Dearest gentle reader,

Wait, sorry, it has been so long since I’ve written a travel blog that I think I may have forgotten how to even start. Sigh. Believe it or not, “write blog post about Portugal” has literally been on my agenda pretty much every weekend since April 2023.

Since April 2023, dear reader, is when our most recent European adventure concluded. I’ll give you a moment here in case, like me, you need a moment to remember that the year is currently 2024. 

(AND THIS IS WHERE I INTERJECT TO NOTE THAT I CAME TO THIS WEBSITE TO WORK ON A POST ABOUT OUR 2025 TRIP TO EUROPE, AND NOTICED THAT I HAD ALREADY MOSTLY FINISHED THIS POST BUT NEVER ACTUALLY POSTED IT. SO ADHD KASEY’S BRAIN SAYS, FINISH THIS ONE INSTEAD AND THEN MOVE ON TO GREECE/ALBANIA/NORTH MACEDONIA/SICILY/AMSTERDAM.)

ANYWAY. Portugal. Lovely Portugal. This trip was known as the “one that got away,” as we were meant to go to Lisbon as a family for Spring Break in MARCH 2020. Anyone else remember what we ended up doing instead? I’ll give you a hint: it rhymed with schmockdown.

As you may recall, we moved back to the United States somewhat unexpectedly in January 2022. We are now living in Ohio, in a lovely community with many fine points but which is unfortunately very short on volcanoes, castles, beaches, granita, and many other things we adore. Do not even get me started on how much we missed our friends as well. All this is to say, that homesickness got channeled into planning another European vacation for 2023. Of the trips that had “gotten away” during Covid, Portugal felt like the obvious choice, in part because flights were so affordable. Originally, we intended to stay for about nine days because we were trying to ensure the kids did not miss too much school. Then the airline changed the return flight and they would have been missing five days of school instead of three, so we said screw it and changed the flight so that they ended up missing six instead. Sorry, school.

Our itinerary for two weeks in Portugal with our kids, then age 10, 8 and turned-4-on-the-trip, was roughly the following:

Day 1-3: Porto, day trip to the Duoro Valley

Days 4-6: Sintra

Day 6-11: Lisbon with friends!

Days 12-13: The Silver Coast

Obligatory How-Points-Factored-Into-This-Trip Round Up
My usual caveat: fancy points people will not be impressed by my airline choices. I might choose differently now, two years after making reservations, but honestly I still think we got a pretty great deal for economy.

Flights: Washington D.C.-Porto, Lisbon to Columbus, roughly 250,000 Capital One points (around $500/each)

Rental cars: Used Capital One travel credit for a rental car in Portugal, Chase points for a one-way Columbus to Washington D.C. rental car.

Hotels: We burned six Marriott free-night certificate for two connecting rooms at the FABULOUS Penha Longa resort near Sintra. 10/10 would recommend. We used a Chase credit for one night in Lisbon (we ended up staying longer there than expected because of our flight change). We also used a free night certificate for a Washington D.C. hotel, but that ended up getting refunded entirely because they accidentally charged my card instead and could not figure out how to fix it. All told, we paid cash only for our Porto Airbnb, Lisbon AirBnB and Silver Coast AirBnB (9/15)

And now — onto to the trip itself. 

A little oddly, we actually started our trip from Washington, D.C. for various reasons (money). We made the six-hour drive on Thursday night, even though our flight was not until about 4 p.m. Friday.  Thus, our trip started by marching our kids for literally six miles to see various monuments in D.C. Our theory was that if we got them tired enough, they would sleep on the plane and thus be in good shape to stay awake until a normal bedtime in Porto, thus destroying jetlag. Happy to report this plan actually worked great.

We arrived in Porto without incident mid-afternoon, rented a car and drove to our AirBnB in Villa Nova de Gaia, just across the river from Porto. In a whole trip of great accommodations, this one was probably my favorite because the entire back wall of this place was windows looking onto the fantastic balcony. You guys know how I feel about places with this kind of windows from the Romania trip, ha. The location was not the most central, but Ubers were so cheap that we just parked our car and grabbed an Uber when we wanted/needed to go downtown.

I had made restaurant reservations at Vila Nova de Gaia’s “World of Wine” district, which included a ton of great places to eat. Since I was not sure whether my anti-jetlag plan would actually work, I wanted to make sure we could feed them at an-earlier-than-normal-for-Portugal time and then send them to bed early if needed. Thus, I booked at the only place that took reservations for 6 p.m., resulting in them calling me, concerned, to ask if I really wanted to come at that absurd hour. Sure did! And that, my friends, is how we ended up being THE ONLY PEOPLE IN THIS ENORMOUS RESTAURANT FOR TWO HOURS. It was called T&C, and it was lovely.

Our plan was to potentially go to the nearby Pink Palace, one of several themed World of Wine mini-museums. Pink Palace is rosé theme, but it was kid-friendly with ballpits and fun stuff to look at. However, tiredness won out and we did not go that evening, instead heading back to the AirBnB to sleep.

DAY TWO dawned with more pre-planned jetlag-killing adventures! I arranged for us to do an e-bike tour at 11 a.m., as our previous e-bike adventure (in Puglia) remains an all-time favorite. As usual, it was a bit tricky to find a place that would allow kids Owen and Fiona’s ages, but we ended up doing a tour with BlueDragon, booked through GetYourGuide. Fiona was juuuuust tall enough for the bike (happy days!) and Lochie sat in a baby seat on my bike.

The first half hour of the trip was pretty alarming as we watched the kids trying to figure out the e-bikes, but mercifully someone else on the tour was struggling with their bike so we were shockingly NOT the troublemakers of the group. The three-hour trip ended up being a perfect way to see a lot of the highlights of the city and learn some history too.

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Afterward, we had a fabulous lunch by the river, where I sampled the Porto specialty,  francisinha, a sandwich that is sort of like a meat-filled grilled cheese covered with tomato soup. It was not my favorite, but I was glad to try it at least.

We spent the rest of the day walking around, including venturing back across the river to the Gaia side to pop into various port cellars. As you may know, port is a fortified wine made specifically in the Duoro valley. Until the late 1980s, it could only be exported from Vila Nova de Gaia.

We wrapped up our day with a visit to World of Chocolate in the WOW district, followed by a fabulous dinner at PIP in the district. The World of Chocolate was not quite as exciting as we hoped (we were picturing a ton of chocolate samples) but still worth a visit if you have kids with you.

DAY THREE in Portgual was tour day! We wanted to see parts of the Douro Valley, especially the wineries, but struggled to decide on a tour since many of them were all-day or multi-day affairs (not good with the kids) or were cost-prohibitive. We ultimately booked a half-day tour with Portugal By Wine, and tour guide Joao was exceptional! It was a group tour, but we ended up being the only people signed up so that worked out great for us. We drove our rental car to a pickup in Peso de Regua, then toured some small towns in the Douro Valley and one winery. Joao was extremely kind and informative, and even volunteered to take the kids on a nature walk while we did a winery tour. I cannot recommend him highly enough!

By the time we got back to our AirBnB, it was pretty late so we went with a take-out and TV kind of evening. Chris and I stayed up way too late watching IU get murdered in the second round of the NCAA tournament on one of the kid’s iPads. SIGH.

Day Four was driving about three hours to a resort near Sintra. We thought about stopping by Aveiro or Coimbra on the way, but ultimately decided against it.

PHASE TWO OF THE TRIP: PENHA LONGA RESORT

This phase of the trip was inspired by 1) Chris and I each having five free-night certificates from a Marriott credit card promo, and 2) seeing a lot of people on my points groups talking about this hotel as being a great bargain considering it had a lot of amazing restaurants on site (including two Michelin starred ones!). We decided to treat ourselves for this particular occasion. Good experience, but probably not something we’ll make a habit of.

Since European hotel rooms have stricter occupancy  rules than American ones typically do, we had to book two connecting room instead of a single to share. This was AMAZING and I wish we could afford to do it every time. Practically a whole wall opened up between the two rooms, so we were plenty close to the kids when we wanted to be. But also, it was a door. That closes. Yay!

The Penha Longa is near the city of Sintra, on a huge property with a lot of fun stuff to offer. While we were there, we enjoyed the pools, rented a golf cart to drive around, played giant chess and spent a lot of time in the kid rec-room areas. Chris and I decided to splurge on our first-ever Michelin restaurant experience while there. We booked a babysitter through the hotel to watch the kids for a few hours while we went, as we certainly were not bringing them with us. It was the most amazing meal I’ve ever had, but also took an insane turn. If you want to hear more about this MASSIVE FIRST WORLD SITUATION and also about how we are idiots, please see the very end of this post.

Our last day at the Penha Longa was Lochie’s 4th birthday (note from 2026 — he turns 7 in two months ahhhh), and we opted to go see Sintra. This was kind of a should-we-or-should-we-not thing because we planned to do a whole tour of Sintra with our friends when we met up in Lisbon, but we decided to go for it anyway. On a few trips, we’ve left the thing we wanted to see the most until the very end of the trip, and something random has come up to make us miss it. So we decided not to risk it, and headed for the Pena Palace. It was a bit of a hike to get where we needed to go, but it was gorgeous!

Afterward, we ended up at a Pizza Hut because that was what the birthday boy wanted. After our experience at the Michelin restaurant the night before (see below) we were not complaining.

Phase 3: Lisbon with friends

As I mentioned early on, we were (and still are!) missing our friends from Sicily as we were planning this trip. After we booked it (about six months ahead of time), I mentioned what we were planning to my Motta Mamas group chat. Two of my girlfriends ended up deciding to come along too, along with their families! All told, we had six adults and seven kids with us, ranging in age from 10 to 4 at the time.

I ended up finding an AirBnB that was described as being three apartments that can be combined. It was supposed to be nine bedrooms and six bathrooms, which we assumed meant each apartment had three bedrooms and two bathrooms — perfectly even. Instead, it ended up being a 4bed/3ba, 3bed/2ba, and 2bed/1bath. Whoops. It was nice to have some separation but all still be together in the same place though, especially for my little introverts.

First stage of our grand reunion was a meal at Lumi, a rooftop bar near our hotel that was just gorgeous. It also had the advantage of being one of the very few that a) would take a reservation for a very large group, b ) was serving food very early. I was dying to go to one of these rooftop bars, but I will say that one thing I did not consider was that it might be hot up there, given that it was March. It did indeed get very hot up there, but we had an excellent time catching up anyway.

On the way back, we looked around for a while and then ultimately headed to the AirBnB to hang out.

For our first full day in Lisbon together, we had a great time visiting the zoo with our pack of animal enthusiasts and visited the Time Out market in downtown Lisbon.

And a meal at the Time Out market! I will say this place was a fairly chaotic option to choose with kids, but everyone could get what they wanted. On the other hand … everyone expected to get what they wanted, and to tour the whole damn place to figure out what they wanted. Yeahhhhhhhh. I actually think this would be kind of great now (2026) because the bigs could go order and collect their own food.

After a kid-centered day, however, came PARENTS NIGHT OUT! For this, we booked a babysitter through the Mary Poppins Agency, which sent two lovely babysitters to handle the crew. This is another way the combined AirBnB came in handy. We did this a second time too, on Monday night.

For our night out, we chose a restaurant that our friends Matt and Christine (the two on the left) had visited about 10 years before, O Chaido, for the famous “steak on a stone.” This place theoretically did not have space for us when we tried to book online, but reaching out to explain the situation led to them agreeing to set up a table for six. The people there could not have been nicer! We adored this place.

Funny story — Matt and Christine remembered loving this place and loving the steak on the stone, but did not remember all the details. Trusting them, I went ahead and just ordered that anyway. When they did not ask me for a temperature for my steak, I joked that it better not come out raw. So, it was pretty hilarious when this was served to me:

Turns out, the thing is that you cook the meat on the stone yourself. It was fun and super delicious!

Sunday, we booked a private half-day tour to Sintra. I am quite certain there are public transit ways to get there that would have been cheaper, but we wanted to make things as simple as possible since we were traveling with seven kids. We booked a private, full-day tour that picked us up right at the AirBnB in a pair of vans. We had a bit of a rocky start with a car-sick kid, but once we reached Sintra things had pretty much chilled out.

We briefly looked at the Sintra National Palace, then most of the group went to Pena Palace. Since we had already been there, we look some time to look at the Moorish Palace in Sintra instead.

Afterward, we hit the Quinta da Regaleira, an estate built by an eccentric millionaire and naturalist. This property had a gorgeous house and grounds, but the most interesting thing is the “Initiation Well,” the purpose of which is entirely unclear even now.

After this, we headed to a nice lunch set up for us in the seaside community of Cascais, complete with wine tasting. We stopped by the beach briefly, at the kids’ request, and most of the adults (including MY HUSBAND) opted to stay off the sand. Those of us who did not got to fish the two youngest, Lochie and Lucy, out of the water after a COMPLETELY ROGUE WAVE attempted to claim them.

Fortunately, the kids had changes of clothes with them. Shockingly, I did not think to bring clothes for myself, so I just got to be all wet from carrying a sobbing Lochie off the beach and to the car.

Our final stop was Cabo Da Roca, the westernmost point of Europe. The kids all got very expensive documentation of their visit, which they have never looked at since. Do not recommend, haha.

On Monday, we spent time at local parks, followed by a visit to the amazing Oceanarium da Lisboa.

Our final adventure of the day with the kids was a ride on the Hippoboat, an amphibious vessel that takes you on a tour of Lisbon that involves periodically plunging into the river. It was a little cheesy, but the kids got a big kick out of it and it was an easy way to see some sights.

We got the nannies back that evening, and the adults went out on another adventure. This time, we did not have reservations but we got lucky enough to snag the last spot at another gorgeous rooftop,Java.

Originally, my family was supposed to be leaving Portugal entirely after this, but our flights got unexpectedly changed. By then, it was too late to add another night at our Airbnb, so we all booked at nearby hotels. It was a pretty low-key day for us, just spending time together.

Part Four: The Silver Coast

Since we were originally planning to leave two days earlier and from Lisbon, we had a couple days to fill after our friends left. We considered a ton of options, but did not want to drive far so we ended up heading toward Portugal’s Silver Coast. We stayed at a super cool Airbnb that had an indoor pool in the basement, then pretty much just chilled out. We did a walking tour in Obidos, which was lovely, and had dinner in Nazare, a town famous for enormous waves.

I am a huge fan of walking tours when traveling with children, as they are usually pretty short and are a good way to see the highlights and learn some things. Obidos was a gorgeous city!

Most importantly, we also picked up a bunch more ginja, a gorgeous cherry liquor often served in chocolate shot glasses. We had it all over Sintra and Lisbon, but it was particularly good in Obidos.

The Torre Branca apartment near Obidos, it was in a very small town and the owners were extremely nice.

Our final meal in Portugal was at Pangea by the Sea in Obidos, which was amazing! In addition to this blue sangria, we had amazing calamari — and this is coming from someone who is not a fan of that at all.

The next morning, it was back to the airport for our return to reality (SOB).

And now, for the promised bonus content.

IN WHICH WE EMBARRASS OURSELVES IN “HIGH SOCIETY,” or

OUR MICHELIN STAR EXPERIENCE AT LAB BY SERGEI AROLA

I will preface this by saying that I am aware that we were aware we were signing up for an extremely extravagant meal experience, and also that it is was an absolutely incredible meal. I am not really complaining, merely sharing this story because it is a fun illustration of our idiocy …

With that warning, here goes.

Going to a Michelin star restaurant was part of the draw  of staying at the Penha Longa, one we justified by thinking, we aren’t paying for the stay anyway, so why not? We chose LAB by Sergei Arola. Originally, I figured we’d just do the set menu and not pay for the wine pairing, but Chris happened to win a $500 prize through this Lions Club drawing my dad enters us in every year, and we decided “fuck it.” With the wine pairing, the meal was going to be something like 450 euro. I made my peace with that, even though it is OBJECTIVELY INSANE to my mind.

So going into this, my preoccupation was with psyching myself up to eat everything put in front of me. I am historically NOT an adventurous eater, something I’ve been trying to correct in myself for a while now. So on the way over, I’m giving myself a little pep talk about how EVERYTHING IS EDIBLE, JUST EAT WHAT THEY TELL YOU, YOU WILL BE FINE. That’s where my focus was. (Already making excuses here).

So when we arrive and our reservation is not going to start exactly on time, the maître d’ invites us to go to the bar and have a glass of champagne. He recommends one in particular and I’m thinking, ok, you are the expert. I’m also thinking, pretty sweet that we get an extra glass of wine because they are running late.

Ha. Hahahaha. SOB.

So the meal starts with this “tour” of Portugal with seven insane presentations of little tapas from various regions in Portugal and one from Spain. One was a shrimp that looks like a fossil and has to be excavated from sand made of some kind of spices (that one was the only one I thought was gross, and sadly was the very first one, so cue panic haha). Everything else ended up being very delicious and unique, and when it finished we were brought into the tiny dining room for our actual meal. It was amazing, but the theme seemed to be: why does this thing taste completely different than I would have guessed, and why is it more delicious?

For instance, the “cookie” on top of this gold kiwi bird was in fact filled with blackberries and MEAT.

So with each course, there is new wine. We did notice that most other patrons in this place were not drinking the whole wine brought to them, but we paid for the wine pairing, damn it. We are NOT leaving wine on the table. This is one of our core values as a couple.

So at various times during the meal, the waiter tells us that the sommelier recommends another specific kind of drink to go with a specific course, and do we want that? I remember thinking, why ask us? We paid for the wine pairing, you are the experts, I do not need to get real involved with this decision.

As you have probably already gathered, we should have obviously clocked that for some drinks they ASKED us if we wanted it versus just pouring it into the glass like with most of the rest of the wines. This should, perhaps, have tipped us off that there was something different here. On the other hand, we were finishing those glasses of wine so our judgement was, ahem, impaired.

I’d like to emphasize that this was a pretty small dining room, just a handful of other tables and you could easily hear other people talking at their tables. Including one woman who bitched at length about how she had to fly economy to get here. The “cozy, intimate” vibe kind of backfired on us, however, when they brought Chris the bill and he quietly handed at me to look at it.

“WHAT?!?!” -Kasey, a million wines deep, after being presented with the bill. I literally gasped. Loudly enough for basically everyone in the restaurant to hear.

In my defense, I had just been handed a bill for MORE THAN EIGHT HUNDRED EURO.

Chris was mortified. Not my finest moment. Luckily I collected myself and went back to trying to pretend this is just a NORMAL EXPERIENCE because we TOTALLY BELONG HERE. But I’m pretty sure the damage was done at that point.

It seems that since we are total rubes, we missed the unspoken rule that if you are ASKED if you want something, it means there is a price attached. The “complimentary” champagne was like 50 euro a glass. The additional drinks (and I think one of the desserts?) were also outrageously expensive. Since we blindly said YES to everything offered, things, uh, added up.

I am still a little traumatized.

That said, we’d already pre-paid the babysitter and had like 45 minutes to kill, so Chris and I did the only thing we could.

Went to the hotel bar for 15 euro gin and tonics.

Fin.

The post Two dreamy weeks in Portugal with kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Two dreamy weeks in Portugal with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

One week in the south of France with kids during lavender season

Planning a road trip around the south of France in July? We spent three days in the French Riviera and four in Provence during lavender season, and it was unbelievably gorgeous. Highlights: Nice, Arles, Roussillon, Gordes and Bonnieux

Note: This post holds the dubious distinction of longest time between trip and writing about trip. Reason? General life insanity, of course. We spent a week in France, pretty much came home to do laundry, then left for five weeks in the United States less than one week later, then came back to (somehow) even more insanity: Operation Allies Refuge, job interviews for Chris, various panicked trips once we realized we’d be leaving, etc. 

Frolicking through Provence during lavender season has been a bucket list item of mine for a while, and this past summer we had the chance to make it happen! It was as pretty as I envisioned, and we got some great family photos taken by the extremely talented Ashley at Curious Provence. I highly recommend that you schedule a shoot with her if you are heading to Provence with kids. Not only will you end up with gorgeous photos taken in a field NOT swarming with tourists (I’m looking at you L’Abbaye de Senanque), but she will have other useful information about swarms. Specifically, the epic swarms of bees.

Yeah, for some reason it never occurred to me that “frolicking through the lavender fields” would mean chilling with I think is most accurately described as a metric fuckton of bees.

I have never seen so many bees, and I’ve literally hung out with bee keepers on several occasions (small town journalism, what can I say?).

The good news? Ashley informed us that the bees would not bother us in the slightest, presumably because they were busy getting jacked up on that sweet, sweet lavender goodness. This also turned out not to be a lie designed to get us to smile for photos, as we ran through these flowers for more than an hour with no issues whatsoever. Yay! So even if you happen to have a crippling fear of bees, it really is no big deal, promise.

But, to back up: this incident — and also the unfortunate situation that resulted in us paying Ashley partially in a large amount of coins — was actually in the middle of our trip. So, let’s start with:

One week in the south of France with kids: our itinerary

Note: Some of what we planned did not end happening because of Covid (Monoco) or because Lochlan got sick and we were stuck at our house (Avignon)

Day 1: Fly into Nice in the morning, check into our Old Town AirBnB and wander the city (focus on parks!)

Day 2: The beach!

Day 3: Phoenix Park

Day 4: Road trip to Curcuron, family photos near Bonnieux

Day 5: Carriere des Lumieres in Les Baux de Provence, visit to Arles

Day 6: Lochlan sick! We stayed in our AirBnB most of the day as he recovered. Poor fella.

Day 7: Roussillon (the red city), Gordes

Day 8: Flew home from Marseilles

Visiting the French Riviera.

We originally intended to come to the Riviera and Provence in July 2020, when — after much debate — we ended up selecting France for a big family reunion with my parents and siblings. We rented the most gorgeous house in Cannes, and I’m still a little sad we never got to go together. Still, the five of us had a lovely time in Nice in 2021! We did not go to Monaco as planned — we intended to visit the oceanographic museum, see various gardens, and hunt for Prince Rainer’s fancy cards on display around the city — because at the time people were required to get PCR tests to enter. That was a hard NOPE from all five of us.

WHAT TO DO IN NICE WITH KIDS

NOTE: I would like to give a shout out to our AirBnB, which — despite its fourth floor walkup location — was basically the ideal location in Old Town Nice. The only thing I will tell you, particularly if you are traveling with your school-age kids, is that the bedroom doors do not lock. That’s all I will say, but consider yourself warned.

1. Promenade du Papillion. Our AirBnB was very close to this park and we visited it every day. It’s various wooden climbing structures were shaped like animals and way fun, plus we found trampolines and a water fountain to play in. Crowd-pleasers, all. 2. Visited the beach at Castel Plage! Right off the bat, I will warn you that the beaches in Nice are rocky. I knew this going in, but when the time came to decide about whether to pack our water shoes, they still didn’t make the cut. (We didn’t bring much luggage). That said, this particular beach experience was AWESOME because we uncharacteristically went fancy.

We originally planned to seek out a sandy beach in one of the nearby towns, but when the day came around we just couldn’t seem to mobilize. Instead, we ended up going to Castel Plage, where we promptly looked like hayseeds by trying to order something at the bar and were told by our horrified “beach boy” (this is verbatim how he identified himself) that this was HIS JOB. So a couple minutes later we had a bucket of ice with a bottle of wine, some snacks and three lounge chairs.

Lochie, being an amazing baby, reverted back to his traditional beach self-defense mode of immediately falling asleep on us. Honestly, that’s pretty much like having a babysitter so we were psyched. The big kids, meanwhile, were delighted by the rocks and sat there for approximately 100 years gathering up different varieties into a collection.

Getting into the water was a bit of a challenge because we didn’t have water shoes, but not nearly as challenging as getting out. Luckily, the beach club had helpfully supplied a rope so people could drag themselves out. The water itself was perfect though (other than the occasional jellyfish).

The big kids also got a nice international bonding moment with some French children who spotted some jellyfish. In the spirit of international cooperation, they all picked up rocks and started wildly chucking them at them (the jellyfish, not the children).

3. Visited Parc Phoenix, a botanical garden and zoo (with an adventure park!)

This one was another crowd pleaser, and not just because Lochie got to use public transit to get there. There was also a high ropes course! We found a lot of these in the last five years, and the big kids always love them.

If you are going to Nice with kids, this place is absolutely worth a visit! We stayed for hours.

4. Walked along the Promenade Des Anglais! This 4-mile long promenade runs along the coast and the goal is to drink in the scenery. I actually came out here for a jog a couple mornings because it was so pretty. This is notable because jogging is NOT my favorite activity.

5. ATE! We had some great meals in Nice, and the top of the list was Pamir, an Afghani restaurant steps from our apartment. There was also a number of excellent bakeries in the area, a crepes joint called Creperie Le Trimaran, and a gelato shop run by a Sicilian close to our place. Regrettably, it has been so long that I don’t have all the names. Sorry, team! Definitely hit Pamir though.

We rented a car on our last day in Nice, and hit the road inland.

Four days in Provence with kids

When planning our four days in Provence, I really struggled with finding the perfect location for an Airbnb. Regular readers will know I am a strong advocate of setting up a home base for as long as possible when traveling with kids, so when visiting Provence I wanted to select one place and launch all day trips from there. Eventually, I settled on a farm stay in Cucuron. The house itself was not great, but the grounds were absolutely beautiful. (Bonus, I got to bust out my extremely terrible high school French because the landlord did not speak English). The beautiful grounds ended up being critical because mid-trip Lochie got sick (per usual) so we were confined to the property while he recovered. Fortunately, there were ample grounds to explore, a (FREEZING) spring-fed pool to swim in and various livestock to enjoy. Critically there were also three dogs, two of which were amazing for the kids to play with. Months later, I still hear talk of the famous Gatsby the Dog.

So, what did we do while in Provence? Here you go.

1. Visited Carriere des Lumieres.
   This place was truly incredible. I know these sort of projection art displays are common in the US right now, but I assure you that this place was like nothing I’ve seen before. It was held in an old quarry and thus the art was projected on an enormous scale. It really did feel like you were walking through the paintings. Unfortunately Lochie found the experience a little “scawy,” and Owen thought the music was too loud, so Chris ended up taking the boys out. My little artist, Fiona, would have stayed forever.
2. Walked around Arles
   After our visit to Carriere des Lumieres, we had a nice visit to Arles!Van Gogh lived in this gorgeous town and produced more than 300 paintings here in the late 1880s. We just walked around for a while, spent some time at the park, ate lunch and checked out the iconic Arles Amphitheatre. When the Romans built this around 90AD, it held about 20,000 spectators to watch chariot races and gladiator battles.

   

3. Roussillon. The red town! This town can only be described as otherworldly. Roussillon sits on a massive ochre deposit, which gives its cliffs a red hue. We walked on the Ochre Trail, which was absolutely lovely and exactly the right length. And now, I’m going to let the photos do the talking.

   

4. Gordes. After Roussillon, we made a quick stop at the Abbeye de Senanque in nearby Gordes. The abbey is a fixture of Provence photography, but was under construction while we were there. We ended up just hanging out a bit, buying some handmade lavender stuff and moving on. I think we would have been more impressed if we hadn’t already spent some time playing in a lavender field a few days before.
5. Hung out around our AirBnB. I was very excited to go to Avignon on our third day in Provence, but unfortunately Lochie came down with a bug and we ended up staying home. Fortunately, we picked a beautiful location to be housebound for the day! The kids had a fun day running around the pond, chasing ducks, swimming in the spring-water pond, trying out bocce and playing with the dogs.  

6. 

   

   

   

   

   Another highlight was definitely watching soccer! The Euro 2020 (obviously played in 2021 because of the pandemic) was on while we were in France, so we had a great time cheering on Italy to victory!

7. Enjoyed Cucuron. We picked an AirBnB near Cucuron mainly because of its central location in Provence, but wow — did it turn out to be gorgeous. We walked into town each day, mostly to grab pastry and bread.

   

   We also had our best meal in France by a longshot at a tiny restaurant on our very last night in town. I had duck, Chris had a burger that he still dreams about. The kids had gelato for what turned out to be the third time that day, but what can I say? It came with the meal.

8. Photo shoot near Bonnieux. I talked about our photo shoot with Ashley at Curious Provence already, but I wanted to close by throwing a few more photos up from our wonderful shoot with her!

Well, that about does it for our France trip (9 months after we got back!), but since I can’t resist: here are some final favorite photos. Try saying those last three words three times fast.

The post Bucket list trips: Lavender season in Provence with kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Bucket list trips: Lavender season in Provence with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

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.

Walking in a winter wonderland: Nendaz, Switzerland, with kids

We spent four days in a gorgeous chalet in the Swiss ski resort town of Nendaz and gave some winter sports a try! We had a little rental car drama (turns out, diesel freezes!) but overall had an amazing time, particularly thanks to the amazing people at Nendaz Ski School. 

The scene: we’re finishing up hour three of our skiing lesson, and I’ve just done my final run down the bunny hill. I managed to TURN repeatedly and STOP when needed. In my only other ski experience, these were what you might call “sticking points.” (Sticking points that led at various points to 1) crashing into a wall, 2) somehow losing one ski halfway down the mountain, and 3) a longstanding aversion to skiing). 

Ceseare, our ski instructor, informs me that next time I’m out, I should be able to try a real hill. Like the kind you’d take a ski lift to do! A real one!

I. Am. Ecstatic.

I am the queen of the bunny hill.

I’m thinking, SUCK IT, Minnesota!*

In fact, I am SO CONFIDENT that I figure, Ima just ski right over to the rest of my family! Wow, this is going to be so much easier than carrying these skis!

You can see where this is going, right?

I turn my skis in the direction of Karoline, Lochlan’s ski instructor/babysitter, who is sitting in the snow holding our boy who, for whatever reason, has decided ski lessons are the time to suddenly become a child who actually naps. Suddenly I am picking up speed. Suddenly I can’t seem to do that cool turning stuff that I was just doing a second ago. Suddenly my “pizza” stance isn’t slowing me down any more.

Suddenly I’m acutely aware that I’m just about to flatten the shit out of a lovely Swiss 20-something and my own 2-year-old son.

And that, my friends, is how I wound up ignominiously chucking myself onto the ground in front of a great number of people. Mostly children. JUDGY Swiss children, to my mind.**

*Minnesota being the scene of my previous inglorious skiing attempt. 

**I have no actual evidence any of the children were either judging me or even paying attention. And YET. 

So! With that story out of the way, let’s back up.

Why go to Switzerland in early December?

We’ve been here for five years, but hadn’t even seriously discussed going to Switzerland, mostly because we’d heard it was outrageously expensive. It entered our radar more when I was trying to decide where to go for Thanksgiving (we ended up going nowhere, which was for the best because we were all sick), in part because there are a lot of cheap flights to Milan and it is easy to drive to Switzerland from there. We ended up opting to go in December because it turned out, ski resorts wouldn’t be open yet at the end of November and Chris wanted to give skiing a try. We ended up going in early December — before the “official” ski season really started — because we didn’t know what was happening with our move and also there was a limited inventory of cool chalets available once you got closer to Christmas. We were a little worried about being there before the “official” ski season started, but it worked out perfectly for our situation.

Where we stayed:

After deciding to ditch our original plan to take trains all around Switzerland, we settled on going to the 4 Vallées region, an area known for its skiing and only an easy three-hour drive from Milan Malpensa airport. Since we knew this was likely to be our last trip before the move, we opted to up our usual budget to stay in a really lovely chalet near the town of Nendaz. If you are heading to this area, I can’t recommend this place enough! It was absolutely gorgeous and somehow extremely warm and cozy, despite these massive windows. Honestly, one of my favorite parts of the trip was just hanging out in this gorgeous house. It was also a convenient location: about a 5-minute drive to the town of Nendaz, and a 7-minute drive to Siviez, where we skied. 

The entire main floor of this house had the most incredible windows overlooking the mountains, while downstairs included a ski room to ditch your wet clothes, three cozy bedrooms and two excellent bathrooms, including a huge tub in one. Seriously, you want to stay at this place if you are going to Nendaz.

What we did in Nendaz with kids:

1. Sledding
2. Playing in the snow
3. Ski lessons
4. Christmas market at Montreux
5. Visit to the local creche for Lochie
6. RELAXED! (This one is not usually on our itinerary but was very needed, ha!)

Thursday:

Highlights: arriving at our Airbnb, playing in the snow, eating fondue 

After landing at Milan Malpensa, we rented a car and started our drive into Switzerland. On advice of another friend, we stopped at a grocery store while still in Italy to stock up on snacks and drinks before we drove into expensive Switzerland. This was definitely a good move and I recommend it, but I will say our kids seemed to take the presence of “snacks for the whole weekend” as a challenge. I’m not sure how it happened that they opened four bags of chips in a day, but it did and it was unfortunate.

When we landed in Milan, there was a little snow waiting for us but it was already melting. Owen spent the entire car ride keeping an eye on the car’s temperature gauge and absolutely panicking about how it wasn’t cold enough (about 4C) to snow. We told him to be patient and ….

There was at least six inches of snow on the ground when we arrived, and it snowed continuously all day the next day. Suffice it to say, we got all the snow we could handle!

First order of business, then, was to get outside and play in the snow. My fellow hearty Midwesterners are about to have a laugh, but I have to admit that in the five years we’ve been living in balmy Sicily I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN what an epic pain in the ass it is to get kids bundle up to go outside and play. And fix their gloves every five seconds. And then have them ready to come in in less time than it took to get ready, followed by an immediate desire to get back out there five minutes after you’ve stripped them out of the boots.That said, we had a blast! The snow wasn’t really packing snow, but they still managed to build forts, chuck snowballs at each other and make a mini snowman. Plus, the huge hill on the side of the house made a perfect slide. And the view! At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it was unreal.

Literally all the kids wanted out of their Switzerland experience was to play in the snow, so on Day One it was already MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Hell. Yeah.

On advice from our AirBnB host, I ran out an bought some cheese from a local shop so that we could give the house’s fondue pot a whirl. 

Fiona and I liked it well enough (and gamely soldiered on even after the appeal wore off because HOLY HELL DID I EVER BUY TOO MUCH CHEESE), but Owen and Chris immediately declared it “TOO SMELLY” to cope with.

I just read this to Chris and he says, dead serious, “IT SMELLED LIKE FEET, KASEY.” Apparently time has not softened his memory of this cheese.

(FYI, it absolutely didn’t,) 

Friday:

Creche for Lochie, sledding and lunch for us and the beginning of The Troubles. 

When we originally decided to take ski lessons, I made my plans based on the assumption that 2-year-olds can’t ski. I also figured that it didn’t matter what day of the week we did a lesson, as we’d signed up for a private family lesson. Turns out, I was wrong on both scores, but thanks to the amazing people at the Nendaz Ski School it all ended up working out.

Original plan: Enroll Lochie in the local creche on Friday (they allow drop-in care during the ski season), then Chris, Fiona, Owen and I have our private ski lesson while he’s in school. I had this all scheduled, but then got a call from Mel, the owner of the Nendaz Ski School.

She explained that while we were more than welcome to have our lesson Friday as scheduled, waiting until Saturday would allow us to use the kids’ area at Siviez, which would open for the season that day. Makes perfect sense, right? Except at that point, I’ve explained to her that we didn’t have childcare for Lochie on Saturday (creche isn’t open on Saturdays that early in the season). This is where I learned that 2-year-olds — and younger! — do actually ski. Mel’s own daughter — a couple months younger than Lochlan — was both attending the creche where Lochie would be, and would be skiing on Saturday when we were there! Still, given my rocky history with skiing, I was a bit nervous about this. The solution: Mel suggested that we have Karoline, another instructor, babysit/teach Lochie while the rest of us had our lesson with Ceseare. PERFECT.

Since we’d already paid for the creche, however, I wasn’t about to skip out on that. So, at Mel’s suggestion, we rented some sleds and went sledding with just the big kids! Everything actually could not have worked out better because Mel’s shop, the creche and an excellent sledding hill were all within 250m of each other. Excellent.

It also helped that everything was close together because Friday turned out to be basically a blizzard. It was like we were inside of a snow globe that had just been shaken up, but it lasted all. day. long. Amazing (and slippery).

We had so much fun! Lochie being in school also made it much easier for us to go over to Mel’s ski shop and get everything squared away for our Saturday lesson, including getting fitted for our skis. Mel and her team could seriously have been more patient or helpful throughout the whole process, and even problem-solved issues that we didn’t know enough about skiing to know that we had. For instance, it hadn’t occurred to us that we would need a way to transport the skis we were renting. Whoops. Apparently there are ski buses that would handle that, but Mel deemed that Too Much Hassle for us to deal with while also corralling all the kids. Her solution? She was taking her own daughter skiing on Saturday anyway, she’d just throw our five sets of skis on her car. CLUTCH.

Mel was also incredibly sweet and checked on Lochie for us while he was at the creche, as she was running by there to grab her own kiddo. She is just the best. He ended up loving it, by the way, and would have stayed longer. 

We took Lochie for a few quick sledding runs after picking him up from creche, then got him fitted for his own little baby skis. Heading back to our chalet was when we truly began to appreciate the difficulty our rental car was having. On the way into town, it has really struggled to grip the road, which we attributed to the not-yet-plowed snow. On the way back, it started doing this really fun thing where it just sort of …. died? Again, for whatever reason we just figured the snow was to blame and it would be fine once the roads were plowed.

Ha. Ha. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Ha.

Saturday:

The (Car) Troubles, a train ride to the Montreux Christmas Market 

Saturday dawned to big excitement for our SKI DAY! What we came for! What we’ve spent so much time (and money) getting ready for! All I needed to do was make a quick run to town to get cash to pay Karoline, which should take maybe 15 minutes at most.

After 45 minutes of the car dying repeatedly, for no apparent reason, on the perfectly-paved roads, I knew we had a BIG FREAKING PROBLEM.

I was in full-on panic mode not only because I was worried about how the hell we were going to get this car fixed, but mostly because of everything that had gone into planning this trip. At least four different people from the ski school were already involved and, I feared, were already on their way to the ski spot because I’d waited until the last minute to get the cash. (They were). I could not have felt worse about the entire thing.

Fortunately, however, Mel & Co. continued to be absolutely amazing. They HAD to be frustrated with us given that they’d done all this stuff for us, but if they were it was impossible to discern. They offered two solutions: they had room in the car to pick up the kids and one adult right then, or we could push the lesson back until tomorrow. We went with the second option, and I’m extremely grateful they were kind enough to do that.

Saturday ended up with Chris entertaining the kids inside and outside, while I spent most of the day arguing with Europecar. There seemed to be some significant differences of opinion about whose problem we were, since we rented in Italy but the problem happened in Switzerland. Also, my cell phone broke.

The whole story is long and convoluted, but eventually we found out the problem and man, is it infuriating.

So, diesel freezes. When we rented the car, the Europecar guy warned us that this could happen if the temperature dipped to -15C. Swiss diesel always includes additives that keep it from freezing, but Italian doesn’t. So, if it got cold we’d just need to make sure we got Swiss diesel. So, ok, we’d been told this. But here’s the thing: the temperature never came anywhere near -15! Because of this, it didn’t occur to us that it could be the problem. Turns out, it was. We had some language barriers with our Swiss mechanic, but he pretty quickly came to the conclusion that this was the problem because it had apparently been solved by the fact that I’d been sitting in the car, running it, for more than an hour while I waited for him and this, I guess, melted the diesel sufficiently to eliminate the problem. All we had to do to permanently fix the problem was to put in Swiss diesel. Chris later did research and learned that while diesel shouldn’t freeze until lower temperatures, really poor quality diesel can freeze as soon as it hits 0C. THANKS, ITALY.

So on the one hand it was excellent news that the only thing we had to do to fix the car was to put in new Swiss diesel. On the other, it was maddening that it took hours of stress and phone tag with so many different people to find out that was the problem. But c’est la vie!

Anyway, figuring this out took most of the day but we were determined not to lose out on everything we planned. We wanted to go to Montreux for the famous Christmas markets on Sunday, but since Sunday had become Ski Day, we decided we’d try to go that evening. We opted to drive into nearby Sion so that we could take the train into Montreux, and I do recommend this. There was a very convenient and affordable carpark right at the train station, and we were able to find our train very easily.

We thought Swiss trains were pretty fancy, but it turned out we had accidentally sat in the first class carriages. We were quickly shuffled along to where we belonged, haha.

The market was beautiful to look at, but we made a bit of a tactical error by going on Saturday night because it was insanely crowded. Crowded to the point that you couldn’t really enjoy it because you had to push through so many people. 

Owen dislikes crowds, so he was kind of losing it. But, we did salvage our evening with some McDonald’s (a tradition in every single country we visit), some gluhwein and accidentally buying more than 40 francs worth of candy (that one still smarts). The trains from Montreux to Sion run about every half hour, so we were able to head back after a couple of hours. 

Sunday

Ski Day! The real ski day! YAY!

First, skiing is freaking hard! Second, skiing is so much easier when you have actual instruction. Ha!

Because we are the worst people on the planet, we were late to our ski lesson. We thought leaving 30 minutes early for a lesson located only 7 minutes away was reasonable, but apparently we should have left much earlier. For crying out loud, we could not give the Nendaz Ski School people a break, could we??

Once we got there, we met with Mel, her daughter, our instructor Ceasare and Lochie’s instructor/babysitter, Karoline, at a cafe on the mountain. We got into our equipment (with great difficulty for *cough* some of us) and left our pissed-off baby with Karoline, and we were off!

Our instructor, Ceasare, was fantastic and extremely patient with us four complete novices. One or more of us would periodically start just slipping away from the crowd, but he was always kind enough to retrieve us. He also was extremely encouraging when one of my kids started to get very frustrated by not immediately mastering the entire sport in an hour. The area we went to seemed like a great spot for kids, and there was tons of them there! I couldn’t believe how many tiny tots were just zooming around like it was nothing, while I was just trying not to crash into anyone. The “magic carpet” on the bunny hill was particularly helpful for getting us up the bunny hill, as walking in skis proved to be extremely difficult. 

Lochie apparently spent most of the lessons walking around with Karoline in his ski boots, but didn’t care for the skis themselves. He then … fell asleep?! On Karoline!? Our kid who only ever naps for his preschool teachers would decide that the side of a mountain, in ski boots, during a lesson, would be the perfect time for a kip. Honestly.

Chris and I would have like to have stayed a little longer to ski more or to rent some sleds (also available!), but by the end of our lesson the kids were completely exhausted so we decided to head out. (This, by the way, is where the incident from the beginning of the post occurred). We found some lunch along the way, then headed back to the ranch to spend the rest of the day relaxing.

Overall, I was very pleased with our ski experience and definitely think this is something we want to try again in the future. We pretty much just dipped our toes in this year, but I think in the future we’ll have to try skiing for more days in a row so we can really get the hang of it.

Overall, if you are thinking about visiting Switzerland, we were very impressed with the Nendaz area! It was absolutely gorgeous and there was tons more to do that we didn’t have time for, including spas and all manner of other snow sports, including ice skating.

Monday, we headed back to Milan for the airport and I have just one quick story on that. We’re driving along and all of the sudden the Google Maps instructions tell us, with no further explanation, that we were to BOARD A TRAIN. As in, “take the left fork and board the train.” Just, WHAT? It turns out there is a train FOR CARS that transports you through the mountain. Insane, right!? It was incredibly cool and all five of us were tickled. However, it almost ended up with another “incident” because the guy in front of us on the train clearly didn’t read the pamphlet provided and did not turn off his car or set the parking break. As soon as the train started moving, his car started sliding backwards into ours. Chris laid on the horn to get him to WAKE UP and the guy slammed on his break about an inch from our bumper. WHEW.

This trip was a bit of a last hurrah for us, as we are moving back to the United States in just a few weeks. Chris has taken a new job in the Columbus, Ohio, area, so we are gearing up for some new adventures. I’m really sad to leave here because I could not love Sicily and our life here more, but I’m grateful for the five wonderful years we’ve had (some of which I still need to write about!). I do plan to keep this blog going, although naturally the pace of travel will slow down once we are stateside again. To anyone who has stuck with me for the last five years on this: thank you.

Here’s to the future! 

The post Switzerland with kids: our winter adventure in Nendaz first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Switzerland with kids: our winter adventure in Nendaz appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

In October, I took all three kids to Romania for five days during the Columbus Day holiday. Chris wasn’t with us on this trip and we missed him terribly, but we managed to avoid any serious mishaps. Our adventures included Brasov, Peles Castle and snow-seeking in Sinaia, DinoPark in Rasnov, Bran Castle and Therme Spa. I can’t recommend visiting Romania in October highly enough! The autumn colors were UNREAL. 

OCTOBER IN TRANSYLVANIA WITH KIDS

The scene: We are at the entrance gates of gorgeous Peles Castle, our top destination when we (I) first planned on visiting Romania. We’ve been technically on the expansive property for more than an hour, but have been forced to turn back twice, first for my debit card (didn’t realize tickets were cash-only until we walked the 100 years from the car to the gate) and then a bathroom (a kid who shall remain nameless but who obstinately refused to use the bathroom the first time we stopped for THAT EXACT PURPOSE until we’d walked that 100 years almost entirely again …. needed the bathroom). We haven’t even walked into our first destination of the day and my Fitbit already records about 8,000 steps.

AND THEN.

The ticket woman has the kindness/nerve to tell me she wasn’t going to charge me for Fiona, so the ticket price is equal to the cash I’d already had in my pocket before the debit-card dash. Five seconds later, we walk through the gate and there is a bathroom literally steps away.

MOCKING ME.

This is perhaps the most aggrieved I’ve ever been by either a deal or a convenient bathroom. But I can say without exaggeration that I was SORELY AGGREVIED.

Naturally, both big kids found this terrible funny. And that, my friends, is how you know that kids are jerks.

But, we’ll back up a bit here.

The basics: I have wanted to visit Romania for years now, but something (coughcoughFUCKINGPANDEMICcoughcough) has always kept us from being able to go. I’ve been determined to go in October for some time now because Transylvania plus October equals spooky season perfection. This year, however, things got a little complicated because my husband needed to go back to the states to visit family that week. Ultimately, however, I decided to take the kids and go myself.

Why go to Romania with the kids by myself? 

A few reasons.

1. I just really wanted to go to Romania! Chris, having already been there for work a few years ago, did not share my enthusiasm for this project.
2. Knowing that we would be leaving Sicily soon meant I couldn’t imagine a scenario, short of living abroad again, where I’d be in the position to go to Romania any time in the near future. Especially not for the roughly 30 euro per ticket I paid. 
3. I wanted to remember that I can travel on my own. When I was 21, I spent almost two months traveling on my own through the Middle East and Asia mostly alone. These days, I rarely even bring my wallet when we’re walking around a place because I can just make Chris hold my ID and cards in his. While certainly I know I’m perfectly capable of taking the kids on various outings alone, I thought it might be nice to remind myself that I am capable of traveling alone.

So, how did we spend our time? A brief look at our itinerary, before I delve into all the specifics:

5 days in Transylvania with kids, an itinerary

Friday:  Arrival in Transylvania, arduous journey through customs, two-hour drive to Brasov, dinner.

Saturday: Le Bistrot breakfast, walking tour of Brasov, failed cable-car attempt, dinner at Le Ceaun

Sunday: Peles Castle, an epic berry quest, seeking snow in the mountain near Sinaia

Monday: Dino Park Rasnov, covid tests, buying all the things at Auchan

Tuesday: Bran Castle, Therme Spa, hotel for a very early morning flight from Bucharest

How we got there: We flew on WizzAir to Bucharest on Friday to Wednesday. WizzAir tends to get a bad rap, but I’ve always had a pretty solid experience with them. I was originally scheduled to return to Catania on Tuesday via BlueAir, but they cancelled my flight (side note: definitely don’t book BlueAir). I spent a lot of time trying to decide whether to fly home earlier, later or from a different airport, but ended up settling on the very early Wednesday flight. I will say the airport ended up being a fairly trying experience because I hadn’t remembered that Romania was not in the Schengen zone and we had to go through customs in both Catania and Romania. It was … not fun. Especially because for this trip, I opted to carry-on luggage only and since I expected it to be cold, we were all wearing or carrying our very heavy coats. The most charitable description I can come up with for that particular aspect of the trip was “suboptimal.”

How we got around: Despite flying into Bucharest, we didn’t explore the city at all. We rented a car from KlassyWagen, which picked us up and shuttled us to the rental place. From there I got (I thought) suckered into paying for extra insurance, which I never do, mainly because I was warned that I’d get charged if I didn’t bring the car back clean. Given that a) the kids immediately exploded a bag of chips all over the backseat and b) on Day 4 the rearview mirror just FELL OFF with no provocation, this turned out to be a wise decision.

A note about car travel: I highly recommend getting an audiobook to listen to if you have to drive for a while. My kids tend to argue a lot when they are trapped in one row together (I’m too cheap to rent vans), but audiobooks help. 

Where we stayed: Guys. GUYS. We stayed in one of my all-time favorite AirBnBs. It was seriously a highlight of the trip just hanging out in this apartment. The entire back wall was made of windows and the view was INCREDIBLE. The bedrooms even had glass sliders rather than traditional doors, just so you could wake up to the view. It was amazing and we absolutely loved it.

Day one: Arrive in Brasov 

Highlights: survival, amazing apartment, dinner 

I will not rehash how crappy our airport experience was because I’m still trying hard to block it out. But after getting our rental car, I will say it ended up being a very pretty drive to Brasov, the town we used as our base for four nights. Brasov is about 2.5 hours north of Bucharest, and it was a mercifully peaceful drive.

Our original plan involved stopping at Peles Castles en route, but since we lost so much time dealing with customs, we ultimately decided to just press on to Brasov and get to our apartment. I’ve already gushed about how gorgeous the place was, but on top of that it was also pretty conveniently located (other than being at the top of a rather large hill) for the city center. We walked into town and had an excellent dinner at Next Door.

All four of us enjoyed our meals, so this one got a gold star from us. And then it was home for some more good old-fashioned sibling bonding time.

Day two: the sights of Brasov

Highlights: a walking tour, a failed cable-car attempt and a park 

Saturday began with an early effort to bribe the kids into having a good attitude about one of their (well, Owen’s, mostly) least favorite activities: a walking tour. They always complain about tours, but about 50 percent of the time they end up enjoying themselves, especially if the guide is good.

So the bribe: a visit to Le Birou Bistrot, an amazing breakfast place. As you can imagine, based on this picture ….

It went over well with the crowd. Lochlan got the same pancakes as Owen (so so messy), while Fiona and I each opted for savory options.

I booked a free walking tour with Diane from GuruWalk, and I highly recommend the experience. I expected to just see the city, but we started out with a walk through a forested area that is amazingly close to the city center and enjoyed hearing stories about the bears (bears!) that have been spotted in the area. Getting to be in the forest was a high point for Owen and Fiona, which helped power us through to the end of the tour.

We saw the Black Tower and White Tower (old city watch towers) and heard about some of the history of those, as well as a general history of Romania. I’ve never done much research on Romania, so I found the whole thing pretty fascinating.

Once we made it back into the city, we saw a bunch of other famous must-see spots in Brasov, including the extremely narrow Rope Street (created as an access point for firefighters to get into the walled part of the city), Catherine’s Gate, the Black Church and the Market Square.

After our tour, a quick lunch at chip shop Cartofisserie (recommend, especially the spicy chicken), we made a last minute decision to try to take the cable cars to the iconic Hollywood-style Brasov sign. However, the website schedule we looked at was incorrect and we ended up missing the final opportunity to go up that day. An overtired Fiona was fairly devastated, but a long stop at a nearby park cheered her right up. 

We finished up our evening with traditional Romanian food for dinner at La Ceaun, which came highly recommended and was great for me but didn’t offer a lot of options for the kids (who insisted on sitting outside purely so they could use the provided blankets).

Unfortunately, this restaurant proved to be the scene of a CRIME. Owen and Fiona had been carrying around their ‘walking sticks’ since the previous evening, and even hid them carefully during our walking tour so we could return to collect them. During dinner they had stashed them again, only to find they’d been ROBBED. Either by some other kid who knows a good walking stick when he/she sees it, or by some adult who clearly doesn’t. Either way: dastardly.

Day Three: The Christmas Prince’s castle and SNOW 

Highlights: Peles Castle, a cable car to snowtops in Sinaia

A visit to the famous Peles Castle was high on the list for both me (because its a famous landmark and because I’m slightly obsessed with castles) and Fiona (because she saw it in The Christmas Prince series on Netflix). Peles is located near Sinaia, and only took us about an hour to drive to from Brasov.

Also, on that drive I SWEAR that I saw a dead bear on the side of the road, with a couple cops gathered around it. I thought perhaps that I was crazy, but it turns out that bears getting hit by cars in Romania is very, very much a thing. So, I’m calling it: we (I) saw a bear in Romania. 

I won’t rehash the adventure of trying to get into the place, as detailed at the beginning of this post, but I will say it was worth all the early aggravation. Construction on Peles Castle began in 1873 at the behest of King Carol I — he fell in love with the area’s gorgeous mountain scenery — and was completed in 1914. Peles was the first palace in the world to be fully powered by electricity produced locally. Various members of the royal family lived there until the abdication of King Michael I, after which the Communist leadership confiscated all royal property, including Peles. In 2007, the castle was returned to the royal family, which subsequently leased it back to the Romanian government. It gets 250,000 to 500,000 visitors each year.

The castle was very cool on the inside (Owen particularly liked a room just absolutely covered with weapons), but the grounds were everyone’s favorite. We ended up on a bit of an epic quest once again after leaving, because during one of our MANY attempts to go into the castle we’d run into an older lady selling the most beautiful baskets of berries. The kids desperately wanted them right then, but since we were still trying to get into the place I told them we’d have to buy them after. The kids promised this woman they’d be back, so when she wasn’t where they left her when we got out of the castle they were extremely worried about breaking their promise. So, off we roamed for at least a couple of miles around the property, sure she must be around the next bend.

Having covered every inch of the property, we were just about to despair of every finding our berry lady and were literally headed toward the exit, when who does Fiona spot?!

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Next it was into town for lunch (me being unwilling to survive only on berries, unlike the kids) and discussion of what to do next. I was somewhat inclined to just head back to Brasov, but having promised the big kids snow, snow we had to have. We were surprised to find that our lunch restaurant (coincidentally named Snow, Swiss food, delightful) was quite close to a cable car, albeit not the one we originally researched. We determined that we could make one of the last cars up, but only if we made a mad dash back to the car for the rest of our winter apparel. From the amount of complaining the kids initially did when we had to walk from the car to the restaurant, you’ll think this was a problem but with snow on the line? NOPE.

We took the cable car to the highest point we could, 2000 meters up. It was really too warm for snow anywhere but here, where we were lucky it hadn’t all managed to melt yet in the 9 Celsius weather. Lochlan fell asleep in the carrier on the ride up and my back was in agony, so I mostly walked around while the big kids frolicked.

The views were fantastic! 

I spent a considerable amount of time being terrified that we’d somehow miss the last cable car down and have to walk down somehow, but while I kept waiting for a trademark Husk “incident,” it seemed that wasn’t going to be. Once we were safely on the cable car down, I could appreciate how gorgeous it was much better.

It was a pleasant drive back to Brasov, although upon arrival I remembered a major flaw in the one-parent trip: they really do have to go freaking everywhere with you. Since I had not yet figured out the food delivery thing (because idiot), we had to go back out to forage for food (Subway for them, Thai noodles for me) and climb the epic hill back to our apartment afterward. Normally, Chris and I tend to divide and conquer after busy days: one of us (Chris) stays with the kids and the other (me) goes our foraging for food. Without Chris, we all had to be along for the ride. Never have I so regretted it not being the 90s, so I could not just leave Owen and Fiona in charge and go on my merry way.

Day four: Dinosaurs and nasal swabs

Today’s agenda was supposed to include Bran Castle, Rasnov Fortress and the Rasnov Dino Park, but once again, that pesky virus (remember the virus?) intervened. Jerk.

At the time of this trip, Italy required covid tests for any unvaccinated person older than 6 years old arriving in the country by plane. (Though in a shocking number of cases, this was no checked but …. still). So, a fair chunk of today got eaten up by locating a testing location 20 minutes away, driving there, realizing we needed passports and returning home to grab them, then finding out we’d have to be at 330 p.m. for the tests themselves. Whoops.

(Also Auchan. Oh, Auchan, how I miss you. A year or two ago, Auchan pulled out of Italy, so when we saw it en route we had to stop and buy a bunch of random items).

Anyway, we ended up prioritizing going to the Rasnov Dino Park. Quite a few parts of it were closed due to social distancing requirements, but the park itself was very cute. I’d say the main part of the park is the dozens of dinosaur statues you can find all over the park and especially through a walking trail through the woods. Some of them even move, which all of us except Lochie thought was neat (“too scawy,” say the Loch Ness Monster). 

Certain aspects of the park, such as a high-ropes course and various craft areas, were unfortunately closed. Major bummer. But we were able to play on a lot of playground equipment, some slides and see a 4D movie that included dinosaurs flying through our heads (also deemed somewhat “too scawy”).

All in all, I’d say a visit is worth it if you have little kids — and probably more so in warmer weather and non-Covid times. An FYI about parking: there is a lot in the front, and you can pay to take a little shuttle bus up to the park. You’ll need cash for this.

After the park, our day concluded with getting the covid tests (not the easiest ones we’ve had, but better than ones we had done in France), a strange, awkward pizza meal in an empty restaurant, and driving back to the house. I also got talked into finally visiting a park relatively close to our apartment, which turned out to be a great spot. Per usual with European parks, this one had many more opportunities to get hurt and thus was dramatically more fun than most American parks.

Day five: (Not) Dracula’s castle and a spa day

Tuesday morning saw us bid farewell to the glorious apartment (SOB). If BlueAir hadn’t cancelled our return flight a week before, completely messing up our original plan, we would have driven straight to the airport from here. However, BlueAir’s nonsense ended up working out in our favor because it allowed us time to hit some sights we missed as a result of customs delays on day 1 and covid test delays on day 4. Go figure!

With our newly available time, we took a second shot at driving to Bran Castle. To my surprise, we found it didn’t add much time to driving time at all, despite not initially looking to be “on the way.”

So, Bran Castle. This place is often described as “Dracula’s Castle,” but basically this seems to have been a marketing ploy come up with by the former Communist government for tourism. It does not resemble the castle described by Bram Stoker in Dracula, and it does not have much of a connection with the historical figure on whom Dracula is based, Vlad Tepes.

Inside, the castle is mostly dedicated to Queen Marie, a British-born princess who became the last Queen of Romania. (Fun fact, she turned down a proposal from the future George V of Great Britain). Queen Marie was devoted to restoring Bran Castle, and now much of the castle describes her life and accomplishments, and those of her children. While there are a few bummers in there for sure — her son’s abdication and then surprising usurpation of the throne — Maria seems to have been the driving force behind Romania entering WWI on the side of the Allies. She also was known for serving as a nurse throughout the war and being heavily involved with the Red Cross.

Queen Maria was heavily slandered after the fall of the Romanian monarchy, but seems to have been a fascinating historical figure known for her extensive writing (she wrote 34 books and short stories during her lifetime), her beauty, her horsemanship and her political instincts. I’m looking forward to learning more about her and her children when time allows. Random fun fact I did stumble upon: one of Maria’s grandchildren, the deposed King of Yugoslavia, ended his life in exile not far from where I grew up. King Peter II was buried in Libertyville, Illinois, in 1970. He was the only European monarch ever buried on American soil until he was exhumed and returned to Serbia in 2013. ,l

We ended up buying hilariously cheap souvenirs at a market at the base of the castle, followed by a low-key lunch in the town of Bran. I would not have minded the opportunity to explore more, but since we had more than a two-hour drive ahead of us, I knew it was time to press on.

Our final stop had originally been intended as a surprise for the kids, but I couldn’t help myself and ended up telling them before we even left. Well done, Kasey, well done. Fortunately, it did end up living up to my expectation.

THERME SPA. 

I have massive regrets about not getting any photos of this place, because it was one of our favorite places and the perfect way to cap off the trip. It is an enormous indoor spa/wellness center with three different “zones,” two of which are reserved for adults-only.  You can find lots of saunas and massages and other spa treatments in those areas, plus pools and hot tubs and plenty more I’m sure. In the family-friendly area though? WHOA. Even better.

We’re talking numerous slides, a giant pool and — my personal favorite — a huge indoor/outdoor HOT TUB.  The only slight hiccup was that Fiona was very offended she wasn’t tall enough to go on every slide, while Owen was. Sorry, kiddo. 

The entire building appears to be a gigantic indoor greenhouse. The walls are mostly glass and there are tons of plants everywhere, and it is very warm. The kids (ok, and I) were very impressed with the locker rooms because each person is fitted with a band when they come in, which opens and closes the lockers as needed. Nothing to carry, nothing to keep track of. (And no way of losing your phone, which has your plan tickets, covid test results, directions to hotel and airport, way of contacting the shuttle at the airport and oh, just EVERYTHING? Also no way of taking pictures though, hence the stock photos)

Fortunately for us, it was also open quite late. We didn’t arrive until about 5 p.m., and ended up staying until a little 8. Therme is very close to both the airport and our hotel, so it was a quick jaunt (and brief period when we couldn’t get the gate open) to get back to bed.

Since our flight the next morning was at 6 a.m. (ugh), that about did it for this trip!

Overall, I’m extremely happy that we went, even though we did miss Chris very much. We didn’t end up having any major “incidents” like car trouble or getting lost or stuck on a mountain top (my top three fears, not in that order), and overall we managed to have a lot of fun. So, now I will just leave you with a few random extra photos.

The post Castles, dinosaurs and snow: October in Transylvania, Romania, with kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Castles, dinosaurs and snow: October in Transylvania, Romania, with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Four days in Krakow with kids (AND friends!)

HELLO from 2021! Let’s try not to think about the fact that it is now November, and pretty much my first time blogging this year. What can I say, it has been an intense year, complete with more lockdowns, work, continued baby sleep issues, a lot of traveling, various long school cancellations because of power outages/flooding/heat issues, etc. You need an excuse, I’ve got them. I’ve got catching up to do, if only for my own sake when I want to remember these trips later. But for anyone else reading this: thanks! 

We are back after four fun days in Krakow, Poland, a trip that was repeatedly postponed because of the freaking pandemic. (If you are reading from the magical future where this is no longer a thing: remember covid-19? It sucked!). On this trip, we were lucky to be joined by one of my best friends in the world, Megan, and her husband and two adorable kiddos. We made quite the crew!

Our trip was slightly marred by Lochie getting sick again (which then turned into croup, FUN), but overall we had a wonderful time. In particular, we loved the prettiness of Old Krakow, the affordability and the food. Especially the pierogi.

OH MY GOD, THE PIEROGI.

So, let’s start with some basic details of our 4 days in Krakow with kids (5 kids!!) in tow.

How we got there: We flew WizzAir, on an extremely affordable set of 30 euro tickets that I impulsively booked during a minor temper tantrum about us leaving Sicily soon (more on that later). At the time of writing this, WizzAir was offering flights from Catania to Krakow very late on Wednesday nights and returns on Sunday. Since we arrived at about midnight in Krakow, I booked an airport transfer to be waiting to take us to our AirBnb. The service, from Mr. Shuttle, cost us about $25 and I would highly recommend it.

Where we stayed: We booked a 3-bedroom apartment about a 15 minute walk from central Krakow, and quite near the Na Stawach food market. It worked out great for our needs, even if it wasn’t the most exciting place we’ve ever stayed.

Covid-19 testing: At time of writing, Italy requires unvaccinated people older than 6 years old to have a Covid-19 test before flying into the country. We booked the three kids older than 6 in our group for tests right at the Krakow airport, which was extremely convenient and highly recommended. It is a little on the expensive side at about $40 each, but you get rapid-test results within 20 minutes. Of course, then you get to be annoyed when no one actually checks them, but oh well.

Where we ate: We had pierogi and mulled wine everywhere we went, but the absolute best meal we had was at The Black Duck in Old Town. I highly, highly recommend you visit! It is relatively small, so I definitely recommend making a reservation online beforehand. Then eat the spicy duck pierogi for me, please.

So, on to the fun part:

Day by day: how we spend our days in Krakow with kids

Day 1:

Highlights: food tour, pinball museum

Since we did not make it to our Krakow apartment until well after midnight on Wednesday, we planned for a late start on Thursday. Food tours have become one of our “things” we usually do on trips these days, partially because we love to eat and partially because you usually learn a lot of helpful information from the tour guide as you go. We’ve now done them as a family in Barcelona, Puglia and Krakow, and Chris has done them in Paris and Venice with other people as well. This time around, we booked a tour with a WithLocals guide. I was very excited about this because we had an amazing experience with a WithLocals guide in Barcelona, but unfortunately this one wasn’t quite as good.

Our food tour experience may have been impacted by the fact that Thursday was a Polish holiday and, our guide noted, some of the places she normally goes to were closed. But we ended up with some obwarzanki (a bagel-shaped bread typically sold on the street and flavored with poppy seeds, salt or cheese), pickled herring, zapiekanka* (toppings melted on a baguette, usually a late-night food), smoked cheese and pierogi. The tour also took us through some of the main Old Town sites, including the Market Square and Cloth Hall.

*This came covered in MUSHROOMS, which I also hate, so I will also be accepting Personal Growth Accolades for eating that too, thanks.

Afterward, we hit the apartment for naps, followed by a visit to the Krakow Pinball Museum! If that sounds familiar, we visited a similar place in Budapest in 2019. This one was equally fun for the whole crew!

For dinner, we ordered Indian food using a delivery app our food guide told us about (pyszne.pln!) Megan and I have joked that it was almost worth doing the food tour just so we could learn about this app, since we both used it a few times for dinner when everyone was too tired to go out. Chris and I had an epic feast of Indian food from Royal Curry.

We did get one other bit of excitement: we happened to walk past the fire-breathing dragon statue, Smok Wawelski, outside Wawel Castle just at the moment it breathed fire! Very cool. However, both the big kids and I were very confused as to why so many little kids were sitting at the base of a statue known for breathing fire. Though in Krakow’s defense, we didn’t see any singed kids the whole time we were there, so I guess it was fine.

Day 2:

Highlights: Salt mine, dinner, mulled wine

During the many times I attempted to plan a trip to Krakow, I always planned to go to the Wielyka Salt Mine. Before mining ended in 2007, it was one of the oldest continuously running salt mines in the world, having been operational since the 13th century. Now it is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Based on my research, I had planned to just buy independent tickets and find our way there on our own, thanks to the numerous blog posts that advised that doing it that way was much cheaper. Unfortunately, once I went to actually do that — the week OF the trip, whoops — I found that everything was sold out on the website. I *think* they keep some available for walk-up buyers, but with nine people that seemed like a big risk.

So, cue PANIC.

I won’t bore you more with the details, but for a while it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to find ANY tour with availability for nine people and we were basically about to book separately. We did end up sorting it out though, and all got on a tour from GetYourGuide. It was pricier than I would have liked, but the minibus that took our group and five others to the mine was very comfortable, at least.

So the tour itself was quite long, but overall it was a very cool place to visit. And fortunately there was a place to stop and rest mid-tour while underground, complete with snack bar. Those of you with kids will appreciate how clutch that was.

The coolest part was definitely the enormous underground cathedral, lit up with chandeliers and adorned with rock-salt renderings of the Stations of the Cross.

We had a bit of a delay with our bus driver after finishing up the 3-hour tour, which was slightly annoying but at least allowed the kids to frolic in some fall foliage. 

Delays in getting back to Krakow led to a somewhat frantic search for lunch (some of us, coughcoughMEcoughcough are NOT at our best while hangry), which included a failed attempt to go to The Black Duck. However, we ended up in a nice place eventually and had — you guessed it — MORE PIEROGI. Because there is never enough pierogi.

From there, we got ourselves a bit of hot wine but then had to head back to the ranch for …

House hunting.

Remember how I said we didn’t have long left in Sicily? We are moving back to the United States and have been in the market for a new house.  Since the housing market is so crazy, there were a couple houses coming onto the market that Friday that we either had to see THAT day or probably never. So, we ended up doing a couple house tours from our apartment that evening.

On a fun note, since Owen didn’t like his lunch/dinner — a veal schnitzel that had been “contaminated” by mashed potatoes — we ended up getting him some hot dogs from the grocery store a couple hundred meters from our house. And thus began a three-day love affair with these hot dogs, which basically sustained him for the rest of the trip.

Day 3:

Highlights: Na Stawych, Krakow Zoo, Planty Park, Trying To Buy A House At McDonald’s, The One Where Lochie Barfs Outside a Candy Store

For a day whose “highlights” take up so much room, we actually woke up on Saturday with no clear action plan of our day. Fiona and Lochie and I took a quick walk down the street to Na Stawcych, an outdoor market, and the nearby bakery. Per usual, we bought way too much stuff because everything was so cheap and decisions are hard. Note: to do this, I took all the cash out of Chris’ wallet and put it in mind. This will be important later.

Going into this trip, going to the Krakow Zoo had not even been on my radar. But once Megan and Dave decided to go, we figured we might as well join as well. Public transit was available, but we thought we’d just squeeze into an Uber to make our lives easier.

Ha. Hahahaha. Hahahahaha.

I’m truly not sure what we did to offend this particular cab driver, but at some point when we entered a bit of a forest preserve-type area, he pulled over and told us to get out. We were here. Uh, ok? We couldn’t see the zoo but figured it must be close, so out we got.

Turns out, we were a solid kilometer away from the zoo. The walk itself was pleasant (though we were on high alert for wild boar after seeing some warning signs) but man, we were not expecting this at all.

The zoo turned out to be in basically the middle of a forest, which might lead you to believe one to believe the cabbie couldn’t take us any closer. Unfortunately, this guess would be wrong. Once we eventually found Megan and Dave — purely by chance, given there was no cell service in the FOREST — we learned they’d been dropped off about five steps from the entrance. Later, we took a BUS back to the city from that same spot, about five steps from the entrance.

The zoo was pretty nice, and the animals were surprisingly very active (probably because of the cold?). We got to hear a tiger roaring and see red pandas moving much faster than I ever imagined they could. The petting zoo area was a big hit, with the kids feeding various animals leaves for years.

Then, things sort of   massively went downhill. We’d intended to just buy some lunch at the zoo, because obviously, right? Except once we got to the food area, we learned that the whole operation was cash only, because they don’t have the internet they need within the forest. They also don’t have ATMs on the property, because it is a forest.

At this point, you should be remembering that I swipe all the cash out of Chris’ wallet previously this morning to buy a random breakfast feast.

So, the kids who had previously been only “kinda” hungry when they thought we were getting food turned out to be just STARVING once they found out we didn’t have cash for food. Megan and Dave had already left, or we might have begged our bread from them. As it was, we just ended up leaving. That also was almost a problem because remember about the cell service issue (can’t summon Uber?) And the lack of cash issue (can we pay for a bus?). Mercifully, however, the bus back into Krakow allowed you to pay with a credit card. Which was a relief, because I didn’t want to have to hunt a wild boar while walking back through the forest preserve. 

Once we got home, we decided we were going to head to a playground at Planty Park, a huge park that basically encircles the Old Town part of Krakow. Along the way, we ended up talking to our realtor and deciding to PUT AN OFFER ON ONE OF THE HOUSES we had seen the day before.

We didn’t really understand how much paperwork would go into this whole offer thing, but we’d figured we’d just e-sign whatever document from the park. Unfortunately, it turned out the playground had closed once it got dark (which was before 4 p.m. because November in northern Europe).

So that’s how we ended up making a house offer at a McDonald’s in Krakow.

Unfortunately we did not end up getting that particular house, but we have subsequently bought a different one. At risk of sounding like a broken record, more on that another day. 

Obviously we intended to celebrate this possible house with some candy and mulled wine, so we headed down to a candy shop our friends had visited the day before. It was a big hit with all involved, right up to the moment where Lochlan had an epic coughing fit. I took him outside, and not a moment too soon because we ended up barfing on the street right outside the shop. Poor buddy.

It will come as no shock to hear that we fled the scene of the incident as soon as possible so we could get Lochie home.  Our little guy acquired a cough almost as soon as we arrived in Krakow, but this was the time it abruptly got worse. Once we made it back to Sicily, our doctor diagnosed him with croup and he missed a week of school.

Day 4:

Highlights: Starbucks, Wawel Castle, The Black Duck 

Sunday, our last day in Poland, came after a terrible night’s sleep because of Lochie’s coughing, plus the news that we’d been outbid for our house. Still, it ended up being a nice day after all. Mostly because of great company (Megan and Dave) and, you guessed it, PIEROGI.

I’m aware that I am a broken record about the damn pierogi. 

Since our flight wasn’t until 6 p.m. that evening and we had to leave our AirBnB much earlier, we got everything packed up — we went with backpacks only for this trip — and dropped it off at a luggage storage place in Old Town. From there it was on to Starbucks, right near Krakow’s market square. The kids had a great time hanging out in this giant head.

Getting Starbucks meant we (briefly) got to sit in these glass boxes set up all over the market square to facilitate outdoor dining, even when it is cold.

From there, it was on to Wawel Castle, which had been high on my “must-see” list for Krakow but had managed to get pushed off for various kid/house/time-related reasons the previous three days.

Wawel Castle, the former seat of Polish rulers, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site that houses mostly museum exhibits. It was very cool from the outside, but we did not get to go in because, not having expected to wait until Sunday to go, I didn’t realize it wouldn’t open until 12:30 p.m. Since we had lunch reservations at 1, we just ended up walking around outside it.

 We did also get another look at the Wawel Dragon statue, which is an emblem of a legend of the founding of Krakow. The story varies, but the basic idea is that a dragon was regularly feasting on the local people until a hero — possibly a prince? — cleverly defeats the dragon by tricking it into swallowing burning pitch. The hero becomes the ruler of the city.

Eventually, we headed back into the center to meet Megan and Dave and have our much-anticipated meal at The Black Duck. Fortunately, it lived up to my hopes and dreams after days of looking at the menu.

Post-meal game plan had included the park, but by the time we actually finished our feast, it was time to collect our bags and head to the airport for the kids’ covid tests.

All in all, it was a great trip that was made even better by Megan and Dave’s crew coming along too. Here’s to many more future visits together, no matter where each of us are living.

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4 days in Puglia with kids:

Alberobello, ZooSafari, Itria Valley, Polignano a Mare & Bari

Hello! It’s been a while. I’m not sure if anyone has noticed, but it turned out quite a lot of things have been happening in the world lately. You’ll be shocked to know that some of those (and work, and kids, and laziness) got in the way of writing about our trip to Puglia in October.

So: we went to Puglia in October with the kids! It actually exceeded all my expectations, and not just because we obviously didn’t have much to compare it to in 2020, haha. We had always vaguely meant to go to to Puglia because we’d seen pictures from a lot of friends who’d visited Alberobello and the ZooSafari, but whenever it was time to book a trip we tended more often to leave Italy. Until, of course, covid meant we needed to stick closer to home and not risk getting stranded in another country.

A note about COVID — if you are reading this in the blissful future when this is no longer a thing, feel free to skip — at the time we planned and booked this trip, things were pretty well under control in Italy, particularly in our region and in Puglia. Things had started to tick upward at the time we went, but it was still a “green zone” at the time of travel — no restrictions. Obviously, things changed significantly later in October as the second wave began. 

How we got to Puglia: We flew into Bari on Volotea. Most people drive — I think it is only six or seven hours from Catania — but I hate driving and the flights were dirt cheap anyway. We rented a car to get around, which you will absolutely want to do if you are visiting Puglia with kids.

Where we stayed: We rented a beautiful three-bedroom trullo house about a 10-minute drive from downtown Alberobello. I can’t recommend this place enough! It was huge and the hosts were probably the best we’ve ever encountered. I recommend doing the bike tour with them as well! (See Day 2)

Day 1 in Puglia: ZooSafari in Fasano and downtown Alberobello

People have been telling us we have to go to the ZooSafari in Fasano* almost since we arrived in Sicily and, as usual, the masses were correct. It was amazing!

*A theme park, Fasanolandia, is on the same property and looked fun, but was closed when we visited.

The first part of our visit was the drive-thru zoo, which looks and feels like Jurassic Park, minus the dinosaurs, death and destruction. (On the day we visited, at least? Ha.) It was so much fun!

If you visit, buy peanuts from the vendors beforehand so you can feed the animals.

We basically could not stop laughing the entire time we were driving through. The animals know what’s up and many of them (the, ahem, herbivores) are able to walk right up to your car to demand peanuts. 

The areas containing more dangerous animals like the big cats were a little more secure going in, but it seemed to be up to the individual not to be the jackass who just leaves the car to go ride a lion. So trusting.

After the drive-through portion of the zoo, there was more to see on foot. (Also some rides, which also weren’t open). It was neat and we stayed for a couple of hours, but the driving part was absolutely what you go for.

LATER THAT DAY: 

Alberobello

Let’s set the scene: you are a lovely couple enjoying a glass of wine on what might be the most romantic rooftop in the most romantic town in all of Puglia. It’s the golden hour. Perhaps it is your anniversary. You are toasting to the good fortune that brought you to this place at this time.

Annnnnddddddddd then three kids and two adults come huffing and puffing up the steep stairs and throw themselves onto your rooftop paradise. The two big kids are bickering about whatever. The small one has randomly decided to pitch a fit because he isn’t allowed to throw himself back down the stairs. The adults look to be in desperate need of wine.

What do you do?

The only thing you can do.

You flee.

And that, my friends, is how we accidentally got sole custody of what turned out to be the most romantic rooftop in the most romantic town at the most romantic time of day. Regrettably, however, Owen, Fiona and Lochlan didn’t stop their shenanigans the second the couple left. The big two managed to corral Lochie for a couple seconds we needed to snap this pic, but that was about it on the romance front.

However, let’s back up. Alberobello is a UNESCO World Heritage Site famous for its unique trulli homes. Trullo houses are dry stone buildings made with conical roofs, and you can find them all over the Itria valley in Puglia. Apparently there are different theories about the why so many of these homes were constructed, but one is that they could be quickly demolished when tax collectors came calling. I have no idea if this is true.

Regardless of the reason, the trulli of Alberobello are absolutely stunning. We parked in one of the many lots near the Trulli monumental zone, then spent a few hours simply wandering around (and terrorizing couples, obviously). We had a fairly forgettable dinner on a piazza, but the scenery made it fantastic.

DAY 2 in Puglia: a scenic bike tour in Itria and a visit to  the Grotte di Castellana

I’ve been wanting to try a bike tour for ages now, so when the owners of our AirBnB told us they also offered private e-bike tours, we jumped at the chance. Or at least, I did. But since I was doing the planning for this trip, that meant we all went along.

To cut to the chase: I was so nervous, but it was AMAZING.

First of all, e-bike. Electric bikes. I understand that these are basically cheating for real cyclists but HOLY COW THEY WERE FUN.* Our tour guide provided us with all the protective equipment we needed, including padded shorts for Chris and I. Fiona was a little too short for an e-bike of her own so she had to ride a pull-behind bike behind our guide, but Owen was able to ride one of his own. He did a great job! I was worried because he sometimes struggles with nerves in these types of situation, but he overcame a couple very minor spills and absolutely loved it. This ended up being deemed everyone’s favorite part of the trip, which is saying something considering we were petting giraffes the day before.

*Especially once Chris found out he could turn his bike to the same easy-as-hell setting I had mine on. He spent the first half of the ride working way harder than the rest of us, whoops.

The scenery was amazing and the weather was absolutely perfect for our ride, which was an enormous relief since I had a bad case of nerves beforehand. On a few occasions I’ve been known to make outdoors-y plans like this that ended up being deemed NOT OUR FAVORITE by the rest of the family.

Luckily, there was still time in the day for me to select an activity that everyone hated.

The Grotte di Castellana!

The Grotte di Castellana is a network of beautiful caves near Alberobello, about two miles of which you can tour. In my defense, no one would have hated it at all — we’ve enjoyed other caves — if we hadn’t made the critical error of deciding to go to the last tour of the day. After we spent the morning exercising.

It started off reasonably well, but after the first hour of walking around underground … not great. Luckily, there was nowhere to go! It’s a cave!

Fortunately, gelato can solve any problem afterward.

Day 3 in Puglia: Polignano A Mare

When planning our trip to Puglia, I really struggled with deciding what to do with what to do with our days. How can you choose between Matera or Lecce or Ostuni or Taranto, many of which had been recommended by friends and appeared to be beautiful? Ultimately, however, we settled on picturesque Polignano A Mare for a leisurely day.

We spent our afternoon walking around this sweet little town, especially enjoying the scenery along the lungomare. We stopped by the famous beach (see above) Lama Monachile, which I’ve seen listed in quite a few places as one of the “best beaches” in southern Italy. I’m so glad we got to see it! I will say, however, that my feelings on this are the same as every time I see “Isola Bella” listed as one of the best beaches in Sicily: it is absolutely insanely gorgeous, but I do not think it is anywhere near a “best” for actually sitting on/swimming at the beach. At least, not with kids. But we were there in October, so that wasn’t relevant to our trip, haha. By the way, Polignano A Mare is home to a cave restaurant you’ve probably see pictures of all over the internet, Grotta Palazzese. I actually looked into going there, but the prices were HAHAHAHA NO. At least for us!

We did, however, have my favorite meal of the entire Puglia trip in Polignano a Mare! I’m still dreaming of this pinsa from Malidea (Lungomare Domenico Modugno, 11).

Honestly, it was hard to walk around Polignano A Mare and not want to take pictures of EVERYTHING.
Every little street was adorable, and in the Old Town area you can find poetry all over the place. 

Day 4 in Puglia: a food tour in Bari

As I mentioned, we flew into Bari. However, we arrived late in the evening and didn’t have time to do anything but grab our rental car and make the one-hour to our house in Alberobello. Since our flight home on Monday wasn’t until late afternoon, however, we had time for one activity. We settled — I’m sure you are shocked — on a a food tour!

The fun surprise for Chris was this turned out to be another ambush exercise activity, as the walking tour I’d scheduled was merged with a bike/rickshaw tour (we just rolled with it because covid). I’d originally been under the impression that we were all going to be in a rickshaw, but then found out that one of us adults had to take a bike.

For the record, I did volunteer to ride the bike but Chris insisted. And it turned out to be a very easy ride. Right, honey?

I love this tour — offered by Velo Service — because it gave us the opportunity to learn a lot about Bari in a short time and to visit places we probably would not have otherwise seen. For instance, our guide took us down a street full of homes where people sat out front and made fresh pasta by hand. Apparently they’ve been doing this for basically forever.

We visited a church (fleeing when we realized a wedding was happening inside), saw some great views of the harbor and stopped outside a castle.

There was also a fun, if overlong, visit with a street musician who got everyone playing some musical instruments. And then there was the FOOOOOOOD.

I should mention that everywhere we went in Puglia, we’d find the traditional focaccia bread, usually with tomatoes. I’ve seen it around in Sicily but didn’t know what all the fuss was about until our AirBnB hosts left us a huge pile of it on the first night we arrived. Yeah, I understand the fuss now. We DESTROYED it. Naturally, then, our first stop of the tour took us to a place where we acquired some phenomenal focaccia. Yessssssss.

Other stops included a deli offering platters of meat and cheese, a candy shop, some fried risotto cooked up outside a restaurant by a woman who seemed to be a very good cook with very little patience for her husband. Hilarious. 

The pasta ladies also gave the kids some dough to play with. 

The last and best stop, of course, was for ice cream! Lochie had his first ever cono gelato. 

On top of everything else, Bari turned out to be a lovely little town as well. Next time, I hope to spend more time there.

Well, that about does it for our trip to Puglia with the kids! It is strange that this was only a couple months ago, but already seems like it was ages.

As for conditions in Sicily right now: we have had lockdowns at varying levels of severity for the past few months. However, despite the second wave hitting our island dramatically harder than the first wave, the lockdowns have been significantly less restrictive. Mixed feelings about that, obviously. The base abruptly closed the schools for a month or so, but then just as abruptly decided to reopen two weeks before Christmas break. The base received the first round of the vaccine and started distributing just in the last week.

I feel hopeful for 2021.

Wishing you all a happy new year! 

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When I pictured this summer, I had a lot of ideas of how it would look. We had trips booked — in particular a long-planned family reunion in France — and others in the works. We had family and friends intending to come stay with us. I expected to spend a lot of time on swimming lessons and pool dates at the base pool. In September, I planned to take Loch for a quick trip back to the States to see family members and attend a cousin’s wedding.

Obviously, covid-19 stomped on our plans. If you asked me back at May, I would have told you that I expected this summer to totally suck.

Luckily, I was wrong.

While we are still deeply disappointed by not being able to see our families this year, we ended up salvaging a pretty awesome summer after all. Obviously we’d prefer none of this had happened, but since it did I think we did a pretty decent job finding the silver linings. For instance, pretty much all of our friends — who travel as much as we do and many of whom typically leave for the entire summer — were around to hang out with more this year. This was the year of the group beach trip! Because of social distancing, we spent a ton of time outdoors this year — the beach, hikes, riding bikes and even the base pool once it opened up. With way fewer tourists this year, the island was also much less crowded than usual — we even ventured to Taormina in August! Normally, I wouldn’t be caught there during the high season because it is absolute madness but this year? Bam Bar in August, baby!

Overall, since we didn’t travel internationally much (other than our quick trip to Malta), we spent a lot of time just really savoring Sicily and spending time with our wonderful friends. While I certainly hope that by next summer we have a vaccine and more freedom to travel, I feel unbelievably grateful for these last few months. I love this gorgeous place!

For most of this summer, we ended up spending at least two, sometimes three days a week at the beach — usually once on the weekend as a family, and once or twice during the week with friends since beach time is a good socially-distant activity. The big kids had an absolute blast swimming with their friends!

We took advantage of trying out various different beaches this year, including a rocky beach to the north near Fiumefreddo. We also took a nice trip down to a town called Marina di Ragusa for a three-day stay in June.

This summer also ended up being a perfect year to try out a few activities that we’ve been meaning to do but never seemed to get around to, including the Adventure Park at Monti Rossi in Nicolosi. I was so proud of my big kids for completing the ropes course!

We did get to travel a little this summer and seized our opportunity to go to Malta about a week after it opened to travelers from Italy. We also had tickets to go to Poland at the end of July, but unfortunately ended up bailing on that trip because of some airline scheduling changes shortened to the trip so much that it didn’t seem worth the travel time any more. Unfortunately both those countries are now labeled “red,” meaning anyone returning to Italy from there has to either quarantine for two weeks or get a Covid test as soon as they return. We had hopes of leaving traveling internationally this fall, but since it is risky to book anything without knowing if a country will turn red before or during our trip, we’ve pretty much settled on staying within Italy for the rest of the year. Fortunately there are still so many places we’d love to see here!

Owen and Fiona started school in-person last week for the first time since March 10, and I can’t even explain how happy they are to be back. Owen is in second grade this year, while Fiona is in first. Things are much different at the school this year, obviously, but they are so happy to be around other kids that they don’t seem to mind much. I’m insanely grateful that we are living out here at this moment in time because our numbers have been mercifully low in Sicily and I feel comfortable sending them back. I know most of my friends in the States are dealing with distance learning this semester as well as juggling jobs, and I just want to send you all hugs (and all the wine).

Looking back over this strange, stressful and sometimes scary year, I’m ultimately glad that the Italian government took the steps it did this spring. Our extremely strict lockdown was difficult to deal with from March to June, but it has really allowed Italy to stomp on this jackass of a virus. We went from almost 1,000 deaths per day during the darkest days, to single digits each day for weeks now. While each of those deaths still happening is a tragedy, the Italian lockdown and the precautions still in place now clearly saved countless lives. Here in Sicily, everyone is watching the numbers with some concern right now because our numbers of cases are starting to rise (perhaps letting our guard down too much at the end of summer?), but having made it through one lockdown already, I know we can do it again if need be. At any rate, I am clinging to the knowledge that each month that passes brings us closer to the release of an effective vaccine. And with that, closer to the opportunity to see our families at last! It has been too long.

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Visiting Malta after lockdown

Hello! Per usual, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. But, it’s been for a good reason — against the odds, this summer has turned out to be a fun and busy one for our family, albeit quite different than summers past (more on that in another post). Earlier this month, we were able to leave the island for the first time since Italy’s long lockdown. Actually, this was our first time flying since the beginning of December — definitely the longest stretch of us staying exclusively on Sicily since we arrived here in 2016. It was so nice to be able to travel again!

First, I want to start by talking a little about our decision to travel. Only a few months ago it felt like we’d never be able to go anywhere again. Italy’s numbers were very bad (although Sicily’s were always much, much lower than the rest of the country) and our lockdown was strict. As in, our children did not leave our home for months. Chris and I could essentially only leave to grocery shop once in a while. Even people with dogs (not us) were allowed to venture no more than a few hundred meters from their homes if the pet needed to be walked. Failure to comply could lead to big fines.

The thing is though, the lockdown accomplished what it was supposed to. While letting down our guard would absolutely be a mistake, our numbers have plummeted. People here are  (ahem) very compliant with wearing masks and as such, things have opened up here considerably. Because Sicily’s numbers in particular have been so low, Malta — when it opened on July 1 — included it on a list of countries in a “safe corridor” from which it would accept tourists. Malta also happens to be one of the European countries that best avoided Covid-19; as of this writing, the island had suffered 9 total deaths from the virus. On top of that, while airplanes aren’t actually known for being clean, we knew that masks were being required for all passengers from ages 3 years and up. All in all, we felt that if Malta was comfortable accepting us, we were comfortable going.

Anyway, I will get to the airport experience a little later but first — the fun stuff we did in Malta!

Three days in Malta with kids

1. Popeye’s Village!
2. Splash pad in St. Paul’s Bay
3. Swam in the pool at our AirBnB
4. Ate (I know, you are all just shocked!)

I’ve written before about our last visit to Malta two years ago, when we stayed at the Hilton Malta for five days and had a great time celebrating Fiona’s fourth birthday. This was an absolutely low-key trip, so if you are looking for more activities definitely check out that post — we visited various sites in Valletta, went to the Malta National Aquarium and more.

Once again, we did not end up going to the Blue Lagoon. We had considered taking the Hornblower tour to Comino, Gozo and the Blue Lagoon — a trip that was highly recommended by a friend and includes a SLIDE from the boat into the sea — but all the options were seven to eight hours long, and that seemed possibly a little overwhelming with the baby. Next time!

By far our entire family’s favorite activity was our visit to Popeye’s Village in Mellieha! The village was built as the film set for the 1980 Popeye movie, and since then it has been converted into a kids’ tourist destination. We went into it not really knowing what to expect and thinking we’d maybe spend half our day there, but instead we stayed almost until closing.

The place was charmingly cheesy, with various Popeye characters running around interacting with kids, periodic musical performances and the like. But we ended up having so much fun! The kids like playing in the (relatively small) pool and especially running around in a playground set on top of a baby pool, which was basically perfect for Lochlan but still amusing enough for the bigs.

Other activities included a small mini-golf course, a small museum of Popeye memorabilia, a screening of the movie (we did not do this) and a whole bunch of oversized games, including giant Connect Four and Checkers.

The thing we were most excited for was a series of floating water trampolines and obstacle courses in the sea, which Chris took the kids to do while Lochlan slept on my chest on one of the nice beds set up in the shade. I will say that if you are going to do this one, water shoes are a must — all three of them hurt their feet because of all the rocks. They also found it more challenging than expected (especially for Chris, who also managed to get a giant scratch on his leg), but the kids loved it!

We also had a fantastic lunch at the Popeye’s Village, with a view that could not be beat.

All in all, I think that our extremely positive experience at the Popeye’s Village was also helped by the fact that there were so few other people there. While that’s not great for business, it was great for us in terms of basically having the run of the place. 

Since this was such a short trip — really only two full days — this was our big activity of the weekend. Saturday, we mostly spent swimming in the pool at the apartment we rented, walking around the St. Paul’s Bay downtown, dining outside at restaurants (yay!) and visiting the local splash pad.

St. Paul’s Bay seemed a lot quieter and more family-friendly than St. Julians, the busy town where we stayed last time. Obviously some of that “quiet” was that we were there just 10 days after the country had reopened to tourism, but one of our cabbies also told us that it is more of a family place than St. Julian’s, so I imagine it will still be true for you future-readers.

Our apartment was about a two-minute walk to Bugibba Square, a busy area packed with restaurants and shops, as well as to the sea. The beachfront was quite small over there so we didn’t end up spending any time on it, but we enjoyed the beach breeze all the same.

Our best meal was Thai takeaway from Benjawan Thai, but we also enjoyed Fat Harry’s Pub and particularly The Donut Factory, where we ended up every single morning.

Traveling to Malta from Italy after lockdown: how we got around

While there are ferries that can take you between Sicily and Malta, we flew. It is cheap and takes about 20 minutes in the sky, so for us it was a no-brainer. The Catania airport has made some changes post-covid, my favorite of which was warning signs advising us to avoid the “promiscuous use of water bottles.” As of now, only people who are actually flying are allowed inside the airport and masks are strictly required. Per usual, check-in at the Catania airport was a bit of a zoo with only a couple people working a long line. Also as usual, it was absurdly hot in there — so much for our theory that fewer bodies = reasonable temperatures!

The airport in Malta was an absolute dream, we were through both check-in and security literally within minutes. AND it had adequate air-conditioning!

Once we were in Malta, we used eCabs for anywhere we couldn’t walk. This is far from the cheapest option, but Malta in July is HOT and we were not at all inclined to figure out the public buses. Reserving taxis was super easy using the eCabs website, which also allowed us to request car seats. If you are looking for the easy way around, I recommend this!

Overall, visiting Malta was a great first jump back into travel! I have no doubt we’ll be back again some day. 

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The post Our first post-lockdown trip: Malta 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.

Prefacing with this statement, as usual:

We are healthy. We have everything we need. We feel safe. 

(We are, however, going through sleep problems with Lochie once again. Thanks, kid.)

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, greetings once again from lockdown. We are doing okay. Online school is going well enough and we are honestly finding lots of ways to occupy ourselves. When this all started, I wondered how we were going to fill the days since normally we spend so much time out and about. Turns out, I somehow feel like I have even less time than usual?! I think that’s a good thing though. I keep saying that if this had to happen, at least we have an amazing amount of educational and entertainment options to keep us occupied.

The news out of the rest of Italy isn’t great though. The death toll in this country has exceeded that of China, with 627 deaths in the last 24-hour period for which numbers have been released. I don’t know what official numbers are here in Sicily, but I’ve heard rumors of there being some cases in a town near us and of positives among locals working at the base. As far as we’ve been told, there are no Americans on base who’ve been diagnosed. Both Italy in general and the base specifically have, however, tightened restrictions here even more. Some of the changes:

-No one is allowed outside their homes for anything other than work, doctor visits or one grocery/pharmacy run per day (one member of the family only). So, no taking jogs or walks, even with the proper social distancing. Our friend was walking her dog and got told to go home, and nationwide something like 40,000 people have been fined for failure to comply. In the hardest-hit area in north, Lombardy, the Army is being dispatched to enforce the lockdown.

(By the way, I wrote a lengthy post for my Facebook page about my visit to the grocery store in town. If you missed it, check the Babies With Backpacks Facebook page.)

-The stores that are still allowed to remain open (grocery, pharmacy) are now closed on Sundays. This includes our base commissary and exchange. Children are not allowed in stores.

-The base is now taking the temperature of everyone trying to enter. If you have a fever, you aren’t coming in.

-Yesterday, guys went through our town spraying some kind of disinfectant in the streets again.

-Lochlan’s 12-month well-child visit has been changed to a telephone call with his pediatrician. The idea, I would imagine, is keeping healthy people away from the hospital. Works for me.

-Lockdown is expected to be extended past April 3, but no date is officially given.

-In Sicily, the airport, train and ferries are closed. The island is meant to be completely closed.

So, that’s the update. It’s not great. But again, to reiterate, we are personally fine.

Moving on to cheerier topics: how have we been amusing ourselves?

LIFE IN LOCKDOWN: A PHOTO ESSAY

1. School! Owen and Fiona’s classes have both moved online, and the last two days have actually gone really well. The kids have even gotten to do meetups with their entire class and their teacher this week, which was a lot of fun for them.

   

   

   

   

2. “Educational” (in theory) activities. As I’ve said, the silver lining of this whole thing is that it is happening at a time when there are SO MANY COOL THINGS online for the kids. Not pictured: educational videos from zoos, Owen working on coding from Khan Academy, science videos on YouTube, fun math games from abcya.com, etc.

We are also listening to audio books (and will probably listen even more now that Audible is offering free kid stories!) and are making a lot of progress in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For fellow fans — we are at Xenophilius Lovegood’s house and about to hear the Tale of the Three Brothers. Chills!

3. Other fun stuff the kids are coming up with, including endless fort/rocket/wagon building. The mess around here is incredible lately, but at least they are occupied. 

4. Chats with friends and family! Unfortunately I did not snap any photos of these because we are always using my phone, but they really like getting to see their friends again. Of course, the second they are on the phone they turn into crazy people. And don’t get me started about their obsession with filters!

5. Walking the balcony. The kids have also been watching some kids’ exercise videos and Chris is lifting weights, but I’m still compulsively walking circles on my balcony. I’ve been trying to hit 10,000 steps per day, but averaging closer to 9,000.

6. Eating. OH MY GOD SO MUCH EATING. Those memes about people eating all their quarantine food on day one? That’s basically us. 

Anyway, I’d say that about wraps up today’s update. Other than to note on the travel front, I’m still working on getting refunds from everybody. Even with all flights cancelled, it seems refunds are not automatic so there’s a LOT of sitting on the phone to do. Fortunately, my sweet friend Leigh Ann managed to get through the insane Chase Travel line and not only did she get her stuff sorted out, she convinced her customer service rep to call ME directly. She (and he) are actual miracle workers.

Stay safe, everybody!

The post LOCKDOWN in Sicily: Our family update first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post LOCKDOWN in Sicily: Our family update appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

I would like to note that Chris’ preferred title for this post — just so you know — is HIGHWAY TO THE RED ZOOOOOOOONE. I told him it only works if you can hear him singing it to the tune of “Danger Zone,” so it ended up on the chopping block. 

Greetings from our apartment in Sicily, which I have left just once since last Wednesday. Let me start off by saying how much we appreciate the many messages that we’ve received from family and friends alike. To answer the questions we are getting most frequently: We are fine. We have plenty of supplies — Chris stocked up on essentials weeks ago, and things are still available at grocery stores and the base commissary. While Italy has the biggest outbreak of the virus outside of China, we are living in the area of the country that seems to have the fewest cases thus far. (Knock on wood). We are healthy. We are not panicking.

That said, we are taking the lockdown seriously over here.

It’s been a strange week. Up until last Sunday, the COVID-19 issue had been somewhat in the background here. While we’d hear concerning things about what was going on in the hardest-hit areas of northern Italy, for a while the most that seemed to change down here was base cashiers and gate guards beginning to wear gloves when they handled documents. At that point, our biggest concern was whether our flights to Amsterdam — where we were scheduled to meet friends for a long weekend trip — would get cancelled.

And then things changed quickly. After declaring first a lockdown specifically of the affected northern counties, last Sunday night I started getting bunches of messages from friends letting me know that the Red Zone had been extended to all of Italy. For a day or two, it was a sort of “milder” lockdown, where restaurants and bars were allowed to be open between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., as long as patrons kept a distance of 1 meter between them. That quickly changed, and now essentially the entire populace is under strict lockdown until April 3. Here’s some of what’s going on:

–We are not to leave our homes unless it is to go to work, to the doctor or to get groceries. If you do need to go get groceries, only one person per family can go. Anyone leaving the house needs to carry a sort of travel declaration form that includes your name, address and where you are going. There is a 6 p.m. curfew. The Italian police can fine you or even arrest you for being out when you aren’t supposed to. So far, I only know one person personally whose been stopped for leaving her house; a friend was stopped twice on her way to the bakery for bread.

–Everything is closed except hospitals, pharmacies, grocery stores and (apparently) pet stores. This means that almost everything on base — library, gym, food court, movie theater, bowling alley, etc. — is likewise closed, with the exception of the commissary and the Navy Exchange. In town, grocery stores are open but the number of people allowed in is strictly controlled, in an effort to maintain social distancing. I have not made an attempt to go out in town, but I heard from friends that there were extremely long lines outside stores on Monday as facilities implemented a “one in, one out” policy for shopping.

–Chris is still going to work. For now. However, he’s been encouraged to telework as much as is possible and has been able to do so for one day so far. A lot of what he does requires him to be onsite, however. Those who are remaining at his workplace are being hyper vigilant about keeping their distance from one another.

-The kids are out of school until at least April 13. All Italian schools, universities, day cares and other such facilities are closed. We believe the base school was actually the last in all of Italy to close, but as of Wednesday it is shut down. Lockdown ends April 3, but spring break starts immediately after so they won’t return until after Easter at best. Luckily, the teachers here are working hard to get e-learning up and running and our first day of that (Friday) went pretty well.

-We aren’t leaving the island until at least May. Obviously, flights to and from Italy are almost entirely cancelled until April 3 (exceptions for essential movements, of course). On top of that DOD has banned both military and civilian employees from leaving for 60 days, so we won’t be able to go anywhere until at least May 12. All PCS moves, either to or from here, are cancelled, so many people are in a bit of limbo. All work travel is obviously also cancelled, so Chris does not expect to go to a training in the U.S. in May as planned.

You may ask, “Isn’t this an over-reaction?”

No. We don’t think so by any means. Is it inconvenient? Hell yeah! I honestly can’t remember the last time we spent this much time inside. Even after Lochlan was born, we still went out as a family, and people could come to visit us. As anyone who knows me can tell you, being stuck in the house for much more than a day and I start getting a little stir-crazy.

But we believe that staying in the house for the next few weeks isn’t just our legal responsibility, it is our moral one. 

It would be easy to write COVID-19 off as “no big deal” because honestly, even if we get it, in all likelihood we’ll be fine. None of us are in the demographic that seems to be most affected by it so far, though I do worry about Lochlan since our little dude has already battled a few respiratory infections in his life. However, we could unknowingly pass the virus on to untold numbers of people, many of whom are bound to be in a heightened risk group. Italy has one of the oldest populations of any country in the world, and culturally it is extremely common for older people to live with their children and grandkids. In northern Italy, hospitals are already struggling to keep up with the numbers of people coming in with the virus and in some cases, hard choices are being made. There are so only so many ventilators in any given facility, so how does one decide which patient in need gets one? If this thing spreads as widely in southern Italy — which is much poorer than the north — it will be ugly.

You can read more about that on your own; if your Facebook is anything like mine, I’m sure it is full of articles about this issue. But before I step off my soap box, I will just encourage you all, wherever you are, to take this seriously.

But on to more about us! How have we been spending our time?

Mostly by making messes, ha! Just kidding. The kids are really doing better than I expected thus far — honestly, I think I’m the one having the hardest time with not being able to leave! Friday was our first day of online school, and it went pretty well (with a few small hiccups). Owen and Fiona have been having fun inventing new games together, which is sweet to see. Lochlan loves having his big brother and sister around all day to entertain him, and is also helping out by taking good morning naps.

We are also playing with a lot of old toys and science kits and games we haven’t touched in a while. In our non-lockdown world, we usually spend most weekday days rushing around dealing with school, sports, homework, dinner, etc., then weekends tend to involve birthday parties or events with friends or more sports. On vacations, we are almost always rushing around seeing things. Perhaps we’ll eventually consider this enforced idleness a nice break? Time will tell.

For my part, I’m taking breaks by walking around our balcony. It encircles our entire apartment, so I just walk an endless loop like a hamster on a wheel. I’m listening to David Sedaris’s new book, Calypso, which is laugh-out-loud funny, so I generally look like a crazy lady walking in circles, cackling like a witch. I’m sure it is a good look.

On the travel front

Obviously, our vacation plans are the least important thing right now. But, as this is a travel blog, I’ll give you the update all the same. Both our spring break trip to Bordeaux and Lisbon, and our planned long weekend in Amsterdam with my friend April and her family have been cancelled. I’m bumming pretty hard about these because both have been in the works since at least 2018, at least in principle, and hours of research went into planning it all out. I’m hoping we can reschedule some of this, but at this point it feels like we need to wait and see what happens.

On the refund front, it’s been a bit rocky. We were able to get almost everything back on our rental house in the Netherlands (whew!) after a phone call to AirBnB, and allegedly I’m getting a refund from RyanAir for our cancelled flights (but it hasn’t shown up in my account yet …). However, we used points to pay for several parts of both trips and trying to get that figured out is a bit of a mess since the Chase travel lines are overwhelmed. I will keep at it them.

We have a trip planned for this summer with my parents and my brothers and sister, and I’m SO SO SO hoping we are able to go ahead with that. It feels like it took a near miracle to get everyone agreed on a time and location (the south of France and Provence) — not to mention SO MANY HOURS OF RESEARCHING — so if that has to be cancelled, there will be quite a few tears. But again, I do appreciate that this is definitely a very minor concern compared to everything else going on right now.

So, that’s the update! I apologize for how long it took me to get this up, but I do appreciate everyone’s concern. Everyone, please stay healthy (and stay home!).

The post LOCKDOWN in Sicily: Life in Italy’s Red Zone so far first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post LOCKDOWN in Sicily: Life in Italy’s Red Zone so far appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

In this episode, we spend two days in Salzburg with our kids, attempting to recreate Kasey’s childhood memories (well, most of them) from 2001. Success was mixed, but we had a great time overall. Viva Austria! 

When you grow up with three siblings and adventurous, travel-loving parents, you end up with two things: a love for travel, and a whoooooole bunch of stories.

Mostly stories about how you and your little band of compatriots’ antics nearly resulted in an international incident.

I’ve talked before about how my parents took my three siblings and I backpacking in Europe for three weeks when we were 13, 11, 9 and 7. It was a trip I will forever be grateful for because it kicked off my love of international travel, and because of the outrageous number of stories that we still love to retell every time we are together.

So our famous Salzburg story goes like this: My parents and I are sitting at a picnic table in an outdoor beer garden in Salzburg while the younger kids run around, and all of the sudden some guy comes up to our table and starts screaming at my parents in German. My parents obviously have no idea what he’s saying or why; to be honest, they basically assume it is a case of mistaken identity. The angry man, apparently appreciating that they have no idea what is happening, storms off. Immediately my parents start laughing.

Until someone nearby calls over them to explain:

“He says, your children, they are throwing rocks on his new car.”

INSTANTLY: my parents are completely horror-struck and jump off the benches to find out what the hell is happening.

It turns out, my youngest siblings were pushing pebbling off a rock wall over which they could not see. No malice involved, but as an adult I can obviously see why the guy was SUPER PISSED.

But for the rest of the trip? Randomly saying, “YOUR CHILDREN, THEY ARE THROWING ROCKS ON HIS NEW CAR” invariably cracked us all up.

Shit. We sound like horrible people as I type this, don’t we? But trust me, it was funny as hell at the time.

ANYWAY. This is a very long-winded and strange way to begin explaining that Salzburg has a special place in my heart. It was one of my very favorite cities on the 2001 trip, to the point that I insisted it be included on the itinerary for my high school graduation trip with my mom in 2005 (yes, I am extremely lucky). I freaking love Salzburg.

So visiting with my own children … it was a lot of pressure.

Overall, we had a wonderful time. But I will admit I spent the first day trying to make the trip be exactly the same as I remembered from my childhood (despite being there in winter rather than spring or summer, and my kids being significantly younger than I was) and it was not the best way to go. Every trip is different, and honestly, you can’t go home again. Still, we ended up having a lovely time (particularly on day two).

Here’s a quick look at our itinerary for our two days in Salzburg with kids:

Day 1:

-Mirabell gardens

-Sound of Music tour

-Attempt to visit the Augustiner Brewery

-Take away for dinner and watching “A Christmas Prince” in our apartment*

*I laugh, but Fiona has now watched that movie and its two(!) sequels a million times. She adores Queen Amber and King Richard LOL.

Day 2:

-Berchtesgaden salt mine tour

-Salzburg zoo

-Christmas Market at Hellbrunn Palace

-Take away again and watching Home Alone 2, because we tired.

Just to keep it real over here — apartment rentals with Netflix? Absolutely wonderful. And while we like to eat out, we find that for us it often works better to make our big meal of the day lunch. If we’ve been marching the kids around all day, we’re usually ready to get something quick and easy to take back to our place. For the kids, that’s usually fast food. For us adults, it is usually some kind of Asian food that we can’t get back in Sicily, with Thai, Indian or Japanese being the favorites.

Anyway, without further ado — here are the details:

Day 1: Mirabell gardens and the Sound of Music tour

As a 13-year-old, I had very fond memories of taking the Sound of Music tour with my family. Everyone on our bus was singing! The driver was hilarious! We frolicked like Maria!

Unfortunately, the group we ended up with on our early-December Sound of Music tour was not what you would call “lively.” We had the kids watch the movie before we left in preparation for this, but when the sing-along portion of events came along, only Fiona and I were all that interested in belting out Do-Re-Mi. Lame!

The tour kicked off near Mirabell Gardens (a filming location), and since we had a bunch of time to kill beforehand we ended up exploring the gardens on our own. It’s pretty, and I’m certain it would be even more lovely in the summertime.

So as I mentioned, the Sound of Music tour was a bit disappointing (not from lack of effort on our guide’s part — I think it was the group). Still, it was fun to see some filming locations.

After we finished our tour (skipping the Mirabell gardens part at the end, since we’d explored independently and it was already dark), we headed to the Augustiner Brewery … otherwise known as the scene of The Incident in 2001.

Unfortunately, the winter weather meant the outdoor beer garden — the scene of the German man yelling about his car — was closed and the tables moved away. Inside, we found every table either packed with people or with reserved signs on them. It was a Monday night, so I have no idea why there were so many people there? Nevertheless, after wasting a ton of time trolling for a table, we ultimately gave up in frustration. We headed back to our apartment, got McDonald’s for the kids, Japanese for us and settled in to watch “The Christmas Prince” on Netflix.

If that last bit sounds a little tragic, don’t worry — it was honestly great. We needed a break and our food was fabulous. (Even if I did accidentally order Chris a hilariously spicy dish. Sorry, babe).

Day 2 in Salzburg: salt mine tour, zoo and Christmas markets

So, I fear that Day 1 in Salzburg may have sounded like a bit of a bummer. Day 2, however, was just jam-packed with awesome.

When I visited with my family, we ALSO did a salt mine tour so I was determined to do that with my kiddos. However, having had two of my favorite childhood memories of Salzburg not quite pan out as expected, I was extremely nervous that the salt mine wouldn’t live up to my memories.

However, I didn’t need to worry. It ended up being the kids’ favorite part of the entire Salzburg trip!

We visited the Berchtesgaden salt mine, which is actually in Germany (we didn’t realize this until we drove over the border, haha), and could not recommend it more strongly. It is even cooler than it was in 2001. 18 years later, they even had a bunch more cool light effects than I remember.

Each of us was issued a salt miner outfit to wear, including the baby. I don’t know why that cracks me up so much, but it does.

Photography was not allowed on the tour, but it had some very cool visual effects. We got to ride the train, a funicular, two wooden slides (not me and Lochie) and take a boat across a lake. It was 100 percent awesome!

After we finished at Berchtesgarden, we opted to head over the Salzburg Zoo. Zoos are one of our “things” (along with castles) that we always seem to wind up visiting. Salzburg Zoo, which is on the same property as the Hellbrunn Palace, was especially enticing to some of us because it was free on the day we came (up to 5 euro on some days, season-dependent). Free is our favorite.

And man. Remember how I mentioned that visiting the Vienna Zoo highlighted how much more trust the Austrian people have in their citizenry to not do things like, say, jump into a wildabeest pen? The Salzburg zoo took it to a new level. There weren’t really people working there (that we could see), so the whole thing was self-guided. But in several places there were little houses you could just walk into and bam! Loose animals! Like, we walk into one of them, look up and realize there is a sloth just … hanging out. Within arm’s reach. I’m sure there must be security cameras or something, but at the time the only thing actually keep up from reaching up to touch him was a sign that warned that he bites. Whatttttttttttt?!

I’m not sure if it was the chilly weather or what, but the animals also seemed to be extremely active. We got up close and personal with a wolf pack (who were probably trying to decide which of the kids to eat) and watched some baby leopards harassing their mom and dad in a very familiar way. Per usual, the kids were completely enthralled by the parakeets whose love you could buy with 1-euro worth of seeds. By all means, kids, let’s obsess over the one thing in this place we could pick up at the local pet store.

As I mentioned, the zoo was on the Hellbrunn Palace property. At that time of year, Hellbrunn Palace was also home to a Christmas market and, oh man, it was gorgeous. There’s always been a special place in our heart for Christmas markets (especially for Chris), and this one was one to remember.

We didn’t end up buying much, just wondered around look at pretty items the vendors were selling, eating the delicious food and taking in the Christmas lights. The sights and smells of a Christmas market will never get old, I swear.

From the pictures, I realize it looks like we were there very late. But, by the time we got home it was really only a little after 6 p.m. However, given that we were completely exhausted, we ended up opting for the easiest option — take away food for the win again!

We had to head to Munich to catch our flight home early the next morning, so that wrapped up our week in Germany and Austria. We had a spectacular time! Traveling in cold weather can be a little challenging (more to pack, have to worry about everyone staying warm), but we enjoy having smaller crowds to deal with and — the kids’ favorite — snow to play with.

Overall, I would say Salzburg was the best for me once I stopped trying to exactly replicate my childhood memories, and made some of our own. Though I’d be lying if I didn’t half-wish we had some kind of “international incident” of our own to go down in family lore.

But hey, there’s always time, right?

The post 2 days in Salzburg with kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post 2 days in Salzburg with kids 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.