5 years in Sicily: a dream come true

Note: I started working on this post shortly after leaving Sicily in mid-January, but have been so busy I’m only just finishing it now. Something about three kids, international move, new schools, new house needing lots of work, lots of feelings … blah blah blah. 

More than five years ago, we arrived in Sicily and took up residence in a hotel in Motta Sant’Anastasia. After a brief incident in which Chris crashed a rental car, we headed to a random restaurant called Valentino’s. Thinking that portions would be small because of Italy (propaganda), we each ordered an appetizer, a pasta and a meat.

Then we accidentally got a truly absurd table full of food  — all at the same time, rather than in courses — because, apparently, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing.

It was delicious (and mortifying). And man, do I wish I had a picture.

Fast forward to January 2022. I’d long planned on our last meal being with friends at Valentino’s because of my (possibly irrational) love of bookends. Covid jacked up those plans in a variety of ways: restaurant wasn’t open for dining, some friends couldn’t come because of Covid, they were only serving pizza rather than a full menu, which led us to move to ordering Valentino’s pizza at our friends’ Matt and Christine’s house. Despite the change of venue, the sentiment, however, was exactly what I hoped for. The food we loved (I will dream of the pizza calabrese senza capperi until the end of my days) was fabulous as ever, but being surrounded by some of the people we love most? Perfect.

We also spent our last Saturday in Sicily in Taormina, which I considered a great bookend for our years here because that’s how we spent our first Saturday in Sicily. Looking at these pictures, I can’t even fathom a) how much the kids have grown, and b) how quickly time has passed.

We’ve had some incredible times here. Honestly, the last five years — despite problems like Cochroach House, Baby Who Doesn’t Sleep and that other tiny thing, uh, the one that shut life down for ages? Oh  yeah, COVID — have literally felt like we were on vacation. Five years of vacation.

Honestly.

Sometimes I worry people think I don’t appreciate what I’ve had, but given how sad I am about leaving — and I am enormously sad about leaving — the one thing that helps is that I know that I appreciated every bit of living here.

For the entire time we were living in Sicily, Chris and I had this bit we’d do. If we were driving somewhere and saw somewhere beautiful, or we’d just look at each other and go

“WE LIVE HERE!”

In the more than five years we lived in Sicily, we had so many cool opportunities, both on the island and off. Memories we will cherish for forever. Memories we will be laughing about years from now, the same way my siblings and I laugh about that time with the rocks on the German guy’s car in Salzburg in ’01. My kids still run around periodically yelling that their “mind is a beautiful computer” like our crazy first landlady, so we’ll always have that.

Anyway, I’m having a hard time coming up with a better way of expressing this than lists. So, lists you shall have. I don’t make the rules.

Also photos. So many photos.

10 All-Time Favorite Trips

Well, this was meant to be about five top ones, but then I couldn’t stop adding. Oh well.

1. Loire Valley. Our eight days in Paris, Giverny and Loire Valley were one of our very first big trips — celebrating my 30th birthday — and every bit of it was spectacular. Paris will always be one of my favorite European cities ever, regardless of whether that is cliched or not. But the Loire Valley! A somewhat random add-on to the trip: chef’s kiss. Spectacular. Beautiful scenery and wine and castles! CASTLES!

   

   2. Slovenia. This was another one that took us by surprise! Chris read about a treehouse hotel in a Navy magazine, so we looked into it and booked it for the following year (first availability). We did not know much about Slovenia beyond this hotel, but we ended up being blown away. We spent two great days at Lake Bled, then two more in Ljubljana, a city that is now in the running for one of my favorite European capitals.

   

   3. Scotland and Berlin. A real dream team here, 3 days in Berlin followed by 8 in beautiful Scotland! Berlin in one of our favorite cities, and we liked it so much we wenet back a second time just a few months after this trip. Scotland was incredible as well. Highlights included Harry Potter sightseeing, finding our favorite-ever museum, ethereal scenery in the Highlands and MORE CASTLES. Hm. Sensing a theme yet?

   

   4. Puglia. Ask the kids about their favorite trip, and both Owen and Fiona will bring up our four days in Puglia. It’s hard to disagree, because it was jam-packed with awesome (except for one thing, see below). Our visit to the “heel of the boot” was easily my favorite within-Italy trip, with highlights being an e-bike tour of the countryside, visit to the ZooSafari and walking around beautiful Alberobello. 

   5. Switzerland. Our “last hurrah” trip to Nendaz was one of the best, even with some minor misadventures! We learned how to ski (kind of) and stayed in the most beautiful AirBnB we’ve ever had. Plus, SNOW! Which was a novelty at the time. There is now snow on the ground in March in Ohio and we are over it. 

   6. Belgium. This was the beginning of our realization that 4-days trips where you don’t have to change accommodations are the bee’s knees, baby. (Never mind that our accommodations in this case turned out to be above a sex shop, up several flights of the most perilous stairs I’ve ever encountered.) We had a great time exploring Brussels (read: eating all the chocolate and french fries in Brussels), Bruges, Ghent and seeing one of the best museums we’ve ever been to in Bastogne. 

   7. Romania. This was a more recent trip, one I took with just the kids. We missed Chris, but adored this beautiful (and extremely affordable) country! We saw two castles, visited a dinosaur park, rode a funicular to find snow and enjoyed a spa evening with waterslides and outdoor hot tubs. 

   8. Budapest. This was the final trip we took as a family of four, and we all loved it. Staying for four days in one city gave us the chance to see a lot, and even still we felt like we only scratched the surface. Every meal we had was amazing, which was great for me because I was about eight months pregnant and completely ravenous all the time. Fan favorites included the pinball museum, a Danube River cruise and the Budapest Circus. 

   9. Christmas markets in Germany/France. Really, this item could encompass all the Christmas markets we’ve been to, because these are truly one of our favorite things. However, this quick trip included two of our favorites: Christmas markets in Frankfurt, Germany, and Strasbourg, France (the “capital of Christmas”).

   

   10. Vienna. What a gorgeous city this was! We spent four days exclusively exploring Vienna, and still could have used another. My favorite part of this one was spending an entire day exploring Schonbrunn Palace and its grounds, which included a zoo and hedge maze (among other cool stuff). 

   HONORABLE MENTION: Nice & Provence in summer 2021! This was similar to a trip that we were supposed to take in 2020 with my family, which got cancelled for the obvious reason. We spent three beautiful days in Nice (including a visit to the best full-service beach), plus four more days driving around beautiful Provence during lavender season. It was an absolute bucket list item for me and I’m so glad we got to go! (And will blog about it eventually). 

   Let’s hear from the kids: Owen & Fiona’s favorites

Owen: Puglia, Germany (“all of them, especially when we went to the Lego Museum for my birthday“), Poland.

Fiona: Malta! (Also for her birthday), Puglia and Romania. 

Favorite trips with family and friends

Writing this up reminded me how many times we were privileged to travel with our friends and family! (And this is with group trips to Amsterdam, France and Tuscany all cancelled in 2020). This list also doesn’t include the many wonderful visits from family and friends, which allowed us to share our home with the people with love. 

1. Oktoberfest! At the time of planning, this felt like my magnum opus. We went to Oktoberbest on our honeymoon in 2010, and immediately after I was planning to do a group trip back in 2012. Instead, I had Owen in October 2012! Once we moved here, I got moving and we ended up doing an Oktoberfest trip with my parents, two of my siblings, Chris’ brother, my aunt and uncle, four of our friends (and three of their kids) and four of my parents’ friends. It was EPIC.

1. Ireland with my in-laws! We visited Dublin, the Rock of Cashel and the Cliffs of Moher. Dublin was so much fun, and then after that *everyone* got to enjoy my first* attempt to drive on the left (and in a giant van!). Good times.  *Edit: not actually my first time, I just remembered. But my only every left-hand driving experience was driving a scooter in Thailand, which is somewhat different than a 9-passenger van.
2. Spain with my sister and Chris’ brother! I’m not even sure how this trip exactly came together, but we ended up spending a week in Barcelona and Mallorca with my sister Torie and Chris’s brother, Brett. Since Chris and I have been together since the two of them were teenagers, they know each other really well and are like brother and sister themselves (past hijinks include getting in trouble for racing wheelchairs at the hospital while I was delivering Owen). The seven of us had so much fun seeing the sights, eating great food and accidentally robbing a robber. 

   

3. Paris with some of our favorites! I went to Paris with my bestie Shaina, and it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had! I could not be more grateful that we got to have that experience together. Chris also had a great time exploring the city on a different trip he took with his brother. No matter how many times I’ve gone, I never get enough of Paris. 4. Garmisch! We spent the 2019 Thanksgiving holiday at Edelweiss, a military resort in Bavaria. We’d already planned to do the trip with my in-laws, Gail and David, but later found out that basically our entire friend group had the same thing in mind. So in addition to spending time with family, we also got hang out with Megan, Dave, Christine, Matt, Meg, Sam, Angie, Rey and their collective nine children. It was insanely fun! And I will be dreaming about the outdoor hot tub at Edelweiss until the end of my days.5. San Vito Lo Capo. This impulsive group trip was the product of lockdown fatigue (someone suggested it one afternoon in summer 2020 when things were just opening again) and within a couple hours, we had five families on board. That was the summer we fell in love with group beach trips, and this one was no exception. Between the families, we had at dozen kids with us in this gorgeous seaside town in western Sicily. 6. Krakow with our besties! Another of our final trips, and one I’m so happy we got to take! Our friends Megan and Dave and their two kids visited Krakow, Poland, at the same time as us and we had a ton of fun together (including my kids trying to teach hers to lick the walls in the salt mine we visited). 

Top 5 times my family kinda hated me

10 points to Gryffindor if you can spot what these have in common!

1. That time I thought a hike to the Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, would be our “first hike of the day.” 

   

   2. That time we got off the bus at the wrong stop in Chianti and had to walk about 30 minutes (partially in the rain) to get to a winery.

   

   3. That time I thought it would be a good idea to visit the Grotte di Castellana for what turned out to be a long, long underground tour … after spending the morning on a three-hour e-bike tour. In my defense, the e-bike tour was a huge hit with everybody and I was still high on the gloriousness of my victory there when I made this decision. Plus, Chris agreed to go so it was at least 50 percent his fault. 

4. That time we got drunk and did the hardest hike in Cinque Terre. I haven’t written about this trip, so here’s the background: we made a last-minute decision to take a 11th anniversary trip to Pisa/Cinque Terre in September 2021. I’ve wanted to hike between all five towns since we arrived, but Chris never wanted to do it with the kids (see above for reasons why) so it kept getting pushed back. Once we knew we were moving, we knew it was time to get it done. We stayed in Riomaggiore and decided to take the train to the furthest-away town (Monterosso al mare) and walk back as far as we could. Except first we had a bottle of wine for lunch in Riomaggiore. (And then another glass of wine in Monterosso). Then we were warned by the woman selling us passes that it was “challenging” and “would take two hours” and “have water and good shoes” and “don’t do it,” but to be real honest with you, I assumed she was just being a little hysterical. After all, I walked on some of the paths back when I was a teenager traveling with my family. Still, I took precautions and got us these for the walk:

Turns out, the paths I walked back in the day were what you’d call “less challenging” and also “paved.” I was encouraged by the number of college students and fit people who were turning around on this hike (or at least as exhausted as us) because hey! we are hanging in there! Chris, however, saw it as signs of our impending doom. Tomato, tomato. See? Looks the same when you write it. Anyway, it was rough but at least we were sufficiently buzzed while sending instructions about care of our children to friends in Sicily.

5. That time that I ran out of gas on a random farm. To be fair to all involved, the only one freaking out or pissed off was me, the person who apparently passed the last gas station leaving Cefalu without noticing. My parents, along for this ride, were extremely chill and understanding about the whole debacle. Chris wasn’t there, obviously, because he’s a proper grownup and doesn’t “get into scrapes” as Anne Shirley and I do. 

Somehow, each of these are actually a cherished memory. Even the gas incident, it turned out to be the first time I ever got to try rabbit (while being warned, in Italian, to watch out for buckshot). So, silver linings.

Things I miss about living in Sicily 

1. Our friends! Above all else, I miss our wonderful friends. Living there was tough because it is temporary for almost everyone, so we said a lot of goodbyes over the years. But I love that we got the chance to meet so many people! (And that I now have people to text in basically every time zone).

   

   Included in the friends category: our wonderful landlords who looked after us for three years.

2. The food. Do I really need to say more? While certainly we got sick of Sicilian food from time to time while there, we miss it terribly now. I can get pizza any time of day now (rather than only in the evening), but it isn’t going to be pistachio pizza and it is going to be — I’m estimating here — about 150 million times the price. Sigh.  I miss walking into a tavola calda or bakery, grabbing whatever looks good and walking out with an epic bag of food and 5 fewer euro in my wallet. My kingdom for a bombe from Puleo! (Deep fried pastry filled with ham and cheese, 1 euro, insanely delicious). 

   

3. The wine. Same thing as above, really. Even the cheapest wines in Sicily (say, the kind that comes in a plastic water bottle from the bakery for three euro) were almost always very tasty. We also had the chance to go to a ton of beautiful wineries and while I don’t think I’ve retained all that much information about wine, I cherish the memories of many wonderful date nights, girls’ day outs and family outings at various spots around Sicily. 

4. Mount Etna. No matter how many times we saw Mt. Etna erupt, it never got less exciting to see. 

5. History at our fingertips. Everywhere we looked, we’d see buildings with incredible history behind them. There was a castle less than a kilometer from us, for crying out loud! We were always finding new things we hadn’t heard about as well; my friend Megan and I stumbled across an ancient mikva while just wandering the streets of Ortigia shortly before I left. 

6. The sea. So many beautiful, unforgettable beach days. With friends, family or just the five of us, it was always wonderful.

7. Cheap flights. Enough said. 

What else can I say? It was an incredible five years in Sicily, and somehow only two months after leaving it already is beginning to feel like a dream. I really hope that someday we’ll have the opportunity to live overseas again, but in the meantime I will just state once again how grateful I am for the last five years. So, I will close with a bunch more of my favorite photos from our time in our bella Sicilia.

The post Bookends: Looking back at five years in Sicily first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Bookends: Looking back at five years in Sicily appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

We’ve now been in Sicily for approaching four years, and I’m still surprised by how much of this gorgeous island we still have to explore! Last month, we visited Sicily’s southern coast and had a wonderful first post-lockdown weekend in Marina di Ragusa. Our goal was really just to find a house with a pool and near a beach so that we could socially-distance somewhere other than our own apartment for a bit, but we ended up really enjoying the town of Marina di Ragusa overall. It’s a very cute and very clean beach town, which we’ll definitely be returning to!

But first — a quick update on Italy’s lockdown. It’s been a while since I posted! I’m pleased to say that Italy’s very strict quarantine has helped reduce the number of deaths here to around 20 per day as of late, with a couple days dipping into the single digits recently. While any deaths at all are a tragedy, it is a substantial relief to see our numbers falling when they peaked at nearly 1,000 deaths per day a couple months ago. In Sicily, we’ve been even luckier with very few cases. Consequently, things have really opened up here. While we are still taking precautions — tables are further apart at restaurants and lidos, people are all wearing masks indoors, some kid-centric things aren’t opening yet — in other ways, it is starting to feel more normal. We’ve been able to see friends, eat in restaurants, go hiking and, most importantly, hit the beach a whole bunch! After so many weeks stuck mostly indoors, it has been wonderful.

We don’t know what the future will hold here, and are crossing our fingers that the numbers continue to decline even now that people are getting out and about. In the meantime, we are going to soak up every bit of outdoor summer fun that we can!

I will say, however, that while we are grateful to be getting out these days, it still is hard not to know when we’ll be able to see our families. This week in particular has been sad because we were supposed to be with my parents and siblings in the south of France, a reunion trip that has been under discussion for literal years and planned for the better part of a year. We were initially hopeful that we’d be able to reschedule for August, but the huge spikes in cases in the US has resulted in the European Union’s decision to bar Americans for the moment, so there is just no way of knowing when it will be possible. Likewise, it doesn’t look like Lochie and I will be going back to the States in September for a visit as I was hoping either. We also always do a trip or two each year with my in-laws, but obviously we can’t even look at dates since we don’t know when travel will resume. I know whining about a lack of travel during a freaking pandemic is just generally not a good look for anyway, but since we’ve moved here we’ve been lucky enough to see our families a few times each year. Rarely have more than a few months gone by that we haven’t had a visit from family on one side or the other, whether it is our parents or siblings or even extended family members. We’ve also gone back to the States three times since we got here. This is absolutely the longest we’ve gone without getting to see people (in person, that is — we are so lucky to live in the age of video chatting!) and it is hard.

But back to Sicily. In June as things started to very gradually open up, Chris and I decided we wanted to just get a house somewhere so that the kids could swim. Usually we spend every summer in the pool, but the ones we usually go to were obviously still closed at the time. Chris did a search of the whole island and wound up selecting this gorgeous house near Marina di Ragusa, in a small town called Punta Secca. It was fabulous and the owner (who lives next door) was extremely helpful. On top of that, all four bedrooms had air conditioning, as did the common rooms. For as insanely hot as it gets here, finding a house with that many AC units is actually quite rare in Sicily.

If you prefer a hotel, our friends who have two small children of their own highly recommend the Hotel Miramare! It is right across the street from the beach and has an excellent pool and breakfast, they report.

While our trips are usually fast-paced and GO GO GO, for this weekend we took it easy. I got out to take a walk each morning and the kids did a lot of swimming in the pool.

In the afternoons, we hit the beach. We opted for the public beach right off the main square in Marina di Ragusa. The water clear and shallow for a long way out, which is always helpful with little kids.

The big excitement one of the days was capturing three crabs we were all fighting (or … something?) in the water, then creating a small habitat/jail for them on the beach for a while.

We did not do a lot of eating out while on this particular trip. Since we didn’t know what to expect about how much would be open (turned out, a lot) we ended up bringing a lot of snacks and foods we knew the kids would like so that we wouldn’t have to go find a grocery store. Since swimming and sun take a lot out of kids, they fell asleep too early in the evening for us to have dined out anyway. However, if you are wondering where to eat in Marina di Ragusa, we do have three recommendations:

Takeaway pizza: A Regola d’Arte. Easy, fast and cheap. The fries were also excellent.

For lunch: Ara. A burger restaurant near the area’s main square. It had some of the best burgers we’ve had in Sicily, plus an amazing range of arancini with different types of fillings. 10/10 would recommend.

For treats: Crema&cioccolato. Oh man, if you go nowhere else — please go here and order a caffe con panna for me. It’s a cold coffee with the most amazing cream on top, and apparently this is a Ragusa-specific drink. (I tried to order it here and it did not go well; we got the explanation later from a Sicilian that it isn’t a thing here). The ice cream and granita were also both great.

Quite a few of our friends have gone to Marina di Ragusa recently, so I may add to this list as I hear of more awesome options from them. In the meantime, here’s a few more cute kid pictures to send you off with.

The post Family-friendly Sicily: Marina di Ragusa first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Family-friendly Sicily: Marina di Ragusa appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

A month. Really, since I’m writing this later than I intended, it’s actually been more like 32 days of lockdown. More than a month since our kids have left the property. Wow.

I will preface this, as usual, with a message for our friends and family: we are healthy, we are safe, we have everything we need. Adding: thank you all so much for checking in, and I’m sorry I’ve been so slow to reply to messages these days. I’m trying to get better about it.

I’ve been meaning to update sooner, but to be really honest, it has been difficult to find the motivation to write. However, I’m sitting on my balcony with a cup of coffee and a rare bit of solitude, so here goes nothing!

(Cue one of my children showing up to ask me to arbitrate a dispute like “who gets to be the murderer” in a game they want to play. Yes, that is an actual fight they’ve had recently).

On the news-y front, there isn’t a ton to update here. Every day at 6 p.m. we check to see the official death/new cases count out of Italy (a morbid ritual we’ve gotten into) and search for signs things are improving. At the moment, it’s hard to say. The number of deaths have fallen from the peak for several days in a row, but when you are talking about another 600+ people dead every single day, it is hard to feel encouraged. Numbers of new cases seem to be up and down. We are hoping those numbers continue to fall, but I think that I need to accept that it will not be a sudden drop off in cases as I secretly have hoped.

Lockdown is expected to be extended until at least May 3 here, with rumblings that it will go on in some reduced form for much longer. At the base, and now in all of Italy, you may no longer be out in public without a mask. For the most part, the Sicilians I’ve seen have almost all been wearing masks since the beginning anyway, but now it is official. The new mask requirement for the base started earlier this week. I’ve been so impressed by the great number of people on base who have been making up big batches of these masks and leaving them for anyone to come grab. Love to see people helping each other during these crazy times!

What we’ve learned so far: Observations from lockdown

1. We have to have things we “have” to do. While doing the e-learning stuff was a bit rocky for the first couple days as we figured it out, I have come to be glad we have it. As a group, we do not do well if we don’t have some kind of a “plan” for the day. I kind of knew this about myself, but holy cow is it ever true for the kids as well. Any day where we don’t have things to do, we all turn into absolute grouch monsters. The kids watch too much TV or play too many video games, which for whatever weird reason INVARIABLY leads to them deciding to fight all damn day. If I don’t have things to do, I get into a shitty mood, which makes me way less capable of dealing with the constant bickering. Then the sound of us all arguing gets to Chris, who ends up longing to be at work rather than in the other room listening to us all be cranky at each other.

   

On days we do have things to do, on the other hand? Honestly, it is such a difference that it is hard to even describe. I have no idea why doing school work or projects in the mornings makes them so much more capable of playing nicely together in the afternoon and evening, but is just freaking does. Having a sense of “crossing things off my list” also gives me a sense of accomplishment, which I honestly need. Especially as I am also not working at the moment because my freelance clients have taken all their work in-house.

This week was spring break for the kids, so I was very worried about what we’d do to stay sane. At the suggestion of one of my friends, we decided to do a “theme” for each day and various activities. It worked really well every day except Thursday when, after a bad night with the baby and a lack of planning on my part, we didn’t really do many of “Portugal” themed things. Unsurprisingly, Thursday sucked. Real bad. We got back on track yesterday though, and consequently it was a dramatically better day.

School starts Monday and I am SO RELIEVED.

2. It’s all jammies all the time over here. Having a “routine” does NOT extend to getting dressed, however. Owen, who has bizarrely shunned pajama days at school in the past, has declared that when they go back to school he wants to make EVERY DAY pajama day. I suspect he’ll change his mind about the fleece jammie pants when it is 100 degrees out, but in the meantime I’m all about it. Ha!

3. Exercise is crucial. Another discovery — every single one of us is a jerk if we don’t get some exercise. Preferably in the fresh air (which mostly means the balcony, since we aren’t allowed to walk outside our property. I’m so jealous of all of you in the States who have been going hiking). I started with my balcony walking as a way to get a bit of solitude, but now it is freaking ESSENTIAL to my mental health. We’ve had a lot of bad storms in recent weeks, some of which were so torrential that we couldn’t even walk on our covered balcony because of how slippery the tiles got. On those days, we all felt terrible. The kids are now required to do 30 minutes of activity as a bare minimum, and I definitely see a difference in them too.

4. The kids still like us. Ha! I guess what I mean to say is, while I know they miss their friends they really seem to be enjoying the opportunity to have more one-on-one time with us. While I’m SO READY for life to get back to normal, I do love the talks and snuggles we’ve had recently.

Every time they talk though, I realize how many of our verbal tics they’ve picked up. Whoops. I guess I should be glad they aren’t dropping f-bombs (yet)?

5. WE EAT SO MUCH. If there is one thing that is driving me a little bit crazy (audience: only one?) it is the absolute unending relentlessness of the dishes/cooking cycle. How is it possible for five people to eat this much? How is it possible to do so many dishes and yet ALWAYS HAVE A SINK FULL OF DISHES?

We did finally order pizza from this one local place that delivers starting at 6 p.m. (!!!) and it was a very nice change. We haven’t ordered much because not a lot delivers here and we tend to eat a LOT earlier than restaurants usually deliver. This pizza wasn’t my absolute favorite, but the owner spoke flawless English over the phone, it got here in probably 35 minutes and it was cheap. So, I imagine we’ll be having it again.

6. The low-budget carriers are a bunch of bastards. I won’t get into a whole big thing about my hours of efforts to try and get refunds for our cancelled flights to Amsterdam, Bordeaux and Lisbon, but it has been a mess. At this point, I’ve settled on vouchers since they’ve deliberately made it impossible to go through the process to get the cash refunds we are entitled to. Here’s hoping these airlines don’t fold before we get to use them, as Chris predicts.

It’s been weird not only not going anywhere, but not knowing when it will be possible to plan future trips. We did move one of our Bordeaux flights to be a flight to Lyon at Christmas time, but beyond that we are just waiting and seeing. At this point, I might start planning stuff for Summer 2021, just to scratch that itch. Ha!

7. There aren’t enough hours in the day. I would have thought that we’d have an excessive amount of free time now, but go figure — there still isn’t enough time to get everything done that I mean to. And when there is free time, I’m too damn tired. Oh well! 

Tell me: how are things by you? How are you occupying your time? 

The post LOCKDOWN: Reflections on 1 month at home first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post LOCKDOWN: Reflections on 1 month at home appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Our stay at the Edelweiss military resort

Hellllo! Welcome to another chapter of “Kasey’s long overdue posts about less-than-recent trips.” It’s become a bit of a tradition, no? Anyway, we spent a week around Thanksgiving in Bavaria and Austria with our kiddos, and two important things happened: 1) the kids got to make a snowman and 2) CHRIS AND I GOT TO MEET AN IU BASKETBALL PLAYER WE ADORED WHEN WE WERE IN COLLEGE.

I was not chill about it.

Backing up: we decided way back around the time Lochlan was born (NINE MONTHS AGO) that we wanted to go to Edelweiss Resort and Lodge in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. This place, which is specifically for military and DOD people living overseas, is extremely popular with people in Sigonella so we’ve been hearing about it since we arrived. We ended up making plans for my in-laws, Gail and David, to meet up with us there, and then it turned out that a tons of our friends had the same idea for celebrating Thanksgiving. The end result was that four of the families we are closest to ended up being there at the same stretch — and even on the same plane — as us! It. Was. Awesome!

In the interest of, you know, actually finishing, this will be a photo-heavy post. Which is appropriate given that just today I got back some of the family photos we took while we were at the resort. LOOK AT THIS COLOR COORDINATION, GUYS. It only took about two months of anxiety and obsessing to decide on these clothes, so no big deal.

We arrived in Munich on the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving, got a (hilariously large) rental car and drove the roughly two hours to Garmisch. Straight off the bat, look how gorgeous our surroundings were!

Our first day in Garmisch, we kept things pretty chill: we ate lunch in town (Shaka Burgerhouse was AMAZING!), hung out with friends for a while and relaxed. And by “relaxed,” I mean tried to figure out how to get all our kids to sleep at the same time in a hotel room with only two queen beds and a crib the baby wouldn’t sleep in.

Thanksgiving Day in Bavaria — Neuschwanstein Castle and our celebrity run-in

Thanksgiving Day this year happened to be Chris’ birthday as well (he was actually born on Thanksgiving Day too!), and to celebrate we opted to take a tour offered by the resort to Neuschwanstein Castle. It was an all-day affair, including stops at a woodworking shop and a church, but the best part was standing on this bridge and gazing at Mad King Ludwig’s fantasy castle.

It also took us back a little bit, as Chris and I visited here in 2010 on our honeymoon as well. It was cool to share it with our kiddos nine years later, who — as you can see — were deeply appreciative of this opportunity. 

Our friends Megan and Dave and Angie and Rey (and their combined four children) also joined us on the tour, so it was super fun for the kids to get to play together during stops. Afterward, we got home just in time for our Thanksgiving dinner at Edelweiss, which was FANTASTIC and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

But what I really need to talk about is who we ran into while walking up to the castle!

So to set the scene, I’m standing there trying to get us to take a picture with a pretty background when a woman walks up to Chris and, apparently, offers to take the picture for us. I didn’t hear her say this and instead saw that she was wearing an Indiana University (our alma mater!) shirt  so I excitedly asked if they were from there. (Ok, to be totally honest, I first awkwardly said “Hoo Hoo HOOSIERS”). They were! We got to talking and the woman introduced some of the people who were around her, when a younger dude stretched out his hand to Chris to introduce himself …

And Chris blurts out “AND YOU ARE JORDAN HULLS.”

Jordan Hulls is a Bloomington native who was extremely well known because he was Mr. Indiana Basketball and chose to stay local to play for IU and because he was awesome. He played from 2009-2013 and was a HUGE reason why they were really good at that time. We basically watched him start every game for four years. He’s now playing in Germany and apparently doing very, very well.

SO, having completely missed that Chris was trying to subtly tell me who this was beforehand, I basically did a cartoonish spittake and blurted out such things as “OMG I USED TO WATCH YOU ON TV.” Which is a particularly weird thing to say, because we watched him many times in real life as well …? I guess somehow my brain thought “watching on TV” was more impressive? I DON’T KNOW.

Having thoroughly embarrassed myself, I ultimately decided the best thing to do was to ignore him and chat with his wife about their kiddos (one of whom was almost the exact same age as Lochlan) and living abroad. She was extremely nice.

And we spent the rest of the trip randomly looking at each other and going REMEMBER THAT ONE TIME WE MET JORDAN HULLS AT A FREAKING CASTLE?

Day Two: it’s hot tub time, baby.

Our original plan for Friday involved putting the big kids in ski school, taking the baby to the childcare center at the base next to Edelweiss and then marveling at our freedom. Regrettably, however, ski school was not available until December. Partially because there was no snow at that time (lame!). Instead, we took the baby to childcare and headed to the pool with the big kids. Or, more accurately, to the HOT TUB.

This was legitimately the thing I was most excited about at the resort and it totally lived up to my dreams.

Frosty air plus hot bubbly water = amazing. We stayed for ages. I want to go back right now, please. 

After that, we opted to check out the Garmisch Christmas market with Gail and David and get some lunch out in town. The Christmas market was cute, but of course didn’t really live up to some of the other ones we’ve been to (or to Innsbruck, where we went the next day).

Day Three: Snow and Innsbruck

Waking up to snow on Saturday was probably the biggest relief of the trip. Why? Ehhhh we had kind of assumed that there would be snow in Germany in the freaking mountains by almost-December, so we’d talked up the snow A LOT in the run up to the trip. Arriving to find no snow made for a very disappointed pair of kiddos for the first couple of days, both of whom seemed to think they’d been deliberately duped.

(I was also relieved because we had to pay extra for a large enough suitcase to bring all the snowpants and boots and things, so I would have been pretty pissed if we didn’t get to use them.)

Snow was the backdrop for our early-morning photo shoot with the resort’s photographer, Toby. I assure you, everyone was super psyched to get out of bed to go outside and stop-touching-the-snow! and smile-right-now-dammit! first thing in the morning.

As soon as we got back from the photo session though, it was off to play in the snow! I can honestly say this was the highlight of the kiddos’ trip.

So many other kids were out playing in the snow that morning, there was basically a forest of snowmen on the front lawn. So cute! Sadly, the snow didn’t last too much past Saturday morning.

After that, it was off to Innsbruck for a Christmas market! I don’t know what I was expecting specifically from Innsbruck, an Austrian town about an hour from Garmisch, but I ended up being blown away. It was gorgeous!

Finding parking was a bit harrowing because we’d been given the world’s biggest rental car, but the Christmas markets were beautiful. And the food! Can’t beat a Christmas market for food.

I seriously don’t think I’d ever given much thought to Innsbruck and I certainly hadn’t done much research before getting in the car to go, so this town was a lovely surprise. If you are in Garmisch, it is definitely worth a day trip!

Sunday we strongly considered going up to Zugsprite, the tallest peak in Germany, and part of me is a little sad that we didn’t since our friends spoke highly of it. However, it was fairly expensive and seemed like a lot of work, so we ended up opting to take the kids swimming and to the hot tub once more instead. But, it will absolutely be on our list next time!

We spent the next couple of days in Salzburg, Austria, but that will be a post for a different day. Spoiler alert: no celebrity sightings there, but still a nice time.

And now to wrap up with some gratuitous cute kid pictures from the Edelweiss lobby because I was OBSESSED with taking photos in there, apparently.

The post Bavaria with a baby: 4 days at Edelweiss Resort first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Bavaria with a baby: 4 days at Edelweiss Resort appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

INTRODUCING! 

Lochlan Samuel

March 23, 2019 (his due date!)

8 lbs, 12 oz (about 4 kg)

21 inches

100 percent adorable

He’s here! Hooray! Baby Lockie appeared promptly on his due date, in what turned out to be a completely different delivery than what I expected. First of all: props to all of you guys who go natural on purpose, because that is seriously intense.

I debated about sharing Lockie’s birth story here because obviously this is a travel blog, but it is also, first and foremost, my personal account of our time living overseas. And I’ve now told this story to so many people here that I can’t imagine not sharing it with my friends and family back home as well. THAT SAID: if birth stories aren’t your thing, feel free to bail on this post now! I’m not offended, promise.

Or for those of you who want to “TL;DR” version of events, here are the highlights: Contractions in the morning that I feared were false labor again, water broke in our car, Lochlan was born 40 minutes after we arrived at the hospital. We are home and doing great!

If you want the full story, see below. Standard warning: this is a birth story. There are birth details. I don’t think there’s anything too gross, but I’m not that sensitive (obviously). Another warning: there’s cursing in here. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who reads this blog normally anyway, but for anyone else — that’s your heads up. Trust me, you would not be getting the full flavor of this experience without some cursing in the re-telling, because there was a lot of it during.

Lochlan’s precipitous labor birth story

First of all, three things I’m extremely grateful for when it comes to this birth:

1. The absolutely lovely people we had caring for us and our children during our days at the hospital
2. That we moved away from our old home in the “Aci” area last summer, because otherwise our baby would definitely have been born in the car.
3. That none of this happened in the middle of the night, because our baby probably would have been born in the car.

So, right off the bat I will mention that my wonderful OB warned me that third babies often come quickly. Since ideally I needed to be at the hospital 4 hours before delivery for antibiotics, she recommended I not dilly-dally once contractions started — even though Owen’s birth took 23 hours and Fiona’s took 7.

THAT SAID: the problem with this was the massive amount of contractions I’d been having in the run-up to Lockie’s delivery, which on at least three occasions had formed a very clear pattern that never increased in intensity or turned into, you know, birth. As recently as four days before, I had been sitting at my son’s basketball game timing contractions before jinxing the shit out of it by telling my OB (also at the game, ha!) that I thought she might be seeing us that night.

So I was feeling pretty jerked around by this kid/my uterus at this point, right?

So Saturday I started having contractions not long after I woke up, but given they were remarkably similar to the ones from the night before, the previous Tuesday and the Thursday before that, I knew I couldn’t trust them. We decided to head to the park to walk around and see if they kicked up, and coincidentally some friends of ours happened to be headed there too (shout out to Megan and Dave, you guys rock!). Perfect!

So we passed about 45 minutes letting the kids play while I walked off the contractions whenever they popped up, and eventually started timing them. Once they finally started picking up in intensity, we decided that the time was right to head to the hospital and just get checked out (at this point I told the crowd that I put it at “70 percent” likelihood that this was the real thing). Megan and Dave offered to take the kids for us, and since they live about a minute from our house it seemed prudent to follow them back to their place, drop off the kids and go get my hospital bag from our house.

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT I WAS NOT EVEN SURE I WAS IN REAL LABOR AT THIS POINT.

So, along the way Chris reminded me that I was supposed to call the hospital and let them know we’d be coming by in a bit. One of their first questions was whether my water had broken, and when I said “no” I think it was pretty clear that everyone’s attitude was that nothing was too urgent.

I hung up the phone.

INSTANTLY: Pop. Water burst all over the front seat of the car, mercifully mostly preserved by the towel we’d laid down ahead of time, just in case.

Needless to say, we called back with the update because after that happened, shit instantly got real. Real painful, real quick. It is extremely lucky that we now live only seven minutes from the base (as do our friends) because riding in the car was awful.

TIME AT THIS POINT: 10:59 a.m., according to a text message we know we sent while still in our house. My water had broken less than 10 minutes before. We left the house sometime shortly after this, once I’d pointlessly rinsed off and acquired new pants.

NOTE: At this point, I still didn’t think we were in any danger of a quick delivery because, after all, my water broke as the first sign of labor with Fiona and I still had seven hours ahead of me. 

So, we made it to the hospital and walked into what appeared to be a creepily-empty ward at first, as they had no other patients and the whole staff was in our room getting it prepped for us. Obviously there were plenty of people there, but it was just an … odd moment.

TIME: About 11:15/11:20 a.m.

I was sure that I would have made some major progress toward delivery, just based on how much pain I was in. But at my nurse’s first check: 3-4 cm. To say I was bummed is an understatement, as that was basically where I’d been five days ago at my regular checkup.

Two things that came out of my mouth then:

“WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS HURT SO MUCH THEN?*”

“WELL, AT LEAST I’LL HAVE TIME FOR THOSE DAMNED ANTIBIOTICS, I GUESS.”

Her answers: “every labor is different” and “maaaaaybe.”

*Note: I later apologized to wonderful nurse for the excessive amount of cursing that followed in the next 40 minutes.

Wonderful Nurse (shall I just call her WN?) asked immediately if I was planning an epidural, to which I gave a resounding YES. I always plan on having one, but joke that I need to get to a certain level of pain in order to be ready for it because otherwise I panic about the needle-in-my-back concept.

I was AT THAT POINT.

WN went to work trying to call the anesthesiologist, but had some initial trouble reaching him. I wanted to jump into the shower as pain relief while I was waiting, but was told I needed 20 minutes of monitoring on the baby before I could safety do so. OW OW OW. But, I was pretty much clinging to the hope of heading to the shower soon while growing increasingly frustrated that the guy with the need hadn’t somehow apparrated, Harry Potter-style, to my beside.*

*Given that I now know he wouldn’t have had time to get it in even if he’d picked up on the very first ring, I’ve gotten over this. But at the time I was having some DEEPLY UNCHARITABLE thoughts about the situation, haha.

Before the 20 minutes of monitoring were up, however, I started realizing that I was feeling … something. I asked my nurse to check again because I thought I might be pushy? Except, how could I be pushy if I was only at 4 cms?

Here’s how: because I’d already progressed to 8 cm since arriving. Next words out of my mouth:

“IS THIS TRANSITION?? IS THIS WHY THIS SUCKS SO SO SO MUCH?”

(WN answer: Yes, yes it is.)

I was not in a great head space at this point, I will freely admit. We’d learned about natural birth coping techniques six years ago in birth class, and early on I was able to talk myself through them and could remember things like finding a focal point and such. But by this point contractions were completely on top of each other and I was basically just clinging to the side of the bed for dear life while things happened around me.

At this point, I think they must have just started calling everybody in the hospital because more people — beyond WN and corpsmen who’d been there all along — started appearing in my room. The doctor from the ER had showed up and I vaguely remember him reassuring me that he’d caught “hundreds” of babies in his day and not to worry about it. I think perhaps another doctor from the ER was there too? And then in walked the OB who was on call.*

This turned out to be GOOD FREAKING TIMING. Because what felt like only a few minutes after being checked the last time, it occurred to me that I was pushing. Involuntarily.

AM I PUSHING? I THINK I’M PUSHING? IS THERE A HEAD? 

Bed was instantly broken down into “delivery mode” and my feet placed (at my protest, for some bizarre reason?) in those little foot-holder dealers and then BAM. I was pushing in earnest. I couldn’t have stopped if I tried. You know how I know I couldn’t stop? BECAUSE I TRIED.

Previous deliveries involved the whole, “nurse telling me when it was time to push and counting to 10 while I worked at it” thing. This one? Not so much. Suddenly I was pushing, and just as suddenly THERE HE WAS. Crying!

My OB didn’t even have time to put on a gown before he had to catch him, poor guy.*

TIME: 11:57 a.m.

It was only at this point that I realized there were something like 10 people in my room, but fortunately I was much too relieved to care about the huge audience. At the time there was a lot of joking about how that was the perfect was to have a baby but uh … it took me a little while to get over the shock before I could agree. Ha!

*I later learned that a road race between the two bases had slowed down traffic considerably.

In the aftermath: I’m totally fine with how it all went down now — and obviously it is kind of a funny story at this point — but it was hands-down the most intense experience of my life. Luckily, the prize was worth it!

Also noteworthy: this has definitely been the easiest recovery so far. I’m not sure if this is related to the natural labor, but it has been really nice.

We spent the next several hours trying to decide what our boy’s name was, which was a big challenge. We had our short-list, but ended up adding a few new names that seemed relevant to his manner of delivery. (And we are still trying out “Dash” as a nickname, though we rejected Dashiell as an official first). Ultimately, we landed on a name I’ve loved forever, which the kids have also been pulling for when not suggesting their own names.

Owen had a basketball game Saturday and since he is on the same team as one of his little buddies, our sweet friends Christine and Matt (hi guys!) picked him and Fiona up from Megan and Dave’s to bring them there. Afterward, they got to meet their new baby brother.

It was love at first sight! I could not be happier with how they are adjusting to their new little guy. Owen has declared him “the cutest thing in all the universes there are” and “cuter than the baby chickens in Minecraft” (huge compliment). Fiona is constantly following us around begging to help and loves to sing him songs and cuddle him. They are the best big brother and sister!

I want to close now by expressing once more how grateful I am for the wonderful friends we have out here. It was such a relief to know we could rely on Meghan and Dave and Christine and Matt, plus one of Fiona’s fabulous teachers, to take such amazing care of our kids while we had to spend two nights in the hospital. But we are also grateful for the many friends who also volunteered to be “on call” for when I went into labor, those who also offered to take care of the big kids, and everyone who has brought us food! We are beyond lucky to have all of you in our lives. And that’s all I can say about that because I don’t need to start crying on my keyboard =-)

The post He’s here! Baby boy’s super-fast birth story first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post He’s here! Baby boy’s super-fast birth story appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Hello! It’s been a bit so I thought I’d pop by to say hi. As you might imagine, we’ve been grounded for quite a few weeks now while we wait for our baby boy to make his grand entrance. Which, by the way, should be scary soon — tomorrow marks 39 weeks, so we have at most about two weeks left. Whaaaaaaaaaat.

First, on the travel front: We already have plans to spend Chris’ leave mapping out the rest of the year for our new family of five, which will include a return to the US to see family sometime this summer. Woohoo! Also on my hopeful list: Austria, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Croatia and Thailand. We’ll see how it goes =-).

In the meantime, I thought I’d share some pictures of our finally (mostly) completed travel-themed nursery! Back story: we put a lot of thought into Owen and Fiona’s nurseries when I was pregnant with them. For this one, we thought we’d be less obsessive about it, given that we are living in a rental and didn’t plan on doing much painting or anything. I honestly thought we wouldn’t get real worked up about it.

Turns out, we couldn’t help ourselves. So, a travel-themed nursery it was!

I fell in love with these prints from Etsy, then spent literally days trying to decide which cities to go with. We wound up with, from left to right, Dublin, Berlin and Amsterdam. The first two are two of our favorite cities, and the third was just so pretty I had to have it.

For various reasons, we actually came to Sicily with two cribs in tow. We ended up deciding to use Fiona’s because the white would pop better against the blue. We also snagged this fun passport-stamp crib sheet from Etsy. Elephant was a gift from a dear friend.

This wall decal was also from Etsy, and it sat in the nursery for a couple weeks because I was scared I’d mess it up (as various school projects have shown lately, I am NOT GOOD AT CRAFTY THINGS). Luckily some sweet friends gave us a hand to make sure it got up there properly! The chair, by the way, was from Owen’s nursery back in Indiana. So, new baby gets something from each of them!

The dresser was actually part of our bedroom set, but since it doesn’t fit in our room it got repurposed into the baby’s dresser as well. The rug and the Kensington Station clock are both from a cute shop over here called Maison du Monde, while the globe was a Christmas present from Chris’ mom that we realized fit in perfectly in this room!

The Boppy pillow has always been my favorite, most-used piece of baby equipment, but its old cover was looking a bit rough after six years and one international move. I picked up this travel-themed boppy cover (which has soft navy-blue minky fabric on the other side) from, no surprises here, Etsy.

We opted against curtains in the room because the door has very effective and easy-to-use shutters, which made curtains fairly pointless. I do want to possibly add one more piece of art to the corner near the chair, but I haven’t found anything I’m in love with yet so that’s on hold. (Also, hanging things here can be a bit challenging).

So, that’s it for now! It is a little less elaborate than our other nurseries, but I’m absolutely in love with it. And relieved that blue wall came out as I hoped!

Lastly, for those of you asking about this boy’s name: he doesn’t have one yet! We never made a decision on a name until we meet our babies anyway, but narrowing it down this time has definitely been more challenging. In the last six years we’ve met a LOT of baby boys, plus now any name we select needs to sort of “fit in” with Owen and Fiona’s names. So, everybody please cross your fingers that this boy comes out with a name tag!

The post While we wait: our son’s travel-themed nursery first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post While we wait: our son’s travel-themed nursery appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

As I type this, there is a chicken head somewhere in my house. It still has eyes. And a beak, and a tongue. Also, it now has a name.

Just in case you couldn’t have gathered this from the fact that I’m even writing about it, this is a family first.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a classic Kasey misadventure to post about (remember the rabbit incident??), so on this happy Easter Sunday … here you go. Buona Pasqua!

Anyway, so Chris and I have been planning to make David Chang’s Chinese chicken soup for about a week (since he watched a video about it) and we wanted to do the thing right. Which meant making our own chicken stock, and thus acquiring a whole chicken. Normally, I’d do this at my favorite butcher’s shop in the town where the kids go to school, where I’ve bumbled through many orders in my time but have indeed purchased head-free chickens in the past. However, we had company this past week and I didn’t get around to it, and by Saturday it seemed silly to drive 20 minutes to another town when surely we had a butcher in our own town who could do the job.

So, the butcher’s shop was a bit of a madhouse when Fi and I arrived there, but somehow we got pushed up to the front eventually. I didn’t see any pollo intero there, but was pleased with myself for being able to ask if they had one available.

Yes, they did. Did I want it cut into pieces, or whole?

Intero, I answered, feeling rather pleased that I’d understood the question in the first place. ‘Am I finally getting better at Italian?’ I wonder. For once this is actually unrelated to the situation, but if you are interested the answer is no, I am not. 

(A note about why I wanted it whole anyway: I don’t really know. I had mentioned to Chris that I could have the butcher cut it up, and he told me he could do it. So, I went with that.)

Anyway, so the butcher goes into a cooler and emerges with what appears to be a large chicken. She takes it to a counter farther from me to start wrapping it when suddenly I notice …. FEET.

THE CHICKEN HAD FEET.

Obviously, I panicked just a tiny bit.

‘SENZA PIEDI, PER FAVORE. SENZA PIEDI!’ 

Naturally, basically every person in town was in the shop and the 12 or so people around me started laughing and telling the butcher ‘SENZA PIEDI’ as well.

The butcher shrugs, cleaves off the feet and wraps the thing up.

I pay and leave without further embarrassment. As we walked home, I started to wonder whether the suspiciously heavy bird might still have a bunch of innards still in it (gross!) and resolved to make Chris deal with it since it was his freaking idea anyway.

Good call, Kasey.

Enter Sunday, he unwraps our feet-free chicken to find no guts. JUST A FACE.

OUR CHICKEN HAD A FACE.

Now, I thought they killed chickens by cutting their heads off. So why did it have a head??* Also, what is the reason for having a head? ARE THERE PEOPLE EATING CHICKEN HEADS? HOW? WHY?

… I was a little grossed out.

Chris went to work trying to get the head off, but it proved to be much harder than I would have guessed. The head was pretty seriously committed to staying on the body (‘as heads tend to be,’ notes my bestie Shaina) and for some reason** we don’t own a cleaver.

Eventually, however, the two parted company and by this point the chicken had suddenly become not at all gross to 3/4 of our family. It had become fucking hysterical. Chris and the kids were basically using it as a puppet and I swear Owen and Fi were nearly crying with laughter. Also? Way too interested in the idea of eating the head itself. #nopenopenope

So, without further ado … meet “DeadHead Chicken BawkBawk.”

For the record, the soup was phenomenal. We need a bigger stockpot though, and also (apparently) a cleaver.

*If you know the answer to this question, please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I like eating chicken.

**The reason is that we don’t often need to cut the heads off of anything.

The post So, I bought a chicken with a face. first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post So, I bought a chicken with a face. appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Thinking about heading to Oktoberfest in Munich? The fest starts Sept. 22 (Sept. 22 now in 2019!), but winter and spring is the time to start planning, especially if you want table reservations in one of the famous beer tents at the Oktoberfest. Chris and I have been twice to the Munich celebration and highly recommend a visit, either with or without kids — there’s something for everyone at Oktoberfest! In 2017, I spent a huge amount of time trying to secure table reservations in the beer tents at the Oktoberfest. This year, I’d like to share what I learned about that process. I’ll warn you that it can be frustrating, but the payoff was us having a great time with 14 of our friends and family members for three days at Oktoberfest!

At the bottom of this post, you’ll also find links to the large tents at Oktoberfest and the most recent information I could find about when each accepts reservations.

I’ve written before about tent reservations at Oktoberfest (here and here) but as a refresher, there are 12 large tents, each of which hold thousands of people. There are reserved and unreserved sections at each tent, but during the evenings and especially during the weekends, it can be tough to find a spot and require a lot of patience and waiting in lines if you don’t have reservations. Spots in Oktoberfest tents can only be reserved by the table; the smallest I’ve seen in for 6, but most will have a minimum of 8 or 10. This is significant because while there isn’t technically a “charge” for the table reservation, you have to prepay a certain amount of food — usually equal to two beers and a meal — for each seat at the table a couple months before the Oktoberfest.

By the way, if you are questioning whether or not to bring your kids to Oktoberfest I’d suggest reading this post and this post. Idea of what to do other than the fest? Look here. If you are looking for a place to stay, by the way, we really enjoyed Citadines Arnulfpark Munich and it was very convenient to the Oktoberfest fairgrounds. While it is in more a “business-y” district, there is a tram right outside the hotel and the stop for the Oktoberfest grounds is only two stops away.

My table reservation checklist for Oktoberfest!

1. Decide whether you need table reservations. If you are only a couple of people or are a group of people who are happy to visit the tents in the morning or early afternoon, you can probably skip it. Have a big group or want to go to the tents in the late afternoon or evening? Get to work.
2. Decide when you are going. The 2018 Oktoberfest runs from Saturday, Sept. 22 to Sunday, Oct. 7. The 2019 Oktoberfest runs from Sept. 21 to Oct. 6. You need to decide what period of time you are prepared to be there so you know what days to ask for on your reservation requests. Props if you can be there mid-week, you’ll have a better chance of getting reservations.
3. Mark your calendar with application dates. Set up a reminder so that you know, for instance, on March 4 you should send your reservations request to Armbrustschutzenzelt.
4. Create a spreadsheet or word document. List every tent and keep track of EVERY communication you have from each, as they’ll start to blend together quickly. In several cases last year, despite the information printed on the website, I received emails telling me to try back again in a month or two after the date they had supposedly begun accepting reservations. Being better organized would have saved me some time and headaches.
5. Apply everywhere. For real. Don’t hesitate to make requests for the same day from different tents because you aren’t going to be able to get reservations everywhere you try, probably only a fraction of them. Last year I applied everywhere and ended up with four possible reservations, two of which I took. When you are offered a reservation they’ll be an initial “activation code” you’ll enter on their website to accept; I’d accept all of them because nothing is final until you pay up a few months before the fest.
6. Don’t ignore the smaller tents. There are several smaller tents at the Oktoberfest, and they can be good options as well for a fun evening. The only place I was able to get a reservation that went until the end of the night one of the days was the Heinz Wurst und Huehnerbraterei, a smaller tent, and we had a blast!

And now — the tents of Oktoberfest!

Pschorr-Brausol: Accepting reservations starting in January 2018; inquiries for lunch reservations can be sent directly to Mrs. Brandt-Witte at s.brandt@braeurosl.de. You need to fill out this form. Website: http://heidevolm.de/braeurosl/reservierungen/

Paulaner Festzelt (Winzerer Festhalle): This is the largest test at Oktoberfest! Updated information on when reservations open up is not available on the website, but last year it opened in mid-January. Check the website at http://www.winzerer-faehndl.com/reservierung.html for the online inquiry form.

Schutzen-Festzelt: Website says it will accept reservations via its online form starting Feb. 1, 2018. https://www.schuetzenfestzelt.com/reservierung-menues

Kufflers Weinzelt: Website says it will accept reservations via an online form starting in February.  http://www.weinzelt.com/de/reservierung/ This is one of the two tents we had reservations in last year!

Schottenhamel: Starts accepting reservations via an inquiry form on its website “starting from” February 2018. Check https://festhalle-schottenhamel.de/en/reservation/reservation

Armbrustschutzenzelt: Will start accepting reservations at 8 a.m. on March 4, but only by FAX or LETTER. For what its worth, I sent a letter last year and never heard anything back so I’d try fax if  I were you. You can find the number here: https://www.armbrustschuetzenzelt.de/reservierung/reservierungsanfrage/

Lowenbrau-Festhalle: Will start accepting reservations via e-mail in March 2018, but be aware they don’t take evening reservations. Send reservations to mail@loewenbraeuzelt.de.  Website: http://www.loewenbraeuzelt.de/reservierungen/

Ochsenbraterei: Accepting reservations in March 2018. You’ll need to send an e-mail with “your desired date (also several possible), number of persons, time as well as your name and address” to info@ochsenbraterei.de.   The website: http://www.ochsenbraterei.de/reservierungen/

Augustiner: Accepting reservations as of March 2018. Visit http://www.festhalle-augustiner.com/html/reservierungsanfrage_en.html

Marstall: Will start accepting reservations in March 2018 on this webpage: http://www.marstall-oktoberfest.de/reservierung.htm

Hacker-Festhalle: Will start accepting reservations “about March/April” 2018 on this page:  http://hacker-festzelt.de/reservierung/

Kafer’s Wiese’n-Shanke: Website says it will accept reservations via its online form starting in April. https://www.feinkost-kaefer.de/oktoberfest

Fischer-Vroni: Will start accepting reservations in May 2018. Check back on their website, http://www.fischer-vroni.de/reservation.htm

GOOD LUCK AND PROST!

The post How to get TABLE RESERVATIONS at Oktoberfest first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post How to get TABLE RESERVATIONS at Oktoberfest appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Happy New Year, everyone!*

Having looked back over some of our favorite things from last year, I wanted to take a moment to talk about some of the things we’re excited about for 2018. Thus far, it looks like this is going to shape up to be our biggest travel year ever — I’ll get into the reasons why down below.

To start, what are we excited for in 2018? Pretty much everything. We are pumped to have a bunch of family and even some friends coming to see us, which is always a blast. We love sharing this island with the people we care abut most!

I’m also determined to work on improving my absolutely abysmal Italian, starting by getting more consistent with my classes. We’ve been here more than a year, damn it, and I shouldn’t still be a complete deer-in-the-headlights every time I don’t understand what people are saying.

I’m also hoping to spend more time hiking, especially now that the kids are getting older and should be able to walk more on their own. There are a ton of good trails around here and I want to make sure I see more of them in 2018. Note to local friends: who is with me?! Note to all the local friends who already do this a lot: make me go too!

Finally, I’m pumped for some seriously exciting trips that we have planned for this coming year. So far none of them are completely planned, but a general outline is starting to come together. The ones that are at least partially booked, either airfare or some kind of hotel include:

1. Brussels, this winter. We bought these tickets on a whim because they were insanely cheap, $41 dollar each for a round-trip, nonstop flight. Remember how I talked in this post about being flexible in searches for flights? We did just that and now in this case and we’ll be flying out of Comiso airport, about an hour to the south of us. Considering I’ve rarely seen flights for less than $200 to Brussels from here, we had to jump on it. Chris was in Belgium last year with a friend, but we are hoping to see take side trips to Ghent (where he hasn’t been) and Bruges (where he didn’t see enough) as well as seeing Brussels.

2. Paris, this spring. Ok, so this one is actually only a “me” trip, not a family one. I am meeting my best friend in Paris for a couple days, then we are coming back to Sicily. I could not be more excited to spend time with my bestie! It will also be the first time I’ve really been away from the kids, except for a single night away from Owen when Fiona was born and a single night away from both kids for my husband’s 30th birthday. They’ll have fun with Daddy though!

3. Berlin and Scotland, this spring. Visiting Scotland has been high on my list for a long time, but originally we thought we’d wait until another year to do it. Well, we changed our minds and I’m thrilled (and overwhelmed trying to decide what to see, ha!) Berlin was also a bucket list item for us, and I explained why these two ended up combined in a post here.

4. Slovenia (and Croatia? or Budapest?), this summer. This one is actually the least planned out, largely because finding cheap fares to that area has been tricky. This is why we usually travel more in shoulder season, guys! Anyway, we booked a stay at a treehouse hotel near Lake Bled — bucket list for Chris! — for a couple days, but beyond that we are still deciding where to go in Slovenia and maybe Croatia. Have you been there? Shoot me some suggestions, please!

5. Malta, this summer. This will pretty much our ‘last hurrah’ before Owen starts big-kid school (sob!) in the fall. I used my 200,000 Hilton points (accrued almost exclusively through sign-up bonus from two Hilton cards at a cost of $75, total) and the fifth-night free perk to book us our first “resort-y” getaway. We’ll see how we like it!

Other than that, our main hopes are to see more of our own island this year — we haven’t venture out to the west coast yet but want to! — and perhaps try taking the ferry to the mainland to drive around southern Italy. With family members coming in, we might also end up spending time in other Italian cities like Rome or Florence, depending on what they all decide they are interested in.

If that sounds like kind of a lot– well, I can definitely see that. But, this is the last year that we won’t have a kid in elementary school. Right now, it doesn’t especially matter when we take Owen and Fiona out of school because hey, it is only preschool. While I’m told that the base school is more flexible than most about absences for family vacations, it still isn’t realistic to think we’ll be able to take Owen out of school for too many days — even if we find plane tickets that are only $41 each. It is also possible that 2018 will be our last full year in Sicily, if we are unable to stay longer. So, with that in mind we are going to spend this next year soaking up every opportunity to travel as much as we possibly can.

I’m going to be a doing some later posts about credit card points again — especially since I just walked a few friends through the basics recently — but I just wanted to mention as well that if you travel or want to, points can really help defray the costs. I’ve mentioned that we used our entire 146,000 Chase UR miles for four tickets back to the United States last Thanksgiving already (and tickets to Paris, and a hotel for Oktoberfest, and half our tickets to the states in 2016 …), but so far for 2018 I’ve used points/perks to book 11 hotel or AirBnB nights at a total out-of-pocket cost of $24. For the out-of-pocket spending we’ve been doing, we are building up more Chase points that we’ll either use for hotels or flights this summer, or stockpile for our next trip back to the U.S. You’d be surprised how quickly they can stack up! But more on that later. In the meantime, I’d like to know …

What are you most excited for in 2018?

*Ok, so this post was meant to be posted rather closer to the New Year than Jan. 3. But, you know, life happens.

The post Looking ahead: trips we are excited for in 2018 first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Looking ahead: trips we are excited for in 2018 appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Pictured: Panetone, a classic Sicilian Christmas food. 

First, a belated Merry Christmas, all! We hope that you are all having a wonderful holiday season.

This was our first year in Sicily for Christmas (we went back to the States last year) AND our first year celebrating the holidays without extended family. It was different and we missed our families, but we did enjoy our relaxing holidays at home with the kids!

Since we were going to be here for the holidays, I asked our Italian tutor about what Sicilians would typically eat at Christmas time so we could give it a try. The answer was there were two can’t-miss Sicilian Christmas food, so obviously we completely overdid it and got enormous quantities of both. Ooops?

Sicilian Christmas food: Panetonne/Pandoro 

This traditional Christmas cake is so insanely popular as a Sicilian Christmas food that I can’t even really explain it, other than to tell you that when I went grocery shopping on the 23rd every single person I saw had at least one in their cart. More often, they had several. The local grocery story I go to had a huge section with mountains of the boxed cakes, and I even saw them sold in stalls on the side of the road.

A fraction of the cakes on display. 

So the cake looks a bit like angel food, but it has a somewhat tougher consistency. Panetonne contains raisins or other dried fruit, while pandoro lacks the fruit and is instead dusted with powdered sugar. Chris first picked us up a pandoro to try …

(Which surprised him by including the wine on the box, ha! Merry Christmas to us.)

It arrives plain, then you take the packet of sugar, dump it on top and shake it within its plastic bag to coat. Fiona loved every part of this process. 

And I mean every part. For the last couple of days, she’s been randomly bringing up how much she likes the cake and how “I could eat a whole one BY MYSELF.” I thought it was tasty but man, not to the level she did!

My preference was for the “fancy” panetonne we had this year. Sicily is known for all things pistachio, and the best pistachios come from Bronte. Our sweet friends were going to Bronte to pick up a pistachio cake for themselves and graciously offered to grab us one too. Hands down, the best pandoro or pannetone we had — and the best of the Sicilian Christmas food, at least in my opinion.

Forgot to take a picture BEFORE we started cutting this beauty. 

Sicilian Christmas food: Schiacciata (here’s hoping I have the spelling right)  

Rossana also told us that most Sicilian families order schiacciata for Christmas Eve dinner, then munch on the leftovers for days afterwards. Basically it is like a pizza with a top crust, stuffed on the inside with cheese and other toppings. At Rossana’s recommendation, we planned to order one that was stuffed with half potatoes and half broccoli. Our bakery turned out to not do halves, so they talked me into ordering two. At the time, I thought the total cost would only be 22 euro so I figured, “why not?”

Yeahhhhhhh. ‘Bout that. Turned out I misinterpreted something somewhere along the way because the total was more than 50 euro. I’m  wondering if the price was maybe 22 euro per kilo? These things were quite heavy.

I would say that both of them were decent, but if I’m being honest I didn’t really love either (though Chris liked them pretty well). Of the two though, we definitely preferred the potato one.

The rest of our (not so Sicilian) Christmas food

So for the rest of our meals, we pretty much just pleased ourselves with a combination of our favorites! In Germany, we really enjoyed weiner schnitzel with berry sauces on top, so for Christmas Eve we did a version of that with Owen’s favorite cotoletta di pollo (fried chicken scallopini) with homemade cranberry sauce, plus veggies and a potato casserole recipe from Chris’ side of the family. Christmas Day, we went with beef tenderloin as my family usually does (which seems to be cut a bit differently here, but I was insanely pleased to have been able to correctly ordered it from our butcher!), plus mashed potatoes, carrots, and asparagus. For a first course, we also made a pistachio pasta (this recipe) and had fresh mozzarella. When in Sicily, after all!

What are your holiday food traditions? 

The post Our Sicilian Christmas: embracing local food traditions first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Our Sicilian Christmas: embracing local food traditions appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

15 great gifts for travelers

Got a friend who loves travel? Know a kid with more passport stamps than most adults? Pull up a chair, because we’ve got gift ideas for you here! Here are 15 great gifts for travelers of all ages, just waiting to inspire you.

The travelers in your life aren’t always the easiest to buy gifts for, especially if they are constantly on the move. But today, I’m sharing some great ideas generated both by our personal experience and the help of my amazing traveling friends and blogging buddies. Here you’ll find a combination of the practical and fun for travelers of all ages.

Psssst. If you are looking for EVEN MORE more gifts for traveling children, I’d also suggest you check out my blogging buddy Tasha’s post here!

Great gifts for travelers: adult edition

1. Scratch off map. Strangely enough, we just received one of these in the mail ourselves after I’d already started writing this! I love this concept so much because it is fun to mark off countries that we have visited and, in doing so, look ahead to where we want to go next. I’ve seen these in a lot of different styles, but I think this one from Amazon is pretty cool.

This map available at Amazon.com for $29.99, and you can check it out here.

2. Passport covers. I like the idea of these because while it is ultimately a practical gift — one we need to do ourselves since man, our passports are starting to look raggedly — but it is also a chance to give a present that reflects that person’s individual style. Passport covers come in all kinds of styles, and I’d suggest looking at Amazon or Etsy to find one that matches what the traveler you know cares about.

I thought this one (10.99 on Amazon) was pretty neat, but there are a ton of options. I’d say you are also likely to find one that matches whatever “fandom” the person in question enjoys the most; for instance, a lovely Marauder’s Map one caught my eye on Etsy! Attention: Christopher.

3. Packing cubes. I have not personally used these, but one of my smart friends swears by it! These can be used to both organize your clothes and get them down to size — useful especially if you are trying to fit everything in a carry-on bag! My fellow blogger Margie from DQ Family Travel can tell you all about the best packing cubes to buy, plus some helpful hints on using them. 

This 6-piece Pro Packing Cubes set is available on Amazon for $39.99 right now.

4. Hershel Packable Duffel. This idea comes straight from my brilliant friend Natalie, who says this bag (which only weighs a few ounces) can be folded down to the size of your fist, making it easy to pack. It is a perfect option if you need to bring stuff home from a trip with you (souvenirs, anyone?).

This bag is currently $29.97 on Amazon.

5. Travel pouch for flat-iron/curling iron. Anyone else have a recurring fear that the flat iron you are stuffing into your backpack as you try to make it to the airport on time might not be quite cooled enough? And then all your stuff catches on fire? Surely it can’t just be me. Anyway, a heat-resistant travel pouch solves that problem and comes in a lot of cute patterns to boot.

This Fit&Fresh Hot Iron Shield is available on Amazon for $14.99.

6. Map pendant necklaces. I am a little bit obsessed with Etsy and I just can’t help it. Every year friends and family end up with stuff from there, and when it comes to travel-related gifts the site is perfect. I particularly like pedant necklaces like this one from PixieWhimsey on Etsy:

This particular locket, which you can find here, is currently $11.95 on Etsy.

I have two schools of thought on these: you could either get one commemorating a place your friend or family member has traveled and loved or, if they are away from home, you could do one with their home city in it. Either way, I think it is a lovely idea.

7. Wine transporters. Know someone who loves booze? On trips we’ve frequently wanted to bring home some adult beverages to enjoy later (limoncello from Rome, wine from the Loire Valley in France, beer from Belgium) but getting it home is a pretty nerve-racking proposition. That’s why these babies can make a great gift for travelers:

These wine skin bags, which range in price from 7.99 to 16.99 for a 2- to 8-pack of them, both cushion your wine and seal it, so if disaster occurred it would be safely contained instead of ruining every item of clothing in your bag.

Of course, if you know someone who is all about go big or go home when it comes to his or her beverages, you could also choose a slightly larger option.

The Wine Check holds a case of wine and will keep it safe for the trip home! Available for $84.99 on Amazon.

8. Portable phone charger. There is seriously nothing worse than being in an unfamiliar place and wondering whether your GPS will get you home before you run out of battery, or worse, being bored on a plane because your battery is dead. A portable phone charger can be a game-changer here: simply charge it before you go and stick it in your daypack. Voila!

There are plenty of options for these on Amazon in a variety of price ranges, but this Anker PowerCore 10000 has great reviews and weighs less than 6.5 ounces. It is available on Amazon for $25.99

9. Books. Or e-books, if the person in question has a Kindle or other e-reader. (Speaking of which, in the unlikely event you know someone who doesn’t already own an e-reader, they are perfect for traveling because you can bring a whole library with you.) It will come as no surprise to anyone who read this post about books that will inspire your child to travel the world that I’m a big advocate for giving books as gifts, but in this case I’d suggest giving a gift that relates to an upcoming trip you know they are planning. Not necessarily a travel book, but one that relates to where they are going. For instance, I’d definitely suggest reading In the Garden of the Beasts by Erik Larson before a trip to Berlin.

Or anytime, really — Erik Larson is a fantastic author. 

10. Luggage scales. Given how strict airlines can be with baggage weight limits, and just how expensive it is if you go over, having a portable scale can save you a lot of hassle. I wish we’d had one of these guys earlier this year, when we spent 20 minutes awkwardly moving things into backpacks and throwing things away in the middle of a crowded Charles De Gaulle airport.

The EtekCity Digital Luggage Scale is $9.97 on Amazon.com.

11. Personalized luggage tags. Like the passport covers, this great gift for travelers combines practicality with personality. There are a ton of fun options on Etsy.com, whether a fun Star Wars set or a pretty monogrammed look like this one from Silverngeauxld’s Etsy shop.

This monogrammed set is available here for $12.00

Great gifts for travelers: kid edition

UPDATE: Making an addition here — scooters! Geoff, a fellow blogger, can advise you on the best folding kids scooters for travel.

12. Books. Yes, these again. I love books as gifts so much that I’ve already done an entire post recommending travel-related books for children. For kindergartens on up, I think this book of maps, helpfully called Maps, looks absolutely fantastic and I’m thinking about grabbing it for my own son this year.

Maps is available at Amazon right now for $28.

12. Headphones. If you know a kiddo going on an airplane ride any time soon, they need a pair of headphones that actually fit them. The ear buds they hand out on the plane? Generally too large for little ears, and too uncomfortable. We got these for our kids before we left the States and we’re been very happy with them, especially since they can be linked together so they can listen to the same show on the iPad.

Nenos kids’ headphones are available on Amazon for $15.99 right now.

13. Kids’ camera. Just recently my kids have started asking to take pictures when I do, so this year we are buying them small cameras of their own so they’ll leave my expensive one alone! I think they’ll be pumped.

I have my eye on this highly-rated VTech camera one for Fiona, which is available here for $29.88. 

14. Backpacks. Seems about I got around to suggesting backpacks, eh? We personally like Pottery Barn backpacks; Owen was gifted one for his third birthday, and I loved it so much that I bought Fiona one of her own for her second. So far, they’ve held up well both as school bags and for being dragged all over Europe.

15. Plus Plus. We were gifted these small plastic building blocks ourselves last year, and we love them for traveling! They are extremely lightweight and very versatile, and Owen and Fiona both like building stuff with them. Plus, since all the pieces are the same there’s no need to freak out if one gets left somewhere … or all over the place. We highly recommend these for planes and restaurants!

Plus Plus are available in a whole bunch of different size packages on Amazon! The set shown here is 100 pieces for $9.97.

Got a fun suggestion for a great gift for travelers? What’s the best travel-related gift you’ve ever received? Let me know in the comments, please!

Pssssst. Enjoy this post? Sharing is caring! Also, if you are not already following my Facebook page at Babies With Backpacks, please come join us!

The post 15 gifts for the travelers in your life — of all ages! first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post 15 gifts for the travelers in your life — of all ages! appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it, but Owen (who turns 5 next week!) has turned into quite the little museum enthusiast. (He was real pissed when the adults lost interest in the Deutsches Museum before he did a few weeks ago, but hey — Hofbrauhaus was calling). So naturally, Owen has been eager to go to our local volcano museum, Museo dell’Etna, for months, ever since we heard about it from someone else in passing. Unfortunately I’d kind of dropped the ball on going because I was confused on how to arrange a visit and just being  lazy about getting it figure out.

Luckily for us, a local playgroup arranged a visit the Museo dell’Etna on Friday and we were able to tag along! Turns out that you need to make arrangements ahead of time with a group of at least 20, and price apparently depends on how many people are coming. I ended up paying 16.67 euro for the three of us, and I’d guess that about 12 families came to the event.

So the Museo dell’Etna is near the Casa delle Farfalle in Viagrande, which puts it only about 10 minutes from our house. And now that I have functional GPS, that means it *actually* only takes 10 minutes to get there instead of getting lost six times on the way to everywhere. Amazing!

So with our reservation came a tour guide named Claudio, who I think did a really good job talking even while a bunch of toddlers and preschoolers with limited attention spans were racing around everywhere. Topics at the Museo dell’Etna included information on how volcanos work, where and how they are formed, prehistoric creatures who used to live on Sicily (and how they might have been affected by volcanos) and more. It was all pretty interesting! From here I think I’ll let the photos do most of the talking though.

Claudio the guide explaining volcanos in terms of the magma in the mountain’s “stomach,” coming up through the “throat” and out the “mouth.” 

Basalt columns — Claudio explained how they are formed by lava. (Pssst, if those basalt columns look familiar, it’s because we saw them at the Gole Alcantara!)

An interesting note about the miniature elephant behind the kids in this next picture — this was apparently how large the species living on Sicily would have gotten, it isn’t just a baby elephant. They think the skulls of this now-extinct breed might have given rise to the Cyclops myth because the skulls could be mistaken for a giant with one eye.

As a reminder, in the Odyssey the cyclops Polyphemus captures Odysseus and his men and eats several of them. They escape by blinding him while he sleeps, giving them time to run into a boat and escape. However, Polyphemus starts ripping up giant rocks and chucking them in the general direction of their boat because Odysseus unwisely decided to taunt him as he was escaping. Those rocks are now found in Aci Trezza, of course, since Polyphemus lived on/in Etna.

Aci Trezza. These are the rocks.

The tour also included a video about Mount Etna’s massive eruption in 2002. I had a hard time hearing because the audio wasn’t great where I was sitting, but the visuals were really cool.

There was also a 3-D movie to watch, but what it was actually about I couldn’t tell you because my kids got totally freaked out and we had to leave that part. Can’t really blame them — basically the first thing was bees flying “at” us. Nope.

There were also a couple of cool “cave” areas that the kids really liked playing in, though photos of those didn’t so much come out. Basically it was supposed to mimic a lava tube, the cavern that remains when the magma leaves.

The tour ended with a craft: making their own volcanos with faces. The kids really enjoyed doing this, which makes me feel a smidge guilty for never doing stuff like that at home because #notcrafty. Oh well!

All in all, I’d say it was definitely worth a trip! The kids did get a bit restless on the tour, but there was a lot to look at and room to run around. Since it was by reservation only, we didn’t so much have to worry about upsetting other visitors with our rowdy crowd. Always a good thing!

The post Local fun: Museo dell’Etna first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Local fun: Museo dell’Etna appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

The weather has been beautiful (and HOT!) here in Sicily, and we’ve been keeping busy! Our main goal on a daily basis is to leave the house, as even though it is about 10 degrees cooler up on our mountain than it is at base, it is still broiling. We have air conditioning, but currently the main AC system isn’t working so we only have air conditioning units in specific rooms to use. It isn’t a huge problem, but it is is better to be out of here during the heat of the day when possible. Plus, what’s the point of being on an island if you aren’t going to go enjoy it?!

As anyone who knows me in real life knows, I don’t so much tan. At all. Ever. But if there was ever a chance that I was going to tan, it would definitely be this year. If only because I become so freckled that they just sort of meld together into a tan.

What we’ve been up to: 

1. The beach! 

The beach is basically why we were excited to come here, and it has finally been warm enough to go! We’ve been going to Fontane Bianche, a sandy beach (many of them near us are rocky) about an hour south of us. We always cough up for a couple of chairs and an umbrella — 17 euro for the whole day, worth it not to have to haul our own. It is a pretty spot! 

We took some new people who we are sponsoring to Fontane Bianche last week, and we all decided to have lunch at a place right on the beach. The food didn’t end up being anything too special, but it had a great view! 

2. The pool! 

The base pool is open, and for the last couple of weeks we’ve basically been living in it.

The kids are taking swimming lessons right now, and so far it is going pretty well. Owen is making great progress! The last couple of lessons with Fiona have been a bit rocky, but overall she is also doing surprisingly well considering she isn’t even 3 years old yet. Today was a bit odd because she was “too scared” to go in with just her teacher so I had to join the lesson, but once in she repeatedly tried to kick away from me and from the teacher because “I swim without floaties BY MYSELF.” So now she seems to be a little too confident.

3. Eating all the granita

Ahh granita, how do I even begin to describe you? It is a frozen snack (I hesitate to say dessert because I’ve recently learned that people here eat it for breakfast as well) that is sort of between sorbet and a slushie. It is less solid than sorbet but you don’t drink it like a slushie? Anyway, it comes in a lot of flavors but the most traditional (according to our tutor) are pistachio and almond, though lemon, strawberry, coffee and chocolate are also common. I prefer stawberry, Chris likes pistachio, Owen is obsessed with lemon and Fiona is all about the chocolate. It is eaten with brioche on the side and all four of us love those too.

Anyway, we’ve been hearing about granita for ages and finally got around to eating it and well, now we’re obsessed.

We’ve also learned that this annoying whistling noise that we’ve been hearing for months? It’s been coming from a guy with a granita/gelato cart who whistles to summon people for their snack. As you can imagine, being able to just run outside our gate to grab some granita has not helped our habit.

4. Hanging with friends 

Of course, we’ve been doing all of the above with friends as well! I am feeling so lucky that all four of us have found great friends to hang out with. The kids are never happier than when we are doing a play date with their little buddies, and it is even better when people are meeting up with us at the pool! As a bonus, several of our friends happen to own a trampoline!

5. Sitting in traffic 

Ok, maybe I’m being a little dramatic. But not very. I feel like we’ve spent half our lives stuck in traffic lately as there has been a ton of construction and a ton of accidents on the highway. Blerg!

But just for fun, here are some other sights from driving around recently …

Goat traffic! We always stop and let them get around because apparently if you hit one of them you’ll find out just how pricy goats are.

Why yes, that is us driving through a bunch of smoke. The side of the highway was on fire (the flames were right there) but everyone just drove on through. According to my friends who have lived here longer, this is a pretty common sight. I’m not sure whether the fire was on purpose since are constantly burning brush around here, or the result of someone flicking a cigarette out the window. 

Only in Sicily!

The post What we’ve been up to lately: summer edition first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post What we’ve been up to lately: summer edition 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.

Pausing this France recap for a minute — Wednesday the kids and I watched a (tiny bit) of the Giro d”Italia!

If you are unfamiliar, the Giro is a three-week bike race that is one of Europe’s premiere cycling events, along with the Tour de France and Spain’s Vuelta a Espana. Thanks, Wikipedia. The route changes every year, but this year — the 100th anniversary! — included two stages in Sicily. The first (stage 4) ended on Mount Etna, and then second (stage 5) started in Pedara. As it happens, that’s where Owen goes to preschool! His school was closed for the day because the streets into the town were closed.

My original ambition was to find our way into Pedara — theoretically parking as close as possible and walking? — but I ended up punking out because I couldn’t figure out how to get there when my usual route was closed much closer to my house than I anticipated. Luckily, my friend Leigh Ann — the pin queen! — had pinned a location where she’d seen barriers on the road in preparation for the race. Even better, it was a roundabout where I drive at last three times a week. Boom.

 We parked at our grocery store/mall, then walked to the roundabout. From there, we settled into a spot on the side of the road to wait. 

I thought that there would be a lot of people waiting so we got there very early. There didn’t end up being so many people in the spot we chose — hey, it is a long course! — so we ended up with an hour or so to hang out and take adorable pictures. 

They went by insanely fast, but Owen had the chance to yell “USA USA USA!” as they went by! I had ambitions of trying to pick out my uncle and cousin’s favorite riders, but it turns out I massively underestimated how fast they’d be going.Overall, it was quick but I’m glad we got to see it! And even happier Owen chattered about how he was going to race his Spiderman bike the whole way home

The post The Giro d’Italia comes to Sicily first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post The Giro d’Italia comes to Sicily appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.