX Convertible Car Seat, which cost less than $50 on Amazon.

2. Invest in a travel cart for the car seat. 

   Before we even left the United States, my friend Diane suggested I buy a travel cart to make carrying the car seat easier. I ignored her because it seems like just one more thing to manage and I’d already bought a backpack for it and really, how hard could it be? Yeah, I was an idiot. I bought this Britex travel cart after that and it makes things about a million times easier, especially when I can drag Fiona along like this. 

3. Position yourselves strategically. 

   If you aren’t able to have the family all in the same row on a plane, try to arrange things so that your most-likely-to-kick-the-seat kid is positioned behind another family member. If your kid won’t stop kicking, at least it is only your family member who is bothered. SURVIVING A LONG PLANE TRIP WITH YOUNG KIDS PLACEHOLDER TEXT FOR SPACING.

4. Pack food. 

   A hungry kid is a cranky kid. Imagine how many snacks you can reasonably imagine yourself allowing your kid to have. Now pack three times that number — first because you’ve definitely underestimated, and second because you never know if you could get stuck on the tarmac somewhere. I’d suggest both sweets that are guaranteed to cheer them up in an emergency, but also snacks that are a little healthier/more substantial, like peanut butter crackers or apples. For a long flight, packing something that could be an actual meal — a peanut butter and jelly, for example — is a wise idea if your kid is picky. Don’t count on always being able to get something to eat during a layover; we had two hours in Heathrow recently and getting through our terminal transfer and clearing security and a random bag check meant we were the absolute last people on the plane. No chance of food.

5. Give suckers, fruit snacks or gummy bears during take-off and landing.

   These will help relieve the pressure on your kid’s ears during these times. Avoid allowing them to sleep during either of these times because they will wake up with their ears hurting if they aren’t swallowing/chewing to adjust to the pressure. 

6. Bring your own sippy cups or water bottles.

   Keeping the kids’ drinks in an open cup on a tray is a recipe for someone ending up soaked, and if your kid is in a car seat the tray probably won’t even be able to lay flat enough to hold the drink. Chris and I have an ongoing debate about which water bottles/sippy cups we prefer (he likes the Nuk ones we used when the kids were younger, I prefer CamelBak kid-sized water bottles.)

7. Prepare for spills anyway.

   I detailed my full packing list in this post, but on it you’ll find suggestions for changes of clothes, baby wipes, plastic bags and wads of paper towels.  SURVIVING A LONG PLANE RIDE WITH YOUNG KIDS PLACEHOLDER TEXT FOR SPACING.

8. Bring lots of entertainment. 

   Before every long flight, I fill each of the kids’ backpacks with toys for the plane, usually including a couple of new things. I am not going to rehash everything we like to bring because you can find that all on my packing list on this post. However, I will suggest downloading a few movies and/or kid-friendly games on your tablet or smartphone ahead of time because you can’t always count on airport wifi working well. Kid-sized headphones are also absolutely essential.Coloring books and Plus Plus (those little plastic bricks) have been our favorites for long plane rides with kids lately. 

9. Dress in layers

   Sometimes kids on a plane are hot, sometimes they are cold — dressing in layers allows you to be ready for either extreme. SURVIVING A LONG PLANE RIDE WITH KID PLACEHOLDER TEXT FOR SPACING. 

10. Don’t stress. 

    Honestly, despite what you see on TV (and in the nightmare situation I described at the beginning of these posts) most people aren’t actually jackasses. If they see that you are trying to comfort your crying child, they are going to be sympathetic instead of pissed off about 95 percent of the time. I’ve even had people offer things to our kids to help distract them. A surprising number of people seem to enjoy chatting with a nearby kid, or at least seem amused by them. Anyway, chances are your kid is going to cry or kick a seat or spill something at least once during a long flight — accept that, and don’t stress about it when it happens.

I’d like to hear from you! How do you go about surviving a long plane ride with young kids?

Remember, sharing is caring! Please consider pinning or sharing this post if you know someone it could help, and if you aren’t already, please consider following my Facebook page at Babies With Backpacks!

The post 10 tips for surviving a long plane ride with young children first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post 10 tips for surviving a long plane ride with young children appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Going to Oktoberfest with kids: our experience a Munich babysitting agency.

For our visit to Oktoberfest, we arranged to use a Munich babysitting agency so that we could enjoy some kid-free time. It worked out great and I’m happy to update that more than nine months later, the kids are still talking about Veni, our Munich babysitter. 

As I mentioned in my last post, we had a great time with the kids at Oktoberfest!

That said, we also had a great time at Oktoberfest without the kids. How? By using a babysitting agency for the first time.

I know that using a babysiting service isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and I understand why. However, for us using a Munich babysitting agency was an overwhelmingly positive experience and one I would feel comfortable trying again if the occasion called for it.

One of the reasons that we picked our hotel was because it allegedly had childcare available for a fee. This turned out to be just a referral to the Agentur Mary Poppins Munich, a Munich babysitting agency that matches people with pre-screened babysitters, full-time nannies, elder care providers, etc. I got in contact with them early in the summer to see if they could connect us with a Munich babysitter for the two times we had reservations at the beer tents, letting them know my criteria along the way (main ones: at least 20 years old, experienced in childcare, spoke at least some English). From there, they set me up with contact information with one of the sitters working with them who met our requirements and we e-mailed back and forth with her to get everything squared away. The fee for connecting us with the babysitter was 50 euro, then we paid her an hourly rate.

So, our babysitter was Veni — a 20-something physical therapy student in Munich who has worked for Mary Poppins for a while, including during last year’s Oktoberfest for other families at our hotel. She described herself as speaking “some” English, but her English turned out to be almost flawless! I was worried that the kids would freak out about us leaving Sunday night, so I brought a bribe (a carton of Hatchimals) for her to give them as we were leaving. Turned out, that was completely unnecessary because they were basically in love with our Munich babysitter the second she walked in the door.

She took them to the park, colored with them, taught them new games and — best of all — got them to sleep before we got home. Victory! We heard about Veni endlessly for the next two days.

Photo credit: Veni, who was nice enough to send me these gorgeous pictures she took! 

Veni also helped us out massively on Tuesday afternoon/evening by watching our friends’ three children, Philip, Henry and Sadie, too. Mike and Andrea had planned to bring their regular babysitter with them to Munich, but something came up about a week beforehand and they were scrambling to find someone to watch the kids so they could keep our reservations. They considering using a Munich babysitting agency as well, but with Oktoberfest being so close we worried about whether there would be time to find someone. I asked Veni if she could manage all five kids (for some extra cash, obviously) and she was nice enough to step in and help out. And was brave enough to take the whole crowd to the nearby park AND on public transit!

I think they had a blast, don’t you?

Final thoughts on using a Munich babysitting agency

Using a Munich babysitting agency worked great for us! I’d feel comfortable recommending it as an excellent option to anyone. While we love traveling with the kids, it is always nice to have a bit of adult time.

The post Oktoberfest: Using a Munich babysitting agency first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Oktoberfest: Using a Munich babysitting agency appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Can you take kids to Oktoberfest in Munich?

Yes!

Should you take kids to Oktoberfest in Munich?

Yes! (At least, during the day. At night you might want to invest in a babysitting service as we did).

We’re just returned from taking our two kids to Oktoberfest in Munich, where we met up with a bunch of friends and family members for the celebration. It was everything I hoped it would be (if a little colder than I imagined) over the last 10 months or so of planning this trip. And we were delighted to confirm that Oktoberfest with kids can be just as fun as Oktoberfest as solo adults!

(For more nitty-gritty details about where to stay, what to eat and what to do if you take kids to Oktoberfest, check out this post).

I’ve written once before about what went into getting reservations for the tents, but as those times were when we went sans kiddos I’ll save that for another post. Instead, I want to talk about taking these little cuties with us to the festival! Cliff notes’ version: Oktoberfest with kids is great!

Now, you could be forgiven if it seems like taking kids to Oktoberfest — probably one of the best-known beer fests in the world — isn’t the best idea. But you (and I, before I did the research) would be wrong! Oktoberfest is a big family event for locals and a large chunk of it is set up especially for children. We even spotted what looked like school groups there, on what I’m guessing were school field trips.

Kids’ activities at Oktoberfest. Yes, there’s plenty to do if you take kids to Oktoberfest!

So most people know about the beer tents at Oktoberfest — there are 12 large ones that seat as many as 6,000 people, plus several smaller ones as well. What I didn’t remember from our last trip in 2010, however, was that the majority of the grounds were covered with games and rides for everyone from the littlest kids to adults (just ask my sister and our friend Marisue, who rode the roller coaster Tuesday after 4 hours in a beer tent!). And of course, all kinds of food stalls selling all manner of things — most of which are delicious and terrible for you. If you take kids to Oktoberfest with you, what more could they want?!

We decided to take the kids to the fest on Tuesday, which was a “family day” where prices were allegedly discounted. They probably were, but by the end we felt we’d spent so much money it was hard to tell. Oh well! Accompanying us were my brother-in-law, Brett, my sister, Torie, and my aunt and uncle, Miss Linnie and Keith. One of my brothers, Mike, made a last minute decision to come to Munich (from Shaghai!) and he also spent some time with us.

We had decided months ago to dress up for the occasion, and I’d ordered our outfits mostly from German companies (Owen’s was the exception — Etsy). The only thing we hadn’t really thought about was what to do if the weather was colder than expected, as indeed it was. We ended up popping a pair of Chris’ socks on Owen to serve as legwarmers of sorts, as it ended up being only in the upper 50s. This photo was taken in the hotel, Citadines Arnulfpark Munich.

Both kids acquired their headgear from a pop-up shop we passed on the way to the festival. 

The group, minus my sister who was checking her oversized purse. No rucksacks or large purses allowed in the fest for security reasons. My parents and the family friends (Steve and Julie, Ralph and Marisue) were on a walking tour of Munich that morning. 

So our kids haven’t ever really been to a festival-type place or theme park at an age when they could really go on rides or play games. We had so much fun … with a few isolated incidents.

First thing Owen spotted was a target shooting game, which to my very great surprise he was old enough to play. My brother Mike, a former Marine, was his tutor in the beginning.

But he ended up being startlingly good at it. Hit 9 targets out of 12! This would be remembered as his absolute favorite thing this trip.

Fiona also got to play a couple of games, though admittedly she wasn’t so much old enough for them. But of course she wants to do everything Owen does.

We did have one miscalculation on our part: my sister asked Owen if he wanted to go into the haunted house ride with her. We should have just said no because we know he historically hasn’t liked scary things, but he was so insistent that he wanted to go that we said OK. He sobbed through the whole thing, which even my sister said was pretty freaky. Whoops.

Rides at Oktoberfest with kids!

We rebounded with a bunch of rides though!

The ferris wheel was awesome, the fanciest one I’ve ever been on and the six adults and two kids all fit on there easily. We had a great view of the entire fest from up there. Fiona did seem to get a little nervous about the height, but while I’m personally not usually the biggest fan of heights I wasn’t all that nervous with this one because each carriage was closed in. It was sort of like a little log cabin on a wheel, with open windows on the side.

The others also had a ride in some bumper cars, though Fiona had to be lifted out halfway through (it was only us in there so no problem).

For older kids and adults, there were rides that were considerably larger as well. And some water rides, which we skipped for obvious reasons. Brrrrr.

In the beer tents at Oktoberfest with kids — it’s fine, seriously.

The temperature seemed to drop quite a bit in the time we were there, so after a few hours (and some of the best chocolate-covered strawberries we’ve ever had, later determined to be Fiona’s favorite part of the entire trip) we decided to head over to one of the beer tents for some lunch. Kids are absolutely allowed in the beer tents, which are honestly pretty low-key during the day. After 8 p.m., children younger than 6 must leave. We went to the Lowenbrau tent and had duck, kasespatzle (cheesy noodles with fried onions on top) and fries for the kids. It was all yum.

Unfortunately, it was here that we learned that Fiona was way more tired than we’d realized. She climbed under the table to, I had assumed, look around. Instead, she just laid down her head and fell asleep pretty much instantly. Whoops. She wasn’t in a good position, so I had to drag her out and she didn’t take it well. It was just as well we needed to get back to our hotel to meet the babysitter (more on that later) because she was pissed.

I swear I’m not actually as heartless as this pictures makes me look. But she gets a little bit funny when she’s mad because you can offer her literally anything and she’ll just scream no. If I had to take a guess, I’m betting that at the moment Brett snapped this I had just offered her a unicorn and was told “unicorns are the WORST.” I ended up taking her outside to get a sparkling apple juice, which cooled her fury. 

SO — despite the rocky ending and chilly weather, we had an excellent time and the kids were very excited. I wouldn’t hesitate to take them there again if the opportunity came up, especially since the older they get the more they’ll be able to do.

TOP TIPS IF YOU PLAN TO TAKE KIDS TO OKTOBERFEST

1. I’d suggest going early, and going on a weekday. The fest opens at 10 and we arrived a little after 11. It was very quiet, which meant we didn’t wait for any of the rides or games and easily found a table in the beer tent at lunch.
2. Remember that you can’t bring a large purse or backpack for security reasons. According to my friend Andrea, you do get a bigger bag if you also have a stroller; however, keep in mind that strollers aren’t allowed on Saturday or after 6 p.m. because of the crowds.
3. Try for one of the family days to reduce the cost of the games and rides.
4. Have fun!

The bottom line: If you want to go to Munich for Oktoberfest, don’t let the kids stop you. There is plenty to do for everyone if you take kids to Oktoberfest — and besides, hiring a Munich babysitter is always an option as well!

Enjoy this post? Sharing is caring! Also, please consider keeping up with our adventures via my Facebook page, Babies with Backpacks, to ensure you always get our latest updates!

The post Oktoberfest in Munich: Fest fun with the kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Oktoberfest in Munich: Fest fun with the kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Unexpected benefits of traveling with young children

Traveling with young children often gets a pretty bad rap. People talk all the time about wanting to do certain types of trips “before we have kids,” as if the baby’s first cry sounds the death knell for travel ambitions.

I say, to hell with that.

I’m not going to dispute at all that traveling with young children is going to be a lot different than your pre-kid trips. Slower, most likely. Less relaxing? Yeah, probably. And you definitely aren’t going to get to pop a sleeping pill before a flight and wake up in Prague. But that’s not to say you can’t still have an amazing trip with your small companions — and in fact, we’ve found that traveling with tots has come with some surprising benefits for us as parents, well beyond just expanding our kids’ horizons.

There’s no best age to travel with a baby (or toddler, or kids) but we think traveling with them while they are young comes with some pretty decent perks.

Why should you travel with your young children

(or at least, a few perks if you decide to do so!)

1. Preboarding, baby. You know how at beginning of boarding, the flight attendants call for parents with small children or people who need extra help come to the front for preboarding? When you travel with kids, that’s you! We never worry about having enough space in the overhead for our bags because we’ve almost always been able to get on the plane first.

2. Skip the lines! (somtimes). Depending on the airport, or perhaps the employees working at the airport on a given day, you can end up hustled through security and customs when you’ve got a couple of littles with you. The first time I experienced this was on our trip back to Chicago last year, when I was taking the kids on the flight by my lonesome. We got to security in Rome and found an EPIC line — the kind that makes you doubt whether you’ll make it through in time for your flight — but I didn’t even have time to begin freaking out because an employee grabbed us and sent us to the front of the line. Score!

3. No school to plan around when traveling with young children. My parents took us out of school for two weeks during our backpacking trip to Europe when I was a kid — something schools weren’t wild about back then and I’m told like even less now — which meant we had homework to do on trains and some serious catching up to do when we got back (totally worth it, by the way). When you are traveling with younger ones, this isn’t much an issue because they probably aren’t missing anything earth-shattering in preschool. Having that flexibility in trip planning is incredibly valuable. Summer is the most expensive time to travel to Europe and popular tourist spots tend to be more crowded and more expensive during those months. For this reason, we love traveling in the spring and fall, and since the kids are in preschool we don’t feel any guilt about skipping it for a week here and there. These times are coming to a close in another year and I’m already dreading it: I was looking ahead to next year’s travel plans* and was thinking about traveling for a week somewhere after Labor Day before I realized that would mean him missing the entire second week of kindergarten. I’m not averse to him missing some school here and there, but I figure missing a whole week right away won’t do much to help him settle in. Moral of the story: enjoy the freedom while you can! Or homeschool, I guess.

4. Connecting with people. One of our favorite things about traveling is meeting new people, and for some reason kids are a great ice-breaker. We might not speak the same language, but that look that says “can you believe this shit?” when your kid is tantrumming is universal. In Sicily, people are particularly obsessed with the kids and always want to talk to them, and, consequently, us. At our very first agriturismo meal, my kids started playing with another little girl and the next thing I knew I was talking to her mom (she spoke a little English, which was fortunate because my Italian remains abysmal) and agreeing to meet up sometime so the kids could play.

5. Making memories. As I talked about in this post, we don’t really buy into the idea that there is no point in taking kids somewhere if they don’t remember it. They might or they might not, but we will — and often the moments that seems embarrassing or annoying at the time will end up being our favorites. For instance, I might have remembered how much I liked Sainte-Chappelle in Paris, but the memory of Fiona ducking under a railing and getting busted by security will go down in Husk family lore to the end of our days. How do I know this? My family’s European vacation was 16 years ago now (literally more than half my life), but references to that trip come up just about every time we’re all together. And the references are almost always something ridiculous or embarrassing, OBVIOUSLY.

6. Slowing down. A common criticism of traveling with young children can actually be a benefit — a slower pace. I have always had a tendency to want to cram as many things as possible into a trip, my impulse being to rush from one thing to the next. Traveling with kids by necessity tends to require you to stop and smell the roses (literally, if it is my kids). An example is one of the days we visited Paris and, having already seen Sainte Chappelle and Notre Dame and walked past the Louvre, I was feeling hurried to get to the Musee de L’Orangerie because it was on our schedule for the day. Walking through the Tuileries Gardens, the kids started whining about being hungry so I we reluctantly agreed to stop. We ended up having a beautiful hour or so break to have a couple cocktails, get the kids some ice cream and people watch in our gorgeous surroundings. It was a good reminder that it isn’t all about just checking things I want to see off my list, but actually taking the time to relax and take it all in along the way.

7. Early wakeups. I don’t believe I’ve met any parents yet who have kids who routinely sleep in as late as they would like, and most of you know that vacation isn’t an exception. While an adult-only vacation would have included some glorious sleep-in time (yes, I do miss this …) getting out early to sight-see often means beating the worst of the crowds. If you were going to be up early wherever you are, you might as well get some benefit out of it!

Update, Jan. 2019: Since being here, we are often told that we are “brave” for traveling with young children. I’ll be honest: bravery doesn’t come into it. There are places we want to see and experiences we want to have. And places we want the kids to see and experiences we want them to have. We aren’t about to put traveling on hold until our kids reach some magical age where they are meant to be “easier” — and as I’ve said, there are some aspects of traveling with young children that are easier than traveling with big kids. As I write this Owen is now in kindergarten. While the school is fairly flexible here on missed days, I can already tell you that having to plan trips around school is more challenging than our first couple years here.

In short, traveling with children is what you make of it. If your expectation is to vacation the exact same way you did before kids, then yeah, you might be frustrated. Try instead to embrace it not as a “kid trip” or a “grown up trip,” but as a family adventure. And have fun!

I’d like to hear from you! What do you like about traveling with children? What drives you nuts? And most importantly, what is the craziest thing your kids have gotten you in trouble for while on a trip? 

Enjoy this post? Keep up with all our adventures by liking and following my blog on our Facebook page, Babies With Backpacks. There you’ll find all my posts as soon as they are up, plus some extra tidbits along the way. 

The post 7 unexpected benefits of traveling with young children first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post 7 unexpected benefits of traveling with young children appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

If you had asked me this question before our first major trip since getting here — visiting Naples and Rome — my answer would have been “neither.”

I don’t want to deal with a stroller, I’d say.

Fiona loves to walk! She hasn’t let me put her in a carrier since she was about 13 months old, I’d say.

People say stupid stuff sometimes. And then they end up carrying a sleeping 2-year-old in their arms for more than half of what turned out to be a four-hour walking tour because hey! Turns out even the most energetic toddler is probably not going to be able to walk literally MILES.

I’ve reformed.

We basically thought we were going to die. THEY WERE SO HEAVY. And when they are asleep they can’t even help by hanging onto you, they are just dead weight. 

Anyway, so — to our debate. Stroller or carrier? Each has some distinct advantages.

Stroller: Less strenuous than a carrier. A good place for your kid to nap. If you bring a double, more than one kid can go in there; even with a single your kids could take turns. You can stash more stuff in it instead of carrying it in your daypack. If your kid is asleep and you go into a restaurant, you can (if there is room) just leave him in the stroller next to you and let him continue to sleep. If you are worried about containing your kid at an airport, having him strapped into a stroller could be helpful.

Carrier: Move easily through crowds. Also a great way to ensure your kid is contained at a crowded or dangerous place (Cliffs of Moher, for example). An excellent place to nap because the movement soothes them to sleep. You can chat with your kid more easily. Don’t have to worry about navigating stairs or getting through areas that don’t have great sidewalks (I’m looking at you, Sicily). Don’t have to worry about leaving it places if strollers aren’t allowed. If you kid decides to walk, you can shove the carrier in your daypack easily.

Looking for a toddler carrier? We like our toddler Tula, but fellow blogger Natalie has a great guide out now about different toddler-carrier options.

Obviously, neither method is perfect. For instance, the main pitfall of a carrier is … well, you have to carry your kid. It gets tiring.

That said, we are firmly #TeamCarrier. Here’s why:

Taking a stroller to places — for the sake of argument, let’s say a major city like Paris versus a rural area like where we live with shitty sidewalks — can be really useful for when you are just walking around. It means you can push your kid at a leisurely pace, stuff your daypack and diaper bag and umbrella and whatever other stuff you want to bring (note: I do not recommend actually bringing all that crap when out for the day — post to come about daypack essentials in the future) without worrying much about the weight of it. Your kid can nap in there as you walk. However, as soon as you want to do anything the stroller can sometimes become an issue. Wanna get on the subway? There may not be an elevator or be a long line for it, so you are going to have to get down the stairs somehow. Is the train crowded? Shoving the stroller on it won’t be fun. Sure, you can fold it up and carry it … but then you have to carry it (and all the stuff you’d jammed in there).

Another issue: strollers can’t always go into attractions. Let’s stick with Paris as our example. The Eiffel Tower is a must-do, but you aren’t allowed to push the stroller onto the elevator and you definitely aren’t climbing hundreds of stairs with it.* You also can’t leave it anywhere because a) that’s stupid and b) an unattended stroller is a potential threat and the Parisian police will respond and destroy it (for real, there were signs and a very serious video everywhere when we were waiting in line).

A carrier, on the other hand, can go anywhere. Sometimes security wants to run a metal detector wand over you, but I’ve never had to actually take Fiona out of it to go into an attraction. When we decide to let Fiona run around somewhere, we can fold it up and shove it into the backpack we almost always have with us or I can just keep wearing it. The thing that is possibly the best part is that a) our little wild child Fiona is contained in the carrier and can’t escape and b) she can take her afternoon nap in there without interrupting our day in the least. She actually slept through a couple of attractions that she probably wouldn’t have been interested in at all, including the Kilmainham Gaol (also couldn’t take a stroller there, though I beleive they had a place you could check it) and the wine cave tour in the Loire Valley. With her asleep, it made it easier for us to listen on tours or to have some one-on-one time with Owen.

Chris and I could walk further along the slippery, non-walled part of the Cliffs of Moher with Fiona in the carrier. I wouldn’t have dared without it because I’d have been terrified she’d make a dash for the edge. (Owen was with my in-laws). 

Advice

Obviously, I highly recommend carriers if you are planning a trip with a lot of walking, in Europe or anywhere else really. That said, a few things to keep in mind.

1. Practice babywearing for a while before your trip. It takes a little time to get used to getting your kid in and out easily, and you need time to build your own endurance with it. When I first re-started babywearing, I got worn out quickly. Now I can wear her for hours without feeling like it is much harder than walking unencumbered (except on hills. ugh). Also, Fiona used to be reluctant to get into the carrier but now she is usually happy to pop on board most of the time. The other day I told her we were going to go climb Mt. Etna the next day (didn’t end up going) and she said, verbatim, “I don’t feel like walking, will you please bring the carrier?” Ha. (Also, no I would not carry her the entire way. Her little butt does do some walking!)
2. Get a quality carrier. I can’t stress this enough. After Rome I decided to unpack my old Ergo carrier from when Fiona was little. About five minutes in my back was already killing me, as had been my experience in the past (though usually not within five minutes). At the suggestion of a friend, I ordered a toddler-size Tula and holy cow. It made an insane difference. I have no idea why this is, to be honest. The two carriers basically seem really similar, but somehow the Tula distributes her weight so much better. It was pricy but probably one of the best investments we’ve ever made when it comes to baby gear. Note: no, I’m not being compensated by Tula. I just love my carrier.

Carnivale in Acireale

Taormina

Another benefit: she keeps me warm and I keep her warm! Of course, this isn’t so much a benefit when it is 100 degrees out. Photo is from Caltagirone. 

So, what say you, fellow travelers? What’s your preference? If you prefer strollers, what is your advice to those who want to travel with them?

*I believe you can fold the stroller up and take it with you on the Eiffel Tower elevator, but then you have to carry it and your kid and your stuff … doesn’t appeal to me.

The post Europe with kids: stroller or carrier? first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Europe with kids: stroller or carrier? appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

So you are going to Europe with kids …

First of all, good for you!

It has always been our experience that travel adds somthing wonderful to your life. It broadens your horizons (and your palate), leads to great memories and is just plain fun. Europe is a fascinating, varied and historically rich place to visit in particular for people of all ages — and contrary to what some people say, having kids is no reason to give up on going there. While you can’t expect a trip taken with little ones in tow to be exactly the same as your pre-kid adventures, there is no reason Europe with kids can’t be just as exciting — especially since now you are seeing it through a whole new set of eyes.

Plus, as I talk about here, there are some other, unexpected advantages to traveling with kids!

Straight off the bat, I’m going to say we don’t believe in the “what’s the point of taking them to X when they won’t remember or appreciate it anyway?” First of all, you can say that about anything — why bother take them to the park or the zoo or the community pool, then? Second, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast most mornings, doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it while it lasted. Seriously though, my kids might not remember every detail of our trips to France or Ireland, but I will remember how excited Owen was while running through the Catacombs or the sound of Fiona trying to moo at the cows we saw near the Cliffs of Moher during our trip to Ireland.

So, this is to be the first in a series I’m planning to share everything we’ve learned in the last nine months of trips (which have included Rome/Naples, France and Ireland, as well as a few weekend trips.) I’ll be adding to this list frequently as we learn more in the coming years! As can imagine, much of our advice will be centered on traveling with younger children since that is our experience, but I hope some of it can be applicable to those with older ones kiddos too. Also: I’ll get into more specifics of planning a trip as far as plane tickets and such at a later date.

So without further ado …

How to travel in Europe with kids without losing your mind (1st edition)

1. Plan extra time into your Europe with kids itinerary. When Chris and I went on our honeymoon, we fit three countries into about 11 days. We crammed a lot in during that time (including a lot of alcoholic beverages). If you are traveling with small children, however, you should plan on taking things a little slower. Two major attractions (this does not include meals) in one day is a nice pace, three is sometimes manageable and anything more than that is probably madness. Whatever seems like a reasonable amount of time to spend in a city pre-kid, you probably want to add at least a day. My blogging friend Diana also talks about the importance of downtime in an excellent post you can find here, by the way.

   

2. Have a plan for what you want to do each day. This advice is somewhat at variance with our former “we’ll figure it out when we get there” ideology. But having done it both way, I’m now a big advocate for having a plan. This doesn’t mean having a rigid hour-by-hour schedule so much as having an outline. Mapping things our ahead of time means that you can organize things logically in terms of location and that you are aware ahead of time when certain places are closed. Without preparation, you end up not realizing that you need tickets to buy tickets ahead of time for the Kilmainham Gaol, for instance. You also end up wasting a bunch of time in the morning debating about what to do and Googling to make sure it is open.

   

3. Feel free to toss out the plan. Be flexible. Sometimes you are going to run into something that makes you want to throw out the plan and investigate. Do it. For instance, in Spain with my parents in 2011 we abruptly ditched our plans to go to the Prado Musuem because my mom hurt her leg and we stopped at a bar to check it. We ended up having drinks, talking to a bunch of people and having one of our most fun nights in Spain. Don’t be so married to your schedule that you can’t ditch it for an afternoon to follow an impulse.

   

4. Sandwich things you want to do with things you know the kids will enjoy. When you are making these plans, consider organizing your day with an activity you are sure the kids will like with one you want to see that might be less interesting to them. For instance: we planned on going to the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris after a morning at Napoleon’s Tomb and the war museum there. In general, I’d recommend familiarizing yourselves with parks or greenspaces near where you are staying in any city because letting them run around at a park for an hour or so is a great break from the go-go-go of traveling.
5. Don’t go into any activity with the assumption that your kids won’t enjoy it. Even if you inwardly think that probably the kids are going to think an activity is dumb, don’t say so in front of them. Don’t bribe them beforehand to “just be good and we can do something fun after.” Basically, don’t say anything that is going to have them walking into a place expecting to be bored and you might be surprised. For example: my kids loved the War Museum in Paris. Go figure!

   

6. Do bribe them though. Be prepared with some bribes though as needed to get through something you want to see. I highly recommend bringing a bunch of snacks in your daypack, and in particular I recommend packing suckers if your kids are old enough to eat them. They are light weight and a kid can’t really whine when he/she’s eating a sucker. Victory.
7. Be willing to bend the rules.This is vacation and it is supposed to be fun, damn it. Our kids end up staying up later and eating a lot more sweets on vacation, and I think that’s OK. Frankly, it is giving yourself a break as well from the usual restrictions.

   

   8. Make (financial) concessions to your sanity. It is possible that renting an apartment is going to be more expensive than the cheapest possible hotel room, but if it means you can all get a little more sleep then I consider it money well spent. Likewise, public transit can often get you into cities cheaper than a car service but if you are walking off a 10-hour flights with a couple cranky kids and a giant suitcase, we think it is worth it to have a car (with car seats) arranged to take us to our hotel or apartment.

8. 

9. Consider putting the kids in “training” beforehand.Chances are that you are going to be walking around more than you normally would at home. Before our France and Ireland trips I made a concerted effort to take frequent walks with the kids to get them in shape in hopes of reducing the chorus of “I’m tired.” Obviously this has the added benefit of getting you ready too!

   

10. But also consider babywearing. I’m going to do a whole post on this later, but I highly recommend you consider carrying your baby in a sling or carrier instead of lugging around a stroller. It can be way easier to get around and you don’t have to worry about parking your stroller anywhere. It is also a perfect nap spot for tired kids in the afternoon! I wasn’t babywearing yet back when we were in Rome, but after that trip I invested in a toddler-size Tula and it has seriously been a game-changer. Update: I did a post about this here.
11. Remember that this is their trip too. Yeah, it can get annoying if they want to stop at the millionth fountain or stay at some boring attraction long after you’ve lost interest, but hey — this is their trip too. Cut them some slack.

    

12. Remember that it is YOUR trip too. That said, do not spend your entire trip catering to your kids’ wants at the expense of your own. Your kids might not love visiting that art museum and they might get bored at a two-hour dinner. Tough shit. It does not kill a kid to be bored once in a while. Along those same lines, try to take it easy on yourself as well. You and your spouse are sitting at dinner and want to linger, but the kid is whining? Give yourself a break and let him watch videos on your phone (or whatever) even if you never do this and but what will people THINK? Seriously, cut yourself some slack and enjoy your cappuccino (or cocktail) in peace.Here’s to you, fellow parent-travelers. You’ve got this. 

Happy travels! 

The post Traveling in Europe with kids and without losing your mind first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Traveling in Europe with kids and without losing your mind appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Ireland, Day Six: Visiting the Cliffs of Moher with kids

Short story: everything people say about the Irish countryside is true. Green and gorgeous! I’m not going to bother with a lot of words today because the pictures (almost) say it all. If you are a visiting Ireland solo or as a family, visiting the Cliffs of Moher should be at the top of your to-do list. (But keep a tight grip on the kids!)

If you are out to see the Cliffs, by the way, I’d also suggest seeing some other sights in the Burren — particularly the Aillwee Cave and Birds of Prey Center — if you are traveling with kids. But we’ll get to that a little later on.

For our final full day in Ireland, we visited the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of the country in County Clare. We stayed at the most wonderful AirBnB house in a town not far outside the city of Ennis, Kilysdart, which was only about 40 minutes from the Cliffs.

Friday was the first day we didn’t get lucky and avoid the rain, but the Cliffs were so gorgeous it hardly mattered.

The Cliffs of Moher are between about 400 and 700 feet above the sea.

My lens was a little fuzzy from the rain. Cliffs of Moher with kids. 

We parked in the visitor’s center area and walked over to see the Cliffs. A good portion of this area had paved areas, concrete viewing places, steps and a wall to keep people from plummeting to their doom.

Further down you could walk on a much rougher path with no fence. We didn’t want the kids to jump offf of it but we did want to walk further, so we sent Owen with Gail and David back to the visitor’s center. It can be so handy traveling with other adults!

Fiona stayed with us because she was safely strapped to my back. Carriers = must-have item if you are traveling to the Cliffs of Moher with kids (well, with babies or toddlers or unreliable adults who can’t be trusted not to endanger themselves — see photo above for reference on that last one.)

After the Cliffs of Moher: the Burren with kids

Once we had our fill of the Cliffs — the visitor’s center was also worth a visit, by the way — we decided to follow our Rick Steves’ guide and do some driving in the Burren.

The best description of the Burren comes from a Cromwellian Army officer in 1651, who described the region as having “not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury one.” It is a rather strange place characterized by exposed limestone that dominates the landscape with very little soil cover. It kind of looks like the place where you’d film a post-apocolyptic movie where humans have destroyed the environment.

The Burren (that name comes from an Irish word meaning “rocky place, btw) isn’t like any other place I’ve seen, but pretty in its own way.

We stopped at a few of the sights suggested in our Rick Steves guide, which outlined a driving tour of the Burren. One of these was the Caherconnell Ring Fort, an ancient and well-preserved ring fort dating back to around 10th century. There is also believed to be Bronze Age structure right next to the ring fort where student archaeologists are working and learning.

We heard a lot about ring forts during our trip, perhaps unsurprisingly give that tens of thousands of places have been identified as former ring forts in Ireland alone. They were homes to a family and perhaps their dependents, status symbols, defensive structures and a way of keeping livestock safe and contained when needed.

This sort of stacked-stone method was used to construct the walls of the ring forts, and apparently they required a lot of upkeep. 

I have to admit that we didn’t find this to be the most interesting thing in the world, but it was nice for the kids to have the opportunity to run around since we’d either been in the car or keeping a tight grip on them all day long.

Our final stop of the day was the Aillwee Cave and Birds of Prey Center, both of which the kids loved. We got to watch a Birds of Prey show, and since we were one of only three families who were there, the kids got to volunteer to hold an owl (both of them) and a hawk (just Owen). They were completely pumped!

In addition to the show, you could also walk through an look at all the birds on display and listen to an audioguide (included in the price). We found Hedwig!

Even though we are from southern Indiana, where there are show caves a-plenty, neither Chris or I had ever been in one. The Aillwee cave impressed us a lot as a result, as did the roughly one-hour tour that took us (what felt like, at least) deep into the earth with a guide who explained to us the history of Aillwee and the formation of the cave. It was fascinating! However, if you are at all claustrophobic this is probably not the place for you.

Our last stop of the day was a restaurant in Ennis, a town that was allegedly hosting some kind of music festival when we were in town (contributing factor for why we chose to stay near there). Unfortunately, none of the music — which proved to be at various local restaurants — was starting at the relatively early hour we decided to dine and we were too exhausted to hang around. Our meal was still great though.

Overall, we absolutely loved Ireland and wish we could have seen more before we had to drive back to Dublin and catch our flights on Saturday. We actually looked into seeing if we could delay our flight home so that we could spend a couple extra days and go to the Ring of Kerry, but Aer Lingus flies between Dublin and Catania just twice a week and the timing didn’t really work out. I guess that means we’ll just have to go back some day!

The post IRELAND: Visiting the Cliffs of Moher with kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post IRELAND: Visiting the Cliffs of Moher with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

IRELAND, DAY 5: The Rock of Cashel with kids

With incredible scenery, fascinating history and plenty of room to run around, visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids turned out to be an excellent choice for our Ireland trip. Located in the middle of the country, the Rock of Cashel feels “on the way” to so many attractions if you are leaving from Dublin. If you are looking for a day trip from Dublin, visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids can also be a reasonable option as it is only two hours away by car.

This visit was the fifth day of a six-day long trip in Ireland with my in-laws; for details on the the rest of our trip, see here and here and here and here. 

When we started planning our trip to Ireland, I knew very little about what exactly we should go see other than a vague notion of seeing “the countryside.” Once we started researching, it turned out that to cover every sight that seemed vitally important, we’d need about a month. We had six days.

By the way, one of those sights were really interested in seeing was the incredible Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. We didn’t make it this time, but if you are interested in going, check out my friend Elizabeth’s post on the visiting the Giant’s Causeway with kids. 

The Rock of Cashel, however, was nearly a no-brainer (in part because its proximity made it “on the way” to the two finalists for our last two days in Ireland, the Cliffs of Moher area or Ring of Kerry area). It took us about two hours to drive to the Rock of Cashel from the Dublin Airport, with pretty countryside all along the way.

I’ve already talked about all the drama that ensued Thursday with our rental car, but once we got on the road it was smooth sailing. (Or, almost smooth sailing depending on how you view my driving-in-Ireland skills.)

Brief history of the Rock of Cashel

A quick back story of the Rock of Cashel: It was a fortress used by the kings of Munster for hundreds of years, changing hands frequently because it was of such strategic importance. In 1101, the King of Munster decided to donate it to the Church — a strategic move because it a) won him the goodwill and support of the church and b) effectively took the Rock out of play because he wouldn’t have it, but no one else would either. From there, it became an important religious site and home to archbishops and a cathedral was built. The Rock was sacked in 1647 when the town of Cashel’s inhabitants refused to surrender to the forces of (military commander, rebel and future Lord Protector of England) Oliver Cromwell, and an estimated 1,000 people who had taken refuge inside the cathedral were massacred. It went into decline and a state of disrepair after that, and a new cathedral was eventually built elsewhere in the town.

What hapens when we try to take a nice family picture … 

Visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids

We took a guided tour of the place; they have these every 15 minutes and I highly recommend doing this. Without a tour, we wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what we were looking at or why it was significant. Now, I know taking guided tours with kids can be a bit of a risky business — you never know if their attention is going to last and there is always the worry they are going to choose the wrong moment to be loud. Taking the tour at the Rock of Cashel with kids, however, worked out pretty well because it was almost exclusively outdoors. When they got loud, we just walked a way a bit.

Part of the Cathedral built in the 1200s, and the distinctive Round Tower discussed here. 

This was an enormous Celtic cross erected as a monument by a family buried here. Unfortunately they used a metal rod to reinforce it and a lightning strike resulted in the top half cracking off. Another reason to visit the Rock of Cashel with kids: for some reason, broken things seem to interest them. Kids are weird. 

The cemetary here was closed to new people sometime in the 1930s, but before that there was a list that people who had relatives buried here could sign in order to ensure they could join their family eventually. Now there are just three elderly women left, and they will be the last to be buried here. 

Stone fence surrounds the whole thing, which means if you visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids, they can run around! And you can lay down. 

We really liked having a tour of the place, but we really enjoyed that afterward we could hang out for as long as we wanted to look at all the tombstones, rest or run around. Benefits of driving ourselves! Seriously though, kids need time to run around and be kids even while on vacation. At the Rock of Cashel, they had the chance to do that.

Well, that’s adorable. 

The Rock of Cashel with kids — not only was it doable, it was great fun!

The post Visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Visiting the Rock of Cashel with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Fun. Fairly chill. Easier than expected. 

Words I use to describe our experience driving around in Ireland, with me (exclusively) at the wheel.

Nerve-racking. White knuckles. Life flashed before my eyes.

Words my husband used to describe our experience driving around Ireland with me at the wheel.

Clearly, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this. But, I do assure you he’s being extremely dramatic. We hit nothing* and, contrary to his beliefs, we were not particularly close to hitting anything either. I’d also like to note that his account of it all has grown more dramatic with each retelling.

Anyway, THE TRUTH** 

It really wasn’t nearly as scary as I expected to be. I’ve only had one other experience driving on the left side of the road — I rented a scooter for several days in Thailand in 2008 — but on the motorway (highway) the traffic is completely divided so the only thing to remember was that the “fast lane” is on the right. In towns it took a smidge more gettng used to, particularly going “the wrong way” on roundabouts, but I felt pretty adjusted by the end of the first day. As in Sicily, the roads were quite narrow in a lot of places, but overall they were much better maintained and tended to be better marked than they are here. And the signs were all in English! (Also Gallic, as were all signs in Ireland).

I do think it would have been more stressful if I hadn’t already spent about eight months here driving a large van through very narrow streets and a lot of traffic. I mean, it was still stressful but much less than just driving in downtown Catania can be. Chris’ chief complaint came from his belief that I was driving too close to the edge of the road on the narrow streets on the passenger side, but I’d point out that while it was an adjustment — I kept feeling like I was driving headfirst into traffic on my side — I ultimately threaded the needle well enough to avoid hitting anything. Also noteworthy: I was the only one to drive in Ireland at all because it was deemed “your big idea.”

Anyway.

The one thing that actually did prove somewhat stressful was the car itself. Thursday morning we had to be out of our AirBnb by 10/10:30, and had plans to pick up the van I’d rented at 9 a.m. Since it was some distance away, Chris and I took a cab to go fetch it and left Gail and David with the kids and the bags. We expected to be back in plenty of time to load the kids and all our baggage into the car and be on our way by 10.

Instead, a mess. The van I reserved from Thrifty Car was billed as being a minivan for seven people and five bags. I pictured something akin to my own minivan. Instead, we were showed to a car that would have been a small five-seater vehicle. The sixth and seventh seats that could be pulled up in the back were ludicrous, no adult could reasonably have sat there and I’d doubt if we could have even gotten Fi’s carseat in. And the “space for five bags”? HAHAHAHAHA. The Thrifty Car representative feebly offered that the website had perhaps meant “space for five carry-on bags.” Again, a complete joke — you could perhaps have fit five small purses, and only if you pushed the back seats so far forward as to make them useless.

So, cue panic. We asked about bigger, automatic vans and they had a 9-passenger automatic one … for 1,300 euro. So about what my family had paid for our flight to Dublin PLUS all four nights at our AirBnB. We considered renting another car, but two cars for the trip? A nightmare. We considered storming off and trying to find another company with a more reasonably-priced van, but again that would take time and what if we couldn’t find one?

I probably don’t need to tell you how I was feeling at this point, but here is a visual representation of my mood all the same:

Finally, the Thrifty Guy suggested that he had a 7-passenger (actual) van at their location at the airport, which they could give for “only” almost twice what we were paying for the original van we’d reserved. That didn’t thrill me, but it was the best we could do. Awesome Thrify Girl offered to drive us to the airport to save time, which we really appreciated. However, it still left us in the quandry because a considerable amount of time had passed and now Gail, David, the kids and about six suitcases of varying sizes were hanging out outside our apartment. A regular taxi to send them to the airport wasn’t an option — too much luggage, too many people and no carseats. I tried calling the carseat-possessing taxi guy that I had used before and got him to agree to come with his van, but he didn’t have the carseat or booster seat with him. This is when Awesome Thrify Girl earned her name and offered to drop off the carseat and booster we were renting from them at the AirBnb. {Also at this point, the original taxi guy called back to say he had decided he didn’t have time after all — panic! — but ultimately he found someone else to send.}

Once we arrived at the AirBnb, Awesome Thrifty Girl agreed to have us take Fiona in her car as well as some of the bags, which mercifully took some pressure off Gail and David. She was also able to just go grab the keys for us from behind the counter once we got to the airport, which was a relief because there was an unbelievably epic line there.

The van itself proved to a Volkswagen, and very similar to the Eurovan I learned to drive on (minus the distinctive bright blue color of our beloved family van, Zippy). It didn’t have much giddyup when trying to accelerate, but I did manage to get it up to a reasonable 140 km/hour on the motorway at various points. It was certainly very wide and long, but it had room for everyone so no complaints here. We drove from Dublin to Cashel to a town near Ennis without incident that day, but of course our car drama wasn’t quite over …

Flat. Tire.

We were actually really lucky that this happened when it did, rather than on the highway. And we’re lucky that we discovered it when we did, as it would have been a huge hassle to have to change in the following morning when we were trying to go to the Cliffs of Moher and it was raining a ton. Instead, Chris and I discovered it in the evening as we were about to make a run to town from our beautiful countryside AirBnB into the town of Kilysdart to grab some dinner for everyone.

Locating the spare and getting it detached proved problematic, and resulted in three of us laying on the ground at various points and Chris whacking himself in the head with the wrench. But once it was off, Chris and David got it replaced pretty quickly. This was a particularly good thing because I had called the Thrifty helpline (back when I thought there wasn’t a spare tire in the car) and was told that it was $200 for someone to come out and replace it.

I need hardly say how unimpressed I am with Thrifty Car as an organization, though obviously Awesome Thrifty Girl was Awesome.

At any rate, I would still overall highly recommend driving in Ireland (with the exception of Dublin, where parking would suck). We’ve now done two consecutive trips that included a renting a car for a portion of it, and I’ve really enjoyed it both times (though obviously the process went a bit less smoothly this time compared to our time in the Loire Valley). Driving on your own gives you the opportunity to see the countryside as you are going, stop when you want to, linger at sights that catch your interest and — spoken like a mom here — store all your stuff. When we are walking around a city, we tend to take everything we need for the day and carry it in a backpack. WIth a car, you can prepare for all eventualities without actually having to carry around a snowsuit in July “just in case” your kid gets cold. Winning.

I do, however, recommend triple checking what kind of car you are actually getting. GRRRRRRR.

Road right outside our Kilysdart rental house. In the distance, the River Shannon. 

*Except some branches overhanging into the road, which do not count beause they are branches. hanging. in. the street. Chris disagrees that these “don’t count,” but also hit some branches just the other day while we were driving around in Sicily. So.

**Because it is my blog, and I get to decide.

The post IRELAND, interlude: Renting a car on the Emerald Isle first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post IRELAND, interlude: Renting a car on the Emerald Isle appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

If you missed the first three blogs on our stay in Dublin, find them here and here and here. Warning on that last one: I just added a new picture of Fiona hugging a lamb that my mother-in-law caught. It is ridiculously adorable.

When planning our trip to France, we took a bit of a departure from our previous methods and decided to make a pretty specific plan for what we’d try to do each day. (In the past, we’d mostly tended to just have a rough idea of what we wanted to do for the entire trip and then decide as we went). I really preferred this way of doing things because it generally meant we had things planned in a logical order, and we were never surprised by showing up at a museum and finding out it was, for example, closed on Mondays.

Because we’d figured this out in France, I’d had every intention of trying to get very specific about planning day-by-day in Dublin. Well, life kind of got in the way. With just three weeks between the two trips, I got bogged down by playing catch up from being gone, trying to get ready for Ireland and (most of all) trying to finish several writing assignments before we left. Our trip was by no means “unplanned” — for example, we’d had our tours and rental car booked, Guinness tickest purchased, van-taxi from the hotel sorted out, etc — but a couple of times not having thoroughly researched everything kind of bit us. For example: we tried to go to the Kilmainham Gaol on  Monday and had no idea that it was so popular that you absolutely need tickets ahead of time. Whoops!

Luckily, we managed to get into the Goal after all on Wednesday because there were still two times available when we went online to buy them. I’m relieved that we did because it ended up being one of my favorite parts of our trip.

So the Kilmainham Gaol was built in 1796, and it has an overall a long, sad history (unsurprisingly for a prison, I suppose) that includes people committing crimes on purpose to get sent to prison, and thus fed, during the Great Famine. However, it is best known because of its association with the Irish revolutionary movement. Many Irish revolutionaries were imprisoned and/or executed here, among them the leaders of the 1916 Easter RIsing.

Our guide for this visit was excellent. Throughout the tour, which lasted a little more than an hour, he explained the history of the jail and its political significance in an interesting, easy-to-follow way that didn’t drone too much. Fiona was asleep in my carrier during the majority of the tour, but Owen was pretty interested. I do recommend that you use a carrier for toddlers and younger — it is a tight space and some of the steps can be pretty steep.

Note: I didn’t get many decent pictures at the jail because it was mostly quite dark and I had a kid to haul around. 

Throughout the tour, our guide shared a lot of anecdotes about people who had been prisoners in the jail over the years. Among these was Joseph Plunkett, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising. Plunkett was allowed to marry his fiancee, Grace Gifford, just hours before he was executed by firing squad at the jail. Afterward, Grace went on to be promote Sinn Fein policies and became a political cartoonist. She was imprisoned herself in Kilmainham in 1923 during the Irish Civil War, during which times she drew inside her cell. This one, which you can see only through the peep hole in the door, is called the Kilmainham Madonna.

I’m not sure our guide would love this pic, but this is right outside Grace’s cell. 

This is the site of the executions of 14 people in May 1916 in the aftermath of the Easter Rising.

This marks the spot where General James Connolly, a man already mortally wounded in battle, was executed. Connolly had to be brought to the jail via ambulance because he was already nearly dead, then ultimately tied to a chair so that he could be shot after he lost consciousness. According to our guide, this was so outrageous to much of the Irish public that it actually took a movement that didn’t initially have a ton of support at the time and magnified it.

The tour ended here, but there was also a nice museum at the jail to peruse, which we did for a little while. Overall, I’d say Kilmainham Gaol is at the top of my list for Dublin recommendations, followed closely by the Guinness Storehouse.

The jail was actually the second stop of the day. We’d purchased a three-day pass for a hop-on,hop-off bus on Monday — incidentally I do not recommend this — and planned to use it to get to all our sights on this particular day. We decided to hit up the National Museum of Ireland – Archeology first, then hope to get to Dublin Castle after the jail since it was open later than the museum. Unfortunately, the hop-on, hop-off turned out to be a bit of a hassle and it took so long to get to the museum that we were left with not much time to explore. Luckily, it was free so we didn’t feel it was a waste to go in and have less than an hour there, and it did turn out to be really interesting.

They had a lot of Viking artifacts, including a lot of gold jewelry and some weapons, that Owen and Fiona were interested in, but for the grown ups the highlight was the “bog mummies.” These are bodies that were perserved in peat bogs in Ireland and other northern European countries, retaining their skin and organs even. They are a little creepy to look at — one even has fingernails! — but fascinating. The bodies on display died violently more than 4,000 years ago, and were possibly human sacrifices.

We had taken a taxi from the National Musuem to the jail so that we wouldn’t waste another hour on the bus, and after the jail we decided to try a taxi in order to make it to Dublin Castle before close as well. It worked out in the sense that we made it there with a little less than an hour, but there wasn’t room in the final tour of the day and we ultimately decided that the price tag wasn’t worth it for only having 45 mintues to wander by ourselves. Oh well!

We ended up wrapping up our final night in Dublin with a nice dinner and a little walking around. Overall, we really liked Dublin. Everyone was very friendly and the city was just kind of low-key and fun. Chris declared several times that he could live there, but part of that may have been that we got extremely lucky with the weather. We arrived during what several locals described as a “heat wave,” with temperatures rising to about 70 and, best of all, NO RAIN!

Next on the agenda: The Blog Where I Endlessly Scared Christopher While Driving On The Left Side of the Road. Stay tuned, folks.

The post IRELAND, Day Four: Last Day in Dublin first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post IRELAND, Day Four: Last Day in Dublin appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

As we were planning our trip, we — me, Chris, Gail and David — spent a lot of time trying to figure out which sites in Ireland to prioritize. There were about a dozen places we wanted to see, but given that they were mostly in disparate parts of the country and we has less than six days to work with, choices had to be made.

From this was born the idea of taking day trips from a home base of Dublin, something Chris and I haven’t done a lot of but were interested in. After debating a lot about taking tours on possibly two of our four days in Dublin (this would have been a huge mistake, btw) to go to some combination of the Giant’s Causeway/Northern Ireland, Blarney Castle, Cliffs of Moher, Glendalough/Kilkenny/Wicklow, we finally settled on just the final one. A big motivating factor was that it was considerably shorter than some of the other tours, about 8 hours compared to 13, and that a friend had highly recommended Glendalough. We went with Wild Rover Tours because the company had great reviews.

Overall, we liked the experience of doing a tour (with a few reservations). I’m not really thinking that we’ll be converts to taking a lot of tours, but it was a nice break to do it one day.

The pros:

-I loved not having to make decisions or figure out transporation for the day — we just showed up on the bus when told. It is very liberating to not have to plan everything out.

-It was really interesting to hear some Irish history and lore from our bus driver as we drove along, including learning about fairy trees.

-It was an efficient way to see some sites.

-Riding the bus gave the kids the chance to nap between sites, more so than other travel days.

-The buses themselves were very nice. And they had seatbelts and booster seats.

The cons: 

-We felt a bit rushed and, given that we wanted to have dinner, didn’t really see much in Kilkenny. I’m guessing we were expected to just grab sandwiches at one of the sites to eat on the bus, which makes sense from a time point of view but isn’t our favorite.

Anyway! Onto the tour itself. We got picked up at a site not far from our apartment at about 8:30, which seemed like a fairly civilized time for us. From there, our first stop was a sheepdog demonstration en route to Glendalough. The kids really liked it, especially when they got to hug a 3-day-old lamb named Sophie and pat Jim the dog.

I wish I’d gotten a picture of Fiona’s face when she got to hug this lamb. Pure joy. 

UPDATE: My mother-in-law had a picture of Fiona and Sophie the Lamb! YAY!

From there, it was on to Glendalough, one of the most important monastic communities in Ireland in its time. It was founded in the 6th Century by the future St. Kevin, and supposedly at one point a pope declared that seven visits to Glendalough would equal one visit to Rome in terms of pilgrimage value. If you were already in Ireland, I suppose this seemed like a good value!

Our guide took us around the sites in Glendalough, including the cemetary, round tower, former cathedral and St. Kevin’s Cross (though we missed some of the tour because Fiona and Owen needed a bathroom).

I would liked to have spent more time in the cemetary, but we ran out of time. 

This round tower would have been used mostly for storage and as a beacon for people coming to Glendalough. Elsewhere in Ireland, we were told that these structures are unique to Ireland and found all over the place. 

St. Kevin’s Cross. If you can get your arms around it, you’ll get your wishes granted. Sadly, my arms weren’t long enough. 

After finishing up his own talk, our guide recommended that we take a walk to the Upper Lake (Glendalough is between two lakes), telling us that it would take about 15 minutes to get there. It was indeed a lovely walk, and I really enjoyed the scenery along the way. As far as I could tell, there were tons of paths all over the area, including one to a waterfall, and we could have easily spent a whole day here exploring.

However, this walk didn’t take anywhere near 15 minutes. And it wasn’t like a “we couldn’t make it in 15 minutes because we had two small kids” thing — I had Fiona strapped to my back and Owen walks reasonably fast. It took about double that for both us and my in-laws, which meant that once we got to the lake we had little time to stop and admire because we were worried about getting back in time. Others on our tour said the same thing. When I asked our guide about it, he simply joked (I think?) that he makes it in 7.5 minutes. I mean, that’s funny but considering the dire warnings we received about how we’d be left behind if we didn’t get back in time it seems like it would be wise for guides to give a more realistic time frame!

That said, I really do recommend visiting Glendalough and doing this walk because it was beautiful. We were lucky enough to have perfect weather as well.

Once we made it back to the bus, it was on to a brief photo stop in the Wicklow Mountains (“if some of you live near mountains you might say, ‘these aren’t mountains, these are hills!’ our guide said (paraphrased.) Accurate.

And then it was on to Kilkenny. From here, we could have taken a 30-minute walking tour down the medieval mile with our tour guide, but at this point we were all pretty much starving and eyeing a restaurant we had just passed that overlooked Kilkenny Castle. The result was that we didn’t end up having time to tour the castle or head down the medieval mile, but having a great meal, some drinks and sitting in the sunshine overlooking a castle felt like a great trade.

There’s not much to report after this* — we took the bus back to Dublin and had a chill night after this long day — so I’ll leave you with this one thing.

This three-tiered platter? It was once full of sandwiches and various pastries and such. A pair of women sitting at a table near us had ordered it, but had only eaten a fraction of all the stuff because it was huge. As they were leaving, they came up to us with the platter and told us that we should eat some of it since it was going to waste. Well, there were desserts on there … who were we to argue? So naturally we were pretty much destroying the thing when the waitress came to clear the other women’s now-empty table and Chris noticed that she kept looking at our table. Suddenly we realized that they probably thought we’d gone over and snagged the platter after the ladies left, at which point Chris insisted that I tell the waitress what happened so she didn’t think we were scavengers. Apparently my explanation was not considered particularly convincing. Whoops?

*Unless you count Fiona loudly yelling ‘I HAVE TO PEE OUT OF MY BAGINA!!!!’ over and over on the bus ride home. Obviously we have some work to do on both discretion and anatomy.

The post IRELAND, Day Three: Trying out a tour first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post IRELAND, Day Three: Trying out a tour appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

In case you missed it, my account of our low-key first day in Dublin is here.

With Monday came the first of what we lovingly termed “the death march days.” It is a running joke (maybe a joke?) that I try to drag Chris and the kids to the very end of their tether every single place we go, and I guess Gail and David got to experience this as well. Whoops. I’m working on it, truly.

That said – Monday was great. We started with a tour of the Guinness Storehouse, with tickets we had purchased online in advance. I highly recommend this, by the way – it is an extremely popular attraction and you don’t want to miss your chance to go. When you are buying the tickets, your pricing depends on what time of day you want to go. Mornings are cheapest, and things get progressively more expensive as the day wears on. Naturally we chose 9:45 in the morning – and even though that sounds too early for beer, the storehouse takes ages to explore and by the time you get to the beer it’ll be a much more reasonable beer time. Like noon.

We loved Guinness. I had a mental picture of basically seeing bottles being filled or something, but it was more of an interactive museum. With beer! You walk in and immediately (next to the gift shop, ha) you see the original lease for 9,000 years signed by Arthur Guinness in 1759. It is right at the bottom of the seven-story “pint glass” in the middle of the museum; if filled, it would hold 14.2 million pints.

Guinness has since bought the land on which it sits, so no worries about the lease. 

Fiona by a pool of grains

The place included explanations of how the beer is made, company history, advertising from throughout the years and across the globe and – the best – beer tasting and instruction for making a perfect pour.

I will freely admit that we did not see a ton of other people with young children at the Storehouse, but we found it to be perfectly kid friendly. Possibly because everything was so visually interesting, the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves.

At the end of the tour you can take your (perfectly poured) Guinness and go up to the glass-walled Gravity Bar on the top floor for awesome views! It was really cool, but the only problem was that it was quite crowded so we didn’t linger long.

We also ate both snacks and lunch at Guinness and were really impressed. Everything we got was delicious and not outrageously priced like you’d expect at a major tourist attraction.

From there, we hit up Phoenix Park, the biggest enclosed park in Europe. It is absolutely enormous, about twice the size of Central Park in New York. Apparently there are 400-something tame deer living in there, though we didn’t run into any of them. Chris was interested in seeing a monument to the Duke of Wellington, the Irish-born general Arthur Wellesley who ultimately defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

This was the tallest obelisk in the world until the construction of the Washington Monument, at least according to our hop-on, hop-off bus driver. 

We also try to stack activities that we want to do with stuff we are sure the kids will like – though honestly they often end up liking the activities we think they might be bored by after all. Example: we planned to follow our visit to Napoleon’s Tomb in Paris with a visit to the Luxembourg Gardens. This time, we decided to let the kids play at the playground in Phoenix Park for a while so they could recover from the Guinness Storehouse. Us too.

For such an enormous park, I was a little surprised that the playground wasn’t larger. Especially because we noticed as soon as we got to Ireland that there were about a zillion kids everywhere, much different than Paris. We googled and Ireland does in fact have one of Europe’s highest birth rates.

We were already pretty tired at that point but decided to go see the Book of Kells at Trinity College (see: death marching) for fear of not having time on our only other day in Dublin. I’m so glad that we did because it was really impressive. If you are unfamiliar, the Book of Kells is an illuminated book containing four of the gospels in the New Testament, created by monks around 800 AD. It isn’t super clear how it managed to survive when so many other manuscripts didn’t, but it did and it is beautiful. I couldn’t take pictures of it, but it is something to behold. This one, I will admit, the kids weren’t overly impressed by.

Another part of Trinity College. This library would make Belle jealous even after Beast gives her his.

From there, it was a quick dinner in Temple Bar and then a return home after we were all basically falling asleep at the table. Literally, in Fiona’s case!

The post Guinness Storehouse and Trinity College with kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Guinness Storehouse and Trinity College with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.