15 great gifts for travelers

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

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

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

Great gifts for travelers: adult edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This bag is currently $29.97 on Amazon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This monogrammed set is available here for $12.00

Great gifts for travelers: kid edition

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

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

Maps is available at Amazon right now for $28.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Planning to go to Venice? Good for you! We had a great time on our trip and found that things went pretty smoothly for us because we’d done the research ahead of time on how to get to where we wanted to go. Now, I’d love to help you do the same!

I already touched on the fun stuff we did in Venice in this post, but in here I’d like to talk about some of the boring-but-important details.

*This post contains affiliate links. 

Who is ready for the details? You are! 

How we got there: We took a direct flight from Catania to Venice on Volotea, a flight we booked during one of the budget airline’s many fare sales way back in March. Their fares are already pretty cheap, but they often have promotions like “kids fly free” or “one-way fares for 5 euro.” The fare sale we took advantage of was the latter, and though naturally the return fare was more expensive than the 5 euro one-way option, our final price tag was less than 40 euro per person. Not bad! It certainly is a “no frills” experience, but for us price tag is a much bigger factor in our decision making than whether a snack is included or whether the plane will be missing seat-back pockets. If you are going to fly Volotea, do remember that checking any bags will significantly increase the price and be sure to pay attention to the fine print — checking in at the airport desk rather than checking in online, for example, will cost an additional 10 euro per person. If you are interested in checking out Volotea, consider using my referral link to save $10 on your first purchase. 

Travel from the airport: There are a few options for getting from Venice’s airport (actually located on the mainland) to the islands of Venice themselves, including regular buses and taxis and even the (VERY EXPENSIVE) boat taxis. I’d recommend taking the Alilaguna water bus like we did; just follow the signs for “water transport” and “water bus” and “Alilaguna” within the airport and you’ll find it easily.Tickets are 15 euro one way for adults, but kids 5 and younger are free and prices are reduced for those 6 to 14 years old. Tickets can be purchased from machines at the Venice airport or within the city (also at counters if you prefer humans), which are easy to find and user-friendly. We took the Linea Arancio to the Rialto Bridge stop, which took less than an hour. One caution: on two occasions we had to take a later water bus because it was already full and we couldn’t fit. They run pretty frequently so it wasn’t a big deal, but if you have to be somewhere at a specific time I would caution you to budget plenty of extra time just in case.

The ride itself was perfectly nice, and included cruising through the Grand Canal as we neared our destination. It actually ended up being a good thing that we didn’t make it on to the first boat as planned, because we were then the first ones on the next boat and got our pick of seats. Considering how overloaded some of those boats looked, we preferred Option B!

Where we stayed: 

Venice is notoriously expensive, but we were quite pleased to find an excellent place to stay only about six minutes’ walk from Piazzo San Marco! As I’ve mentioned before, we prefer to stay in apartments because separate living areas mean that we can put the kids to bed but stay up later ourselves. In this case, I found a place listed as the “Venice Dream House”. Although it was listed on the hotel website, it is actually a bunch of apartments in different buildings in Venice, mostly in the Piazza San Marco area. We chose the one labeled “Executive Apartment — San Marco Area, Bolero” and paid $159 per night. Admittedly this is a bit more than cheap me likes to pay for hotel rooms, but frankly things are generally just expensive in Venice and I really felt like we got our money’s worth with this place. It wasn’t especially fancy, but it had a bedroom with a large bed, reasonably-large living room with a sofa bed where we put the kids, a nice bathroom and a fully-equipped kitchen. That last item was helpful on Saturday night in particular because our kids where exhausted and whiny, so we decided to buy them some food at cook it at home rather than drag them to a restaurant.

Where we ate: 

So, Venice isn’t exactly known for its food (though seafood is supposed to be decent). We made plans to eat at exactly one fancy spot — the well-rated Trattoria al Gatto Nero — but when that fell through we didn’t seek out anything fancy. A good quick-eats spot was the Dal Moro’s Fresh Pasta-to-Go, which is a chain but still pretty tasty. You pick your noodles, sauce and any other additions you want and they cook it up for you and hand it to you in a cardboard box like you’d get at a Chinese takeout place. We ate it in the street right outside the shop.

The kids’ favorite part was being allowed to draw on the shop window! 

Other than that, our meals were fairly unremarkable. We made lunch our bigger meal of the day and avoided eating in Piazza San Marco or at places along the Grand Canal. I’d recommend doing both these things if you are making an effort to save money in Venice!

How we got around: 

As always, walking is our favorite mode of transportation and in Venice it was especially nice to be able to do so without fear of being smashed by a speeding scooter. Our worries, then, were limited to making sure the kids didn’t plummet into the filthy canal water, which would no doubt be on accident in Owen’s case or on purpose in Fiona’s.

Visiting the islands, of course, did require transport. For this, Chris and I each got a 24-hour pass for the vaporetto (water bus) that allowed us to go from Venice to Murano to Burano and back on Saturday. We took the 4.2 vaporetto line from Fondemente Nove to Murano’s Colonna stop, then took one from Murano’s Faro stop to Burano. The waterbuses can get a little confusing, but the officials on each were very good about being clear which water bus was going where (even if it didn’t necessarily match the timetable we’d read). We could have ridden the vaporettos all day and gone to the islands of Torcello or of San Michele, the cemetary island a few minutes from Venice, but we were pretty exhausted and glad of a restful one-hour return trip on the vaporetto from Burano to Venice’s Fondamente Nove.  Day passes cost Chris and I 20 euro each, but the kids were free. I mentioned this in my other post, but I’ll say it again: if you need to be somewhere at a specific time and are using the vaporetto, leave very early. On almost every occassion, Chris and I couldn’t get onto the very first vaporetto that arrived because it was too full and had to wait around for the next. It isn’t a huge issue given they come pretty often, but if I was trying to make it to a reservation or something it might have stressed me out.

Fiona loved looking out the window! 

Well, I think that about sums it up! Have you been to Venice? If so, what did you like? What didn’t you?

*Pssssst! Like this post? Sharing is caring! Please also consider following me at my Facebook page, Babies With Backpacks, so you never miss a post (plus additional content!)

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So packing light is something I’ve been wanting to address for a while now. We’re big proponents of limiting the amount of stuff you take on a trip as much as possible. Not only can this save you money — checking a bag or bags can get expensive quickly — but it also saves you the considerable trouble of dragging it around, especially on public transit. This is even more true when you are traveling with a kid or two or six; you need those hands available to keep the kids from jumping onto train tracks, in front of a bus, or off a cliff (ok, that last one might only be applicable in certain situations.)

For heaven’s sake, don’t bring this much crap anywhere, ever. I’m cringing just looking at it. In our defense though, this is the stuff we brought when we were moving to Sicily and didn’t know when all our household goods or express shipment would actually show up.

The reason I haven’t written about this already, however, is because it is still a work in progress for us and something we are trying to improve on. I’d say we do a fairly decent job of packing light; for our 8-day trip in France we brought one big suitcase and one carry-on suitcase for the four of us. For our most recent trip to Munich, we brought one carry-on suitcase and a garment bag (mostly for our costumes!). So, not bad — especially considering we needed some bulkier clothing because of the weather for both those trips — but there is definitely room for improvement.

Therefore, I am now passing on the advice-on-packing responsibility to my mom, Kathy, the official packing goddess. As a reminder, she and my dad took me and my siblings backpacking in Europe for three weeks when we were 13, 11, 9 and 7 years old and each of us got only a backpack (that had to be light enough for us to wear ourselves). Most recently she and my dad have outdone themselves on their most recent trip of almost five weeks, which included stops in Ireland, Wales, England, Scotland, France, Germany (Oktoberfest!) and Italy (ending in Sicily with us). For this trip, my mom brought only “a lightweight 19-inch wheeled backpack and a daypack in lieu of a purse.” The daypack, she notes, was actually a kid-sized backpack.

My parents at St. Andrew’s golf course in Scotland in September. Photo swiped from their Facebook because I doubt they’ll sue me. 

So without further ado — here’s some words of wisdom from my mom on traveling light.

So, packing doesn’t need to be a big deal if you are willing to do some laundry here and there. There is always a place to do it in any city I’ve ever been to in Europe. The reason for not bringing your whole wardrobe is obvious, you have to lug it around all surfaces, especially the evil cobblestones, and not only is it tough on the luggage but your arms get really tired. You could cab everywhere but then you don’t really see your surroundings or get a lay of the land. 

Most people subscribe to the roll-your-clothes method, but I prefer the flat method. I fold my clothes like they do in stores and stack them. Socks are stuffed in my shoes, I had tennis shoes on my feet and a pair of 3/4 ankle waterproof boots and a pair of flats in the daypack. Underwear was in the bottom-zippered compartment of the backpack. As for clothes, I took two pairs of jeans (one blue and one gray), a jean skirt, the yoga pants I wore on the plane, a lightweight nightgown, and two or three shifts for each pants/skirt. My coat was a hooded, waterproof zippered jacket. Toiletries were in a zippered pouch and were mostly travel size; you can replace them as needed easily. We aren’t big on souvenirs. The only thing I bought was a golf shirt at St. Andrews in Scotland.

I know most people think this is crazy, but the less you worry about your stuff, the more you engage in your surroundings. 

As usual, great advice from my mom! I think the only tip I would want to add (though this an attitude they clearly have) is not to pack thinking about every worst-case scenario. Simply put, don’t waste room packing sweatshirts for Portugal in July on the off-chance that an unseasonable cold snap comes out of nowhere thanks to, say, a volcanic eruption that blocks out the sun. Instead, remember that stores still exist and you can always buy a damn sweater.

By the way, I can absolutely attest to my parents’ inter-trip laundry habits after seeing my dad hanging his newly-washed socks out to dry in Cefalu and receiving about thirty reminders not to let him leave them there. (He didn’t). Nicely done, guys!

Cefalu!

Pssst. Looking for more tips? Check out fellow blogger Dev’s advice on deciding whether to travel with a backpack or suitcase.

Now, I’d like to hear from you! What are your tips and tricks for packing for a trip?

Pssssst! Like this post? Sharing is caring! Please also consider following me at my Facebook page, Babies With Backpacks, so you never miss a post (plus additional content!). 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aci Trezza. These are the rocks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

During the first hectic couple of weeks here, when everything was either baffling or infuriating or both (I’m looking at you, government bureaucracy), Chris and I said more than once that we kind of wished we could fast-forward six months to when everything would have calmed down. Six months was always the marker we used.

Imagine, then, my surprise this week when I realized that our six month anniversary had passed without us even noticing.

I’d say it is safe to say we feel pretty settled at this point. Despite the horrible scratches all over my car and its busted mirror, driving here doesn’t scare me at all any more. (Annoy me? Yes.) Owen goes to school three day a week and doesn’t get upset about it much any more. We have favorite bakeries, butcher’s shops and grocery stores. We have friends to hang out with. We are taking Italian lessons and catch about two words in 50, which is significantly more than we did before. We have a better idea about how that double-cheek kissing thing works.

That’s not to say things are perfect. I’m still completely confused by so many things (in large part because I don’t understand those 48 out of every 50 Italian words I hear!) and the combination of all things Sicilian and government can be infuriating. For example, Owen and I each saw the doctor on base a couple of times, starting in October. We are supposed to receive a bill in the mail but none ever came, so I went to the hospital to ask for the bills. I was then told that because they need to comb through “different systems” it would take a few days to get my bill organized. Two weeks later, I received an e-mail telling me my bill was ready and I should come in right away because, surprise! it will be sent to collections if it isn’t paid by Friday. It was a Tuesday night. Likewise, most of our utility bills show up a couple days before they are due.*

But all in all, we’re very happy here. We can’t believe how lucky we are to be able to have this opportunity and are trying to make the most of it!

What we love. 

1. Food. Oh, the food. I can’t begin to explain how good the pasta is here, and that includes packaged pasta you buy from the store and cook yourself. I don’t remember exactly what the difference is, something about the flour used, but is is exceptional. And the bread! And the oil! Don’t even get me started on the olive oil. We are basically going to have to buy a couple barrels to bring home when we move back. The produce here is also wonderful, especially the strawberries lately. Just down the street from us are a couple of dudes who sell fruit off their trucks, so about every other day we are popping over there to grab something. There’s also a fish guy, but since I haven’t completed  my learn-to-love-fish goal we haven’t done that yet. Oh, but we are now obsessed with espresso. Woo!

2. The scenery. On a clear day when Mount Etna is in her glory I still can’t believe we live here. And eruptions have not stopped being absolutely thrilling to me, as anyone who is friends with me can probably tell from their lava-filled newsfeed. And that’s just in our area. We’ve seen some truly gorgeous places, and we haven’t even been here during the most beautiful time of year yet. I can’t wait to see more!

Ragusa, from this trip. 

Taormina 

3. The people. People we’ve met here have been mostly warm and wonderful. The Sicilians (maybe Italians in general?) are absolutely obsessed with children and are constantly going out of their way to smile at our kids and try to chat with them. (Also touch their hair, which Owie and Fi don’t so much love — their hair is a bit of a novelty). People seem to be remarkable relaxed, everything is ‘va bene, va bene’ all the time. Even when I accidentally hit some woman’s SmartCar.

4. The travel. At home, I spent a lot of time “planning” European trips that I wanted us to take eventually. Now that we are here, I get to plan them for real! We’ll be in France, Ireland and Germany at various points of this year and believe me, I am 100 percent aware of how lucky that makes us. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We know that we are here for a limited time, three years or five years at most and because of that, we are motivated constantly to get out and see things around us when we can. I hope that we bring that attitude back with us when we get home and see more of our own beautiful country.

Things I Miss 

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there are some things we miss very much from home, however.

1. Family and friends. This one goes without saying, right? It is hard to be away from people you care about. I even miss just being on the same time zones as my friends for text-messaging purposes. Luckily, we’ve had visits from my parents and sister already and Chris’ mom will be here this spring and his brother in the fall. I hope lots more people come to visit! 
2. Having internet that works well. Our internet is fairly terrible and there really isn’t anything to else be done about it (Chris has already made some adjustments and additions). If Chris is trying to play a game online, we can’t use any other devices at the same time. Same goes for when I’m trying to make calls for work and the quality is often less than great, which can be frustrating and embarrassing. So yeah, we miss high-quality internet.
3. Our town. Bloomington is a beautiful place to raise kids and I wouldn’t mind going back there when this is all over. In particular I miss our gorgeous walking trails, especially since lousy (and largely absent) sidewalks here mean taking a walk with the kids can be somewhat harrowing.
4. Being able to watch sports. The only NCAA games we managed to watch started at about midnight and it was pretty brutal trying to stay awake!
5. Convenience. I am finally at the point where I usually remember that everything is closed at riposto time (usually between 2ish and 4:30ish) but it hasn’t stopped annoying me. I miss being able to get anything at just about any time of day. And I miss Amazon two-day shipping. And going out to dinner at what is (to me) a normal time. Most restaurants don’t open until 8 p.m. and by that point that point we are trying to have the kids in bed and it isn’t worth the effort.
6. Knowing what the hell I’m doing. Even simple transactions here can end up fairly anxiety-ridden for me because of the language barrier. For example, going into a cafe I still invariably end up confused as to whether they are delivering my food or if I’m taking it now, and when I pay. I’m getting better about just laughing it off, but honestly some days I just wish I could go pick up food at the chicken place or buy a bouquet of flowers without it turning into a big, confusing debacle for all involved. I guess this can only get better with time and Italian lessons though!Remember this? Early attempt to order Owen a hamburger with no sauce. I actually do know how to say this in Italian now … unless they have any follow-up questions at all. Then I just look like a deer in the headlights. 

And finally … the things I don’t miss.

1. Enforced speed limits
2. Traffic lights (there are very few of them here, mostly all roundabouts)
3. Snow
4. Eating too much fast food (We have McDonald’s but the language gap means I have to go inside instead of using th drive-thru, and mostly I consider it not worth the effort. Which is a lot healthier for us all).
5. Our mortgage

*This is especially weird because by and large many of the other businesses we’ve encounter have a surprisingly casual attitude about bills. Our preschool, for example, didn’t have me pay for weeks after he started (despite me asking frequently) and didn’t even mention it when one month I forgot to pay until about the 20th.

The post We’ve been here HOW long? first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post We’ve been here HOW long? appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

So, yesterday Tuseday our first-ever overnight guest arrived! Our friend Mike (who we stayed with in Naples) is on the island for work, so he is staying with us so we can all hang out. If we haven’t scared him off by Friday, his wife is also going to join us and we are going to Carnevale for some party-time.

We also took the kids to Carnevale in Acireale on Sunday — post on that to follow

Mike’s arrival kicks off about two-and-a-half weeks of guests, and we are pumped. My mom gets here Saturday, followed by my dad and sister a week later. Mom will be here almost two weeks, while my dad and sister will have about six days.

So, what to do while they are here? I’ve been struggling to decide because there are just too many things I want to show them. We’ve been here five months and have already seen some very cool places, plus there are still plenty more that we hope to see soon. My family has been pretty consistent in saying they are “up for whatever.” Thanks for the input, guys!

Anyway, I’m trying to organize a perfect few days here on the island while also minimizing the amount of time we spend in the car, since they don’t have a lot of time (Dad and my sister anyway). Owen goes to school Monday, Wednesday and Friday too, so we’ll be working within that restriction since I won’t want him to skip all three days. I figure longer visits (and at warmer times of year) will be the time to do things like visit the Aeolian Islands to the north or drive the two-and-a-half hours or so to Agrigento, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the southeast that is apparently one of Sicily’s biggest tourist attractions thanks to its well-preserved temples. So far, this is where I’m at:

1. Taormina. The first place that we visited about five days after we visited, Taormina is only about 40 minutes from our house and absolutely gorgeous. The Corleone scenes of The Godfather were filmed in and around the city. I’m hoping we can take my family on the cable-car ride to the city center, as the cable cars were closed when we were there. We’ve been meaning to go back since our first trip there, so this is a definite yes. 
2. Siracusa/Ortigia. I didn’t blog about this trip, but we visited Siracusa a couple of weeks after arriving when we were still in the hotel. We saw the archaeological park in Siracusa at that time — lots of Greek/Roman ruins there — but didn’t have enough time to property explore Ortigia, a island connected to Siracusa by three bridges. There’s still tons to see (and some places I want to eat!) so I’m excited to go back with the family. It is a quick one-hour drive from here on a nice highway, so an easy trip during the week.
3. Catania. Driving in Sicily’s second-largest city might be insane, but isn’t that part of the authentic Sicilian experience? I’d like to take the family to the fish market and Elephant Square some morning while they are in town, especially considering the city is only about half an hour away. I assume the highlight for my sister will be watching me attempt to parallel our gigantic van in the city.
4. Agriturismo lunch. So far we’ve been to one of the famous, three-hour, multi-course eating extravaganzas at a local farm-to-table restaurant, and we’d like to take the family to a Sunday lunch while they are in town. I’m thinking of making reservations at one that is also a winery because two birds, one stone
5. Caltagirone. We haven’t actually been to this central Sicily town, which is known for pottery and pretty scenery. It is only an hour away and we’ve heard good things, so I think we’ll go out there one day (probably just with my mom because of the others’ time limitation).
6. Eating out. So, food is one of the things Sicily does really, really well. It also happens to be one of my favorite things to do while traveling. I definitely want the family to get to sample everything Sicily has to offer food-wise, but we actually haven’t been eating out much ourselves since moving into our new house. The reason? Restaurant hours. We have a nice restaurant just down the street from us, but it doesn’t open until 8 p.m. For most other restaurants, 7/8 p.m. seems to be pretty standard. Considering our kids usually go to bed between 7-8 in the evening — and meals are usually about two hours long at least — taking them out for dinner is pretty rare. I’m booking a babysitter for a couple nights while they are in town so that we can go out and actually enjoy ourselves while they are in bed. I’m hoping with can try some places in nearby Acireale, and also take everyone (kids included) to one of our favorite places when we were living in Motta. Bonus if we also take the time to explore the castle in Motta that we inexplicably never got around to visiting during the six weeks we stayed there!
7. Hiking. The only one to have spoken up about wanting to do something in particular in my sister, who is interested in hiking Mount Etna. It is still very snowy right now, but I’m thinking we could go to Nicolosi, a little town further up the mountain from us that supposedly has a good spot for hiking in the Parco dell’Etna. The town is also supposed to be cute and worth a visit.
8.  Our farmer’s market. Our town has a farmer’s market every Monday, less than half a mile down the road for us. It’s got plenty of food, but also tons of stalls selling everything from clothes, household cleaners, pots and pans, shoes, purses, fabrics and more. Fiona and I usually walk over while Owen is in school.
9. Every day living. This list is ambitious, but I also want to leave some time for them to see our day-to-day life here. We’ll drive Owen to school (possibly getting stopped by a herd of goats or sheep on the way), go to the bakery I visit pretty much every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, walk into the city center to buy some vegetables and embarrass ourselves by trying to speak Italian. I’ll enjoy watching them try to figure out our insane light switch situation and the six different categories of trash. We can all be peeved when we forget riposto exists when we want to do something. If we get really lucky, maybe we’ll be able to see some more lava from Mount Etna. Fingers crossed.

Runners up: Ragusa and Modica, both of which we loved but have likely scratched off the list because they are further away than the others.

The post Planning for visitors (woohoo!) first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Planning for visitors (woohoo!) appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Well, somehow it has been more than two weeks since I posted. Um. Whoops. I certainly didn’t mean to let that much time go by, but the combination of having a lot of freelance work due at the same time and just trying to get back into a routine made the days fly by.

Some updates:

1) Owen started preschool! We have chosen to send him to an Italian nursery school where several other American/Canadian children also go. Classes are primarily in Italian but the teachers for the English-speaking kids’ classes also speak English and speak that some of the time as well. This way, our kids learn Italian and the Italian kids get to pick up a little English.

First day of school pic. He decided on a Batman t-shirt and a Gryffindor hoodie to help him be brave

So far, it has been fine — the first week he went every day for a little longer each day to try and ease him into it. (From now on he’ll go three days a week). He clearly had fun every day, but getting him there every morning took some coaxing. I’m sure that will get easier with time though.

One fun thing about preschool — I’m pretty sure they eat better lunches than I do! Owen reported that the first day he stayed for lunch they had pasta with sauce, meatballs, salad, fruit and bread. Obviously, my son refused to eat everything.

It is a nice view on the way to preschool too

We thought about sending Fiona to the 2-year-old preschool because she seemed to really enjoy it when she attended the base preschool for a couple weeks while Chris and I were doing Indoc classes. However, her classes would have been exclusively in Italian. We ultimately decided that we’ll send her in the fall when she’s 3 and can attend the same kind of class as Owen. In the meantime, we’ll get lots of Mommy and Fi time.

2) We went to our first agriturismo! Basically an agriturismo is a restaurant (and sometimes hotel) on a working farm, where the food served is generally grown on site. Meals are usually about three hours long and include tons of food. The one we went to, Casale del Notaio, did not disappoint. For the first 45 minutes or so, they brought out so much food out that we could barely keep up — bread, antipasti, vegetable dishes, pasta etc. After that, we got a little break to drink wine while Owen and Fiona ran around with a bunch of other kids at the restaurant. Fiona was racing around the table and no one even blinked the eye; I can’t imagine how much people would be judging if she did that back home. After that, it was on to meat, meat and more meat, plus dessert and espresso.

We *may* have bribed Owen with one dollar for every new thing he ate. Fiona ate almost every bite of one of the pasta dishes they brought for the table, then literally yelled at the waiter when he tried to clear the other away. He laughed and put it down. Smart guy.

3) I went to an olive oil factory (Oleificio Peltom) and learned a little about the process of making olive oil, plus got a giant jug filled with oil to take home. It is so insanely good that we are consuming it at a fairly alarming rate, so I’m trying hard not to think about the calorie count there.

One fun thing our guide told us (I went with a group of other preschool moms) was that after they get all the oil they can by pressing, the leftovers are sold to a company that uses chemical processes to extract the last bit of oil in it. The guide said that this is low quality oil, which is why they don’t use it themselves … then hesitated (like he was worried about offending us) and said he’s heard that’s what they use in olive oil sold in the US. We laughed.

About two liters of oil for 18 euro — apparently prices are up this year because it was a really bad growing season. Usually prices would be more like 6 euro for a liter.

4) We paid our first “guy” for watching our parked car (though we didn’t know it ahead of time …). We were leaving the market near our house where we’d parked on the street, and this guy just stands up next to me window, makes eye contact and nods. So we handed him a euro and drove away.

5) We went to a grocery store and my kids embarrassed the hell out of me by smashing some eggs on accident. Turns out that would not be the most embarrassing moment of the trip though, because I promptly went back to the van and backed into a SmartCar while trying not to hit the two cars on either side of me. FAIL. The owner happened to be standing RIGHT THERE too, but it turned out to be a woman who I had just let go ahead of me at the checkout because she only had a few things. Possibly this earned me some goodwill, because she basically just laughed at how worried I was, brushed off her car, and kept repeating “va bene, va bene, va bene,” patting my arm and shooing me away. To its credit, the SmartCar had absolutely no damage at all once we brushed the paint from my van off it. I guess those tiny things are stronger than they look?

Just a cute picture of the kids with a rainbow because why not?

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

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

The scene:*

Chris and his buddy Mike, sitting in the backseat of a stranger’s vehicle somewhere in Rome. The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ in the USA” is blaring and the non-English-speaking driver is singing along. A fellow passenger and birthday twin, James from Liverpool, is joining in. James’ wife’s jacket, studded with spikes, is gouging Mike with every turn because they are crammed in so tightly in the backseat of the car.

How did they get here, we ask?

Train strike meets taxi strike plus soccer tickets = ingenuity.

As discussed here, we were in Rome to celebrate Chris’ birthday. I had bought him tickets to a Roma soccer football game, and we invited Mike to stay an extra night and go with him. The stadium was a bit of a trek from our neighborhood, so they left a good two hours early to give themselves plenty of time … and probably also to have drinks once they got there.

That extra time ended up being important, because once they arrived at the taxi stand near our apartment they were puzzled to find only three empty cars and zero drivers. During the previous day and a half, including our night out the day before, it had been bustling. They waited around for a while hoping someone would show up, but since neither was dressed appropriately for the weather they decided to step inside a nearby unofficial Roma shop and buy Mike a scarf and wait there for a bit. While inside, a helpful clerk informed them that there was a taxi strike and they wouldn’t be getting a ride that way, and told them how to get to the nearest metro station. A woman nearby was listening and told Chris that she and her partner were also trying to get to the game, and could they just follow them? Sure. Why not?

So then they got to the metro, which was strangely closed as well. Someone standing outside informs them that there is a metro strike right now.

Earlier in the day, we’d seen signs talking about how Uber was banned in Italy with fines of up to 500 euro, so they knew that was out. Google told them it would be something like an hour and a half to walk there. Also out of the question.

As is so often the case with travel, Chris and Mike determined that the best thing to do would be to try to throw money at the problem until it went away. There was a bar next to the shop, so in they went and Chris asked the barman whether he knew anyone they could pay to drive them to the game. Sure enough, he knew a guy. He called his friend to come over and a “quick” five minutes (read: 25 minutes) later, they were them were piling into the car with some guy who, it turned out, also worked for the bar. After they all huddled in the bar to quietly pay the man under the table, the five of them — Chris, Mike, the driver and the couple from Liverpool — were on their way.

Along the way, James volunteered that his wife (whose name escapes Chris) had bought him the tickets for the game as a birthday gift since his birthday was the next day. Same birthday, same gift. How weird is that?

The guys asked the driver to pick them up after, but he declined (possibly because he was a Lazio fan and it was a Roma game?!), so they arrived at the stadium with no particular plan for getting home. However, they decided that teaming up with the Liverpool couple for the trip home was the best way to go, so they exchanged numbers and made a plan to meet.

The seats we bought ended up being pretty decent! Roma won, 3-2

So afterward, the couple sent Chris a text letting him know they were heading to the meeting place. Naturally, Vodafone chose this moment to refuse to let him call or text unless he paid extra money, which he wasn’t sure how to do because all messages are in Italian and time was of the essence. They decided to just go to the meetup point, but as they walked outside there were three cabs, just sitting there. Apparently it was the world’s shortest strike?

This still left the problem of the Liverpool friends, however, so they decided to have the driver go to the meetup site so they could try to find them. And lo and behold, there they were, waiting on the sidewalk. The cab was actually a van, so when the driver pulled up in front of them they opened the sliding door and said — these are Chris’ words now — “ciaaaaaaaooooooooo” in “the world’s creepiest voice, like we were going to kidnap them or something.” Since they were freezing their butts off, the couple apparently decided to ride home with the creepers anyway.

*This post based on descriptions from Chris, as I was there for exactly none of us. Except for getting a play-by-play via text messages.

The post A train strike adventure for Chris first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post A train strike adventure for Chris appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Chris’ summary of buying a car here, in our experience:

“We’d like to buy a car, please.”
“Haha, LOL, good luck.”

So, as you may remember we are shipping our minivan to Sicily. It is on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic right now, I assume. Ever since we’ve arrived, we’ve been been looking for an island beater — preferably a small, four-door automatic car for cheap. In the mean time, we’ve been using a rental car provided by our hotel. Chris has tested a couple, but we haven’t been overly worried because hey, we still have weeks, right?

Uhhhhhh suddenly, without realizing it, we are basically almost out of time. We move Monday. And we still don’t have a car.

Shit.

We really didn’t expect it to be this difficult, but we’ve been running into roadblock after roadblock. And reached record levels of paranoia, haha. The issues:

1) Conflicting advice
So, basically almost everyone we talk to here has different recommendations for how to go about finding a car, what kind of car to get and how much to spend. So, as a result we are baffled as to who/what to believe. Some people have told us to only get an Italian car to blend in, others tell us a newer American car is the way to go because it more likely had regular maintenance done. Some say buy the cheapest, oldest car because it is going to get beat to shit anyway; others say a newer one is a better bet for reliability. Some say you should only buy already denationalized cars (cars sold to Americans have to be “denationalized,” then can only be sold to Americans after) from another foreigner, others say the denationalization process is no big deal and don’t worry about it. Some say a warranty is a must, others say a warranty is total bullshit anyway. Two dealers have come recommended by some, but not by others, and both bad-mouth each other.

So we have no idea who to believe.

2)Availability
We are having a very difficult time just finding cars to choose from, to start. There are a couple of websites for Americans selling to others, but the good ones go fast. There are dealers in town, but only a couple that speak English. Getting answers from them can be … tricky. Quite frequently a couple of them have told us they were getting something in “tomorrow” or “later this week” that somehow don’t quite materialize. In another instance, we were given vague reasons given why we couldn’t take the car somewhere else for an inspection before buying. Greaaaaat. Part of the problem is our parameters, of course: I want us to have an automatic because while Chris could happily drive a stick, I am not good at it and don’t want the anxiety that comes with it.

3) Outrageous prices, and paranoia
So while it seems easiest to buy from an American leaving the base — no language barrier, no 10-day waiting period for denationalization — we have thus far been fairly shocked by prices. A recent example? A 1989 Renault for $3,000. For a car practically as old as I am. I mean, you can make the argument that it is a classic but come on.

Another problem is that we recently learned that rolling back a car’s odometer is very common here. One of the dealers told us he saw 30 cars one day, and all but four had rolled-back odometers. So now any time we see a car with low mileage and a reasonable price, we are extremely suspicious instead of considering it promising.

Of course, every salesperson we talk to has a lovely story about how it belonged to a little old lady who didn’t drive much. Chris: “There can’t possibly be this many little old ladies who just so happen to want to sell to Americans …”

At the same time, however, we don’t want a car with too many miles either. So, we are looking for a magical car with not too many miles, but also not so few that it seems suspicious. As far as I can tell, it is basically like hunting for a unicorn.

The post The car hunt becomes urgent first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post The car hunt becomes urgent appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Wooohoo!

As soon as I posted my last update, we learned that the electric has been switched to our name! We should be good to go now! Only another couple weeks until we can move in!

I’m SO RELIEVED.

To celebrate, here is a cute picture of my cute kids doing something cute. Because cute.

YAY!

The post We got the house! first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post We got the house! appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

House hunting continues Tuesday with five more houses to see (yay!), but in the meantime I’ve been meaning to talk about our hotel! Brett, this one is for you.

We are staying at a hotel in the town closest to base. So far, it’s been a good experience overall — and better since we made some changes. In an effort to be positive, here are the pros:

1) The location is perfect for getting to base quickly.

2) The staff could not be nicer or more helpful. One helped me carry breakfast upstairs today because she saw my kids were being unruly. Another gave us advice for our planned day trip tomorrow.

3) It has two bedrooms, so we don’t share with the kids.

The kids have developed a super fun game where they jump between the two beds. Guess how long it took one to miscalculate and crash into the dresser? Guess.

4) Our room has a great balcony that stretches around three sides of our room.

5) Breakfast is my favorite thing ever. Those of you who know me know I am NOT a breakfast person at all. But every morning here they have an assortment of pastries, some cereal, juice, toast with nutella or jam and — most importantly — cheese and the most amazing hard rolls. They also will make you coffee, espresso or cappuccino. I have a cheese sandwich for breakfast every single day and I’m in love. LOL.

Nice breakfast area

As for the cons — well, every bit of furniture in this place is pretty impressively uncomfortable (for example, the mystery metal bar just sort of lurking in the couch?). Chris has been waking up every morning with an aching back from the beds, and we are both itchy and suspect it is the linens. BUT things have vastly improved since we bought a mattress topper, pillows and new sheets. I assume that the maid probably thinks we are super high maintenance and is rolling her eyes.

Our room, pre-bed transformation.

On the other hand, the kids don’t seem bothered about any of this, so possibly we are high maintenance. Though I’m not sure I trust their judgement on what’s comfortable, considering Fiona literally slept on the marble floor with just a blanket once night after (apparently) getting out of bed at some point.

Last complaint — the stove’s igniter broke somewhere along the way, so they left a box of matches to use instead. It works, but scares the shit out of you. Feels like there is a metaphor in there somewhere, but I’m tired.

The post Our current accommodations first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Our current accommodations appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

I posted once before about warnings I’d read about driving in Sicily.

Turns out, descriptions such as “the seemingly erratic driving nature of Sicilian traffic” were a bit of an understatement. Last night, for example, resulted in us and others having to go the wrong way on a one-way street because we ran into an unexpected bit of construction (because who needs signs?). I was freaking out, but apparently this sort of shit is just normal.

At any rate, Chris and I had our “safety class” today to learn about Sicilian driving. Mostly the class consisted of telling us what the rules of the road are, and then advising us not to follow them. You are required to stop at stop signs, for example, but if you actually do that you will probably get rear-ended by the guy behind you. Tailgating is bad, but leaving more than a few feet ahead of you is, according to our instructor, “an invitation to come cut you off.” He had several examples of times when you should technically have the right of way, but “don’t ever assume anyone agrees with you.” Cars drive in the center of the road to avoid potholes, swerving out of the way when oncoming traffic approaches. But if you hug the side of your lane to avoid people flying past you or to make room, all you are doing is inviting the rest of the traffic to decide there are three lanes of traffic, not two, until you get squeezed out.

Safety guy says that in the US, 1 in 15 drivers annually are involved in traffic accidents. In Sicily, the number is 1 in 5 drivers. Color me shocked.

We also learned the appropriate way to pay “a guy” who “watches your car” when you park in various places. The way this is communicated is through eye contact. Also, if involved in a crash we were advised not to talk to the police until a base translator shows up because foreigners have a funny way of getting blamed for any and all incidents. Something to do with the fact that we are all required to have car insurance to bring a car here. This also makes us about a million times more likely to get parking tickets, apparently.

Speaking of which, one fun fact we learned is that tons of base personnel (based on rank in military or on the GS scale) are allowed to issue tickets. So that includes Chris. If he sees someone driving like an asshole, he can take down the license plate and report it to base security, which apparently just takes his word for it and writes up a ticket. For some reason this was hilarious to me. Although to be fair, I really couldn’t help laughing at several points during the entire presentation because it was all so absurd/terrifying.

So far, Chris has done almost all the driving (for which I’m super grateful) and has been quite calm even when people fly out of nowhere. I’ve only tried a couple of times but both have been OK — largely because I drove during the day and on non-busy roads. Baby steps. Our rental car is an odd little thing – it is an automatic, but it tends to jerk around when you hit the gas and it rolls backwards when you take your foot off the gas. Our own van will be here in the next couple of months, and in the meantime we are actively searching for a small second car. I have a feeling our van will have plenty of new dings and scratches as souvenirs when (if) it goes home. Sorry, Sienna.

The post Driving in Sicily, now that we are here first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Driving in Sicily, now that we are here appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Today is our anniversary! Chris and I got married six years ago today (yes, Sept. 11) in Bolingbrook, Ill. I might be biased, but I think our wedding was a blast!

I love this photo because it looks like we think we are getting away with something. Like I’m going, ‘ha! I tricked him into marrying me! No going back now, dude. MWHAHAHAHA.’

But one of the best parts of getting married, in my humble opinion, came the next day when we left for our honeymoon. (Minus the unfortunate morning when I was yelling at everyone because we couldn’t find anything and I thought we were going to miss our plane and also drunk friends had been pounding on our hotel room door at like 4 a.m. … but I digress). We had never been on an actual vacation together, and Chris had never been outside of the country. We agreed that we wanted to go outside the U.S., and Chris wasn’t interested in a beach vacation. So, Europe it was. We originally started by trying to cram about five cities in five countries into a less-than-two-week trip, then realized that was madness and settled on four. And then we realized again that that was crazy, and ultimately cut it down to three. Chris was dying to see London, I wanted to go to Paris for the romance factor and we both liked beer so Munich — for Oktoberfest! — it was.

I had traveled a fair bit by that point (Europe a couple times, Australia for a six-month study abroad, and a two-month trip to the Middle East and Asia that I’ll talk about some other time) but Chris later confessed that he didn’t necessarily see the appeal. I mean, he could see why traveling was cool and why people (including himself) would want to do it, but he didn’t really get why I’d want to sink so much money (coughcoughASIATRIPcoughcough) into it.

Well, that trip pretty much changed that. And with it — I think it is fair to say — the course of our lives. Because he completely fell in love with travel as much as I already was, which led to his strong interest in moving overseas with his job “some day,” which led to now.

We started in Paris, where we loved everything except the Louvre. That’s sacrilege, I’m pretty sure, but we were over the place pretty quickly. Viva La Musee d’Orsay instead! Our hotel was one I had stayed in before, right near Notre Dame. We’d pick up some pastries and drinks from one of the local shops and have lunch in the park right next to it. Bliss.

I’d say we saw our fair share of sights, but one of my favorite things was visiting Sacre Coeur and just sitting on the steps for hours people watching and drinking beers we’d bought from guys walking around with cases of them. We laughed our asses off negotiating them down on price because for whatever reason we only had so much cash handy and didn’t feel like hunting out an ATM. At one point we offered a euro and ten cents and the seller was so disgusted he took the Euro and refused the ten cents with a massive French eye roll. C’est la vie.

I’m not sure why I look vaguely pissed off in this picture. This was legit one of my favorite things.

From there, we went on to Munich where we took a day trip to see Neuschwanstein Castle, went to a soccer game (which ended 0-0, what the hell kind of sport is this?!) and made some friends at the hotel bar. We intended to attend the tapping of the first keg for Oktoberfest the next morning with these friends, and even — apparently — set up a wake up call at the front desk at some point in the evening. Regrettably, our buddies at the bar ended up buying a pretty fair number of shots that evening and when morning came at least one of us* wasn’t in any shape to go. But, once we made it down there we had a blast! Dancing on tables, Ein Prosit, the works.

*It was me.

The thing we loved most about the Munich part of the trip was that we met so many people along the way. I’m even still friends with a few of them on Facebook (hi Emily! hi Natanael!). The places I’ve had the most fun are always the ones where I’ve put myself out there and talked to people the most. Something about traveling makes you want to latch on to anyone else who can understand you and start swapping stories.

Us and our friend Natanael. Not pictured: the couples we hung with, which included a guy who looked EXACTLY like the dentist from The Hangover. I suspect he was less amused by this observation by round three of those beers.

Our final destination was London, which was lovely except for the sticker shock on everything.

Isn’t he the handsomest??

Unfortunately, I did not find the entrance to Diagon Alley. Perhaps next trip?

Plans are already in the works to go back to at least two of those locations next year, Paris and Munich for Oktoberfest next September. Speaking of which, we would love for family and friends to join us in Munich! Just mentioning again …

The post Days of yore first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Days of yore appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.