Dealing with baby feeding on a 10 day trip

As is our way, we overdid it. Our awesome nanny makes baby food for FDR in big batches (Annabel Karmel is a great resource) and freezes it.

We had* a styrofoam cooler and super duper freezer ice that we used to transport frozen breast milk back from the States when we brought FDR home. We figured we'd fill it with enough food for 10 days and we wouldn't have to feed him store bought baby food.

Well, it sort of worked. The super duper freezer ice is supposed to keep things frozen for three days. By the time we got to Turks & Caicos, it was right around 72 hours after we packed and sealed the cooler. Also, the super duper freezer ice can maybe be reused once.
The little pouches tear and then leak. So his food made it, still cold but slightly thawed.

We probably would have been fine with store bought food. But we had all his homemade frozen stuff, and groceries on the island are insanely expensive. Not that FDR is drinking beer yet, but to give you a frame reference, a 6 pack of Corona at the grocery store cost $19.

Milk-wise, he's still on formula and has graduated to "night time" milk which has a little cereal in it so is heavier, which supposedly helps him fall/stay asleep.

*Had the cooler because we threw it - and the super duper freezer ice - away as soon as we got to our rented house.

Bienvenidos a Miami

FDR is the first grandchild on my side of the family since my nephew was born in 2007, so he has been much fêted since he was born. My parents and sister all live on the west coast and don't get to see him often, so my sister proposed that Tom, FDR, and I travel there
to see them over Christmas.

Our reaction was, if we're going to take a 10 hour flight with a seven-month-old, it's not going to be from London to the Pacific Northwest in December. After a relatively brief negotiation, we settled on the Caribbean, specifically Turks & Caicos. We had to be routed via Miami so decided to stop off in Miami for a day to help ease the jet lag (as if, more on that later).

We cashed in a bunch of miles on American Airlines and went business class for the London-Miami leg. We didn't get a seat for FDR but the nice thing about this was there was room for him to lie down in the airplane bassinet (which, at 7 months old, he barely fit in):

Have you ever seen a flying snowman?

I do have to say, before we actually got on the plane, AA was totally disorganized in terms of what they had in terms of a bassinet for him - the phone agent said something different than the check-in counter agent, who said something different than the gate agent, who was also
wrong. As you can tell, this bassinet is on the ground because apparently in business class, there aren't the necessary hooks or whatever.

He did sleep okay on the plane. We tried to keep him to the schedule of eating every four hours. He had his "night time" bottle at 7:30pm, or 5 hours into the flight, and then another bottle at 11:30pm his time / 4:30pm Miami time in our attempt to get him on the new time
zone.

The poor guy was so tired by the time we got to the hotel room (8pm local time so 1am his time), he was shaking.

Fontainebleau - good and bad

We cashed in a bunch of Tom's Amex points and stayed at the Fontainebleau, a sprawling hotel complex in "North Beach". You can see my detailed thoughts on the place on the link, but the short version is this:

The good -

Our room was very big and had a good size balcony. There was a kitchenette (sink, mini fridge) that was perfect for our baby food and bottle washing needs. And the service from the staff was for the most part excellent. 

The bad - 

However, the pool scene is that awful Vegas-style chaos where people get up at 7am to claim pool chairs by leaving a hat or magazine on them, and by noon the place is a total mob scene. Not relaxing at all. We decided this was too much to deal with with jet lagged daddies and baby, and since I'm a member of Soho House, we spent our one full day at Soho Beach House which just happens to be right next door to the hotel. Even if you're not a member, it's a good (if pricey) option for a hotel.

Paris again!

Tom's family came to visit us in London over Thanksgiving so we decided to cap that by going to Paris. FDR's cousins loved hanging out with him. So lucky FDR has been to Paris twice before his first birthday!

So, you may ask, did we learn anything from our last trip to Paris with him? Well, yes and no.

Yes - got a bigger room at the Westin. Had to zero out our Starwood balance to do so, but it was totally worth it. We had a junior suite, basically two tiny rooms instead of one tiny room. This allowed us to put FDR to bed (he did better in the hotel crib this time) and stay up in the
other half of the room.

No - took the Bugaboo and forgot the baby carrier again.

Yes - left the Bugaboo case at home and just folded the stroller (in two parts) in the luggage area. Doable on the Eurostar. I wouldn't recommend this if flying.

No - attempted the Metro, with our stroller plus another one that one of FDR's cousins needed. Oh boy. Have I mentioned that taking a stroller on the Paris Metro is not a great idea? The station we entered actually did have a gate, with a helpful button to call an attendant to open it for you. Unfortunately, the attendants were too busy having coffee behind a glass partition to open the gate for us. So, with the help of a French family, we passed the stroller over the turnstile and then carried the various babies through. I think one of the other moms thought we were asking to kidnap her baby. At our destination, the exit gate was too narrow for our Bugaboo, so we had to take it apart and again rely on the kinds of French strangers. Say what you like about the French or Parisians, but the Metro workers aside, they seemed to be delightful. Maybe take the bus instead.

Yes - boat ride on the Seine again. A good way to keep track of 4 kids ranging in age from 6 months to 9 years.

No - taking FDR up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. The family wanted to go up, naturally, but it's not like FDR cared! You can get most of the way up via elevator (buy tickets well in advance!), but the final stage is stairs, which meant taking the stroller apart again and hoisting it up in two parts. Stupid decision.

FDR with his cousins

FDR wondering what her smile means

Florence

We stayed at Firenze No. 9, a modern-ish hotel about a 5 minute walk from the train station. Everyone there - particularly the dining room staff at breakfast - were incredibly friendly and fawned all over FDR, which was great. They upgraded us to a junior suite, so we had extra space to put the hotel crib. I'm not sure I would stay there again though; the lighting controls were extraordinarily complicated and made a Law & Order-style "ker-chunk!" every time you turned them on or off. Not ideal when you're trying to keep a baby asleep.

Since he's only 5 months old, he's still exclusively on formula, so that's all we had to pack in terms of his food. For a three day trip we just packed a tupperware full of formula and the little three-section food dispenser. Also, when he's asleep, he is ASLEEP. So at dinner, we could feed him his bottle at 8:30pm (7:30pm London time), put him in the cot in the stroller (this is where the Bugaboo shines), head out from the hotel at 9 and sit down to dinner around 9:30pm, and (fortunately) he stayed asleep during dinner. Risky strategy perhaps but sure beats a 7:30pm dinner and retreat to the hotel, or boring old room service.

During the days, we walked around Florence, which is a beautiful, relatively compact city to walk around with a baby in a stroller. Italians love babies, and if he got fussy during lunch time, one (or more) of the servers would come over and coo at him and just generally distract him. Grazi!

You don't need me to tell you what the tourist sights are - The Uffizi, The Duomo, The David (the real one and the copy), and the Ponte Vecchio - all are well navigable with a stroller though I imagine during peak tourist season, the crowds might make that more challenging. Another stroller-friendly activity is just puttering around an outdoor market (in our case, Santo Spirito, though there are many others).

Good luck finding a bathroom outside your hotel suitable for changing a baby. Plan on doing that in the stroller and/or "around a corner" somewhere. Hand sanitzer is key!

Plan the train journey back to Pisa better than we did. We were bad parents again, and after making a dash for a 10am train, we ended up having to sit on folding seats between carriages, with our monstrous pile of luggage, and FDR on our laps. That was harrowing, and I'm not sure we would have emerged unscathed but for the help of Italians who love babies (all of them).

Pisa Pisa

Not much to say about Pisa, except of course if you have to fly into Pisa to get to Florence, it is a no-brainer to spend half a day there so you can get the classic tourist shot with the Leaning Tower:

For our part, we took a taxi from the airport to Pisa Centrale. We left all of our luggage at the left luggage office and set off to the Leaning Tower on foot. Note: when Google Maps tells you the walk is 22 minutes, add about 20 minutes to take into account you are traveling with a baby - you will not be at optimal walking speed!

Did I mention we stupidly packed our stroller? There it was minding its own business in Left Luggage, and our Ergo carrier was safely back at home in London, so we had to carry FDR. When we stopped for lunch at a little sidewalk cafe/pizzeria, we took turns holding him while the other one ate since he was still too little for a high chair. Learn from our mistakes people.

The other new experience was changing him on an unoccupied table in the restaurant because the bathroom wasn't conducive to changing a baby. Until then, we'd been pretty squeamish about such things, and before we had FDR, horrified when other parents did that. We got over it!

After getting our photo op at the Tower, we opted to take a cab back to the station. Turns out many European cities (Paris included) will let you just hold a baby in a car (no car seat) in a taxi. You feel guilty about doing so but it sure beats the walk and/or lugging a car seat around if you think you'll need a taxi.

Getting to Florence - a comedy of errors, or, don't pack your Bugaboo

First vacation with FDR involving air travel!

So of course, it was a series mistakes compounded with a few mishaps. We made it to Florence safe and sound but it was a long day. 

Mistake #1 - the 9:25am flight from Gatwick. This means a 6:25am departure from home, which means a 5am alarm. As far as FDR goes, this wasn't much of a problem - he stirred briefly when we changed him and got him into the taxi, but went back to sleep thanks to the motion. It's more punishing on me and Tom since there's less opportunity to nap inflight.

Mistake #2 - packing our stroller in this monstrosity. Believe me when I say that however it looks online, it is about a million times larger in real life. The only positive was that the bag is so big you can fill it with a bunch of the baby's other stuff. The drawback of that, of course, is that you've now packed your stroller.

Mistake #3 - packing our stroller. So now we're carrying/holding a 6 month old for two-ish hours at the airport. Doable, but not super convenient, especially while going through security while he's tired and restless.

Mishap #1 - flying into Pisa rather than Florence. The Florence airport is relatively small and we were told in the process of shutting down, so most flights into the area land in Pisa. Unfortunately, Pisa was experiencing severe wind that day, so after an aborted landing (about 20 feet from the ground, then the the pilot pulled up), we had to land in Genoa and wait on the plane for an hour before we could try Pisa again. Now, everyone told us to have a bottle ready for FDR for landing, to help with the air pressure in the ears. We did. But we used it up on that first landing attempt. So all we had for the other two landings was his pacifier, so as annoying as this was for us adults, poor FDR was really unhappy.

FDR on the tarmac in Genoa, expressing his thoughts on the situation

Mishap #2 - getting from Pisa to Florence. This is actually quite easy on the train. What is less easy is doing that with a baby, a (packed) stroller in a giant case, a duffel bag, a rolling suitcase, and a diaper bag. Fortunately we had the presence of mind to leave the car seat at the left luggage office at Pisa Centrale station because we knew we wouldn't be driving in Florence, so at least we weren't lugging that around.

Final mishap - our hotel in Florence is an 8 minute walk from the train station (Firenze Santa Maria Novella). At least it is without the aforementioned baby, stroller, stroller case, duffel bag, suitcase, and diaper bag. I wish we had a picture but I'm sure we looked like terrible parents, or at least, idiots.

I think we got to the hotel around 6:30pm. This included a few hours in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower (see next post!), but like I said, a long day.

Road trip! To the Cotswolds

The Cotswolds are an easy two-ish hour drive from London, though we did get off to a stressful start due to a huge f---up on the part of Europcar. Will not bore you with the details but be very careful with them! 

Jerry Seinfeld has some thoughts on the matter

In any case, we got off to a late, stressful start that was all the more inauspicious when I knocked the mirror off a parked car mere seconds after pulling out of the rental car driveway.

We decided on a road trip for our second vacation with FDR because we assumed we could just throw everything in the car and not have to worry about clever packing. The only issue was our Bugaboo, which as mentioned previously, is not well suited for travel - it doesn't exactly fold up, so it took up about half of our trunk space.

There are tons of great-looking B&Bs in the various charming towns of the Cotswolds. Unfortunately, other people had the same bright idea that we had to go over the three day bank holiday weekend, so we decided to go for a hotel.

Ellenborough Park is lovely, an old country manor that has been very nicely remodelled. Our room had a beautiful four-poster bed, and I guess FDR got used to it because he refused to sleep in the hotel crib and insisted he sleep with us.

Amazingly, since they knew we were traveling with a baby, the hotel supplied a diaper genie (well, the British kind) in our bathroom! Bonus points for that, for sure. The food at the hotel was great too.

I would definitely recommend an overnight trip from London to the Cotswolds. The area is littered with charming towns with names like "Stow-on-Wold" and "Chipping Norton". We stumbled across a bank holiday festival of some kind in "Bourton on the Water", which as you can see, Tom and FDR are enjoying (the Water, that is). It's the kind of place where you drive for half an hour, stop off in a small town to feed or change the little one (or feed yourself), and then keep going.

Stray observations on Paris

At two months, FDR still sleeps a lot. So we could get away with a 9pm cocktail in the beautiful atrium at the Westin because he was fast asleep in his stroller. He also didn't mind the 10pm boat cruise followed by the walk back to the hotel (zzzzzzzzzz). As long as we fed him and let him sleep in his stroller, he was fine.

He did not, however care for the hotel crib. If you have a Sleep Sheep or similar white noise device, bring it with you.

My French is very basic - I took it through high school and some college and have been refreshing myself with a great podcast called Coffee Break French. It turns out that if you start out an interaction at a restaurant or wherever with a cheery "Bonjour" and attempt French, most people (even Parisians) will be enormously helpful and will probably switch to English.

The kids/baby section at Le Bon Marche is bananas. If you need a €1200 Dior dress for your two year old daughter though, it's the place for you.

All in all, this was a perfect gentle introduction to traveling with bébé. I love Paris and hope to come back when he's older.

Bon voyage!

Seeing Paris with a baby in tow

Take long walks. Central Paris is beautiful for walking. Saturday evening, we walked from our hotel, through Place de la Concorde, across the Seine, stopped for dinner at Le Petit Thiou (where they happily made room for us and our stroller, on a Saturday night at 8pm), and then to the Eiffel Tower.

Take a cheesy boat cruise on the Seine. We'd already been up the Eiffel Tower on a previous trip, and figured FDR at 2 months wasn't very interested in that. The Bateaux Parisiens leave from the foot of the Tower, and are a nice way to see a bunch of the sights, especially at night when everything is lit up.

Eiffel Tower, lit up, as seen from the Seine

Explore the gardens. The Tuileries Gardens are just across the street from the Westin, and right in front of the Louvre. There are a few outdoor cafés where you can feed your little one while enjoying a glass of wine. How civilized!

The Tuilieries Gardens 

The Luxembourg Gardens are beautiful too, and are an easy walk, just south of the river. 

Note that many of the gardens in Paris are meant to be enjoyed from the path! In other words, don't count on enjoying a picnic lunch on the lawn...

Finally, if you find yourself in Paris on Bastille Day (the 14th of July), note that much of central Paris will be closed for the parade in the first part of the day. This includes many Metro stations and even pedestrian access to certain streets. Plan ahead if you need to be somewhere. Also, make sure to get your baby's photo taken with some cute French "soldiers".

Mangeons!

Food, like diapers, depend on your preference and what your baby is used to. For this trip, this was relatively easy because we've weaned him off breast milk and onto formula, and he isn't eating solid food yet. And since it was a short trip, we just packed enough formula for the weekend. Buying food is an option in many places of course, but if you or your baby are particular about brands (and we had a good thing going with him and HIPP Organic), bringing your own means one less thing to worry about. Are you sensing a pattern here??

It's also a good idea to buy some kind of container where you can pre-measure the formula you'll need for the day, so you don't have to lug a ton of formula around and then measure it while you're trying to eat at a restaurant or in a park. We use this one from Avent, and it's perfect.

Bottles take up more space in your luggage than you think they will, but the more you take, the less often you'll have to wash them. And there won't be a ton of room to wash them in a hotel bathroom sink (especially in a standard room in the Westin Paris). You may want to pack your own dish soap and bottle brush; these are annoying things to have to buy when you're on vacation.

I imagine in some ways it's much simpler if you are breast feeding! And I'm sure it can be more complicated too.

At two months old, our schedule did have to revolve around FDR's mealtimes somewhat. But we adapted, and the French love babies.

Our last afternoon in Paris, just before we had to catch the train back, Tom wanted to go to a restaurant he had been to on a business trip, Avenue. They were delightful, but slightly baffled when we asked for some hot water to heat FDR's bottle. The solution? A champagne bucket of course:

And here is Tom, multitasking:

How we roll in Paris!

We have the Bugaboo Cameleon and FDR still uses the cot, but decided to travel with the Maxi Cosi car seat + adapters for this trip so we could use the car seat in a (Paris) taxi if necessary.

Note - in London, you can just roll your stroller right into a London black cab and still have room for 2-3 adults, which might be one of the most awesome things ever. Not so anywhere else in the world as far as I'm aware.

London cab

I love the Bugaboo but it's not well suited to travel. It doesn't fold up into a super compact state, and has to be broken down into two parts. Still, it's what we had and was good to have the car seat attachment. FDR didn't seem to mind! 

I also think he was too little at two months for an upright umbrella folding stroller.

On this trip, we mainly walked everywhere because the Paris Metro is not at all conducive to those who travel on wheels, and also because we were slightly nervous about installing the car seat in a Parisian taxi. We're over that now - as lovely as walking through Paris can be, the walk from Gare du Nord to the Westin was not!

We did however make sure to take a photo at the Metro stop named for FDR. 

If you are planning to take the Metro, prepare for lots of stairs (don't try it alone). Also, don't try to rush onto the train after you've taken an adorable photo. The doors close fast, and hard, and Tom had a bruise to show for it - not a good look when you're carrying a baby. All was not lost though, there was a male model in workout gear there to pull me to safety.

The raison d'être of this blog!

So, the million dollar question - how many diapers did we need for a three day trip? How many did we bring, and how many did we use????

Well, we didn't need 24. And the truth is, we could have bought them at any grocery store. So on one hand, taking up all that space with diapers probably wasn't necessary, not least because you are schlepping your bags on and off the train.

That said, we're new parents trying to eliminate as much uncertainty as possible, so packing all these diapers helped on that front. Also in France (what we didn't know in advance) is that most stores are closed or have very limited hours on Sunday. Had we run out on our three day trip, we might have been really scrambling and stressed considering that third day was Sunday. And he was two months old, size 1 diapers, so it wasn't a HUGE amount of space.

My advice would be, for a short trip like this, just (over)pack your own diapers. You know they work, and you don't want to waste time running around Paris (or wherever) looking for the foreign equivalent.

Of course, if luggage space is really at a premium, unless you're going to somewhere really far flung, you can buy diapers anywhere. Not to mention, it's probably a terrible idea to travel with a two month old anywhere you can't buy diapers!

Bring a packet of wipes but you can buy those anywhere too (unless there's a brand you can't live without).

As Delicious Baby points out, it's probably a good idea to bring some plastic bags you can tie up poopy diapers in to contain the smell. You won't be traveling with your Diaper Genie!

Coming up - stroller, food, clothes - what else to pack!

Baby friendly Paris hotel - the Westin

Our first time in Paris, we stayed in a lovely boutique hotel in the 17th arrondissement, near the western edge of the city - it was really nice but other than the Arc de Triomphe, we had to get on the Metro to see any of the sights. Our second trip, we stayed in a charming old hotel in the Marais which we loved, but it doesn't have an elevator, i.e. not baby friendly. In the interests of keeping it easy, we decided a big, American chain hotel was our best option and cashed in a bunch of Starwood points to stay at the Westin Paris - Vendôme. 

TIP - when you're searching for hotels on TripAdvisor, you can look for hotels that have wheelchair access. Wheelchair access means there's an elevator, which means you're not carrying a stroller up and down 4 flights of stairs.

The other great thing about the Westin is that it's right in the center of Paris, steps away from the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens. The Paris Metro is decidedly stroller unfriendly. Lots and lots of stairs, and you'll often have to go up one set of stairs and down another while in the same station. No elevators, no ramps, and if you want to push a stroller through the turnstile, it may require human intervention from a Parisian Metro worker who may or may not be enjoying his café au lait at that moment. Given the Westin's location, we figured we could walk to most of the touristy places.

The downside to the Westin (and in fact, most of the hotels in Paris) is that the standard room is TINY. With the bed and then the crib for FDR, there was kind of nowhere to stand other than the shower. Upgrade the room if that's an option.

Pourquoi Paris?

One of the best things about travel in Europe is the Eurostar from London to Paris. It takes you from central London (Kings Cross) to central Paris (Gare du Nord) in slightly more than two hours. Security is a breeze - everything goes through the X-ray, but you can keep your shoes on and your laptop and toiletries in your bag. You can get to the station 30 minutes before the train leaves (they recommend 45) and have plenty of time. You go through immigration and get your passport stamped (if you're not an EU citizen) at the departure end, so once you arrive in Paris, YOU ARE IN PARIS. The first time we did it, we were slightly baffled when we just walked off the platform onto the street and thought we had done something wrong. Door to door from our home in London to the hotel in Paris takes 4 hours, including waiting time - probably faster than if you flew, and a million times less stressful.

So as I mentioned in the previous post, we decided to do Paris as our first trip with FDR because we knew it would be relatively stress free. I realize that train travel is not as practical an option in the US, but perhaps one day it will be!

FDR chilling on the Eurostar

Up next: how to pick a hotel in Paris!

About the blog (and us)

Tom and I moved to London in the fall of 2011, for a job opportunity he had here. Knowing that this wasn't going to be forever, one of our goals was to take full advantage of being able to travel around Europe so easily. And so between December 2011 and April 2013, we visited Marrakech (technically not Europe, but close enough), Paris (twice), Les Houches (France, just next to Chamonix), Prague, Barcelona, Thailand (also technically not Europe), Rome, Amsterdam, and Istanbul. 

Then, in May 2013, our son FDR arrived. He's awesome. And changed everything. We knew that we didn't want to stop traveling just because we had a baby, but we were brand new parents and had no idea how best to travel with a baby. How "baby friendly" are certain countries / cities / neighborhoods / hotels? How much do we need to bring with us? What are the best air travel strategies?

We decided for our first trip with him, at two months old, we would at least eliminate the third question with its infinite complexities and decided that taking the train to Paris was a good baby step (har har).

As for the second question, one of the things we ended up packing was a 24 pack of diapers for a Friday-Sunday trip. After going through 4 before getting to Paris, I wondered if "Paris on 8 diapers a day was too ambitious," and if we would have to buy Les Pampers at Le Monoprix or something.

Thus, the idea for this blog. 

This blog is for parents who travel, to give some tips and opinions on our trips with FDR, with the benefit of hindsight. It's what I wish I had before we, say, packed our giant Bugaboo Cameleon for a weekend in Florence. For all the information on the internet (TripAdvisor is a godsend and also a nightmare), there's not as much of the "DO this. DON'T do that." variety when it involves traveling with a baby. 

So enjoy, and I welcome your feedback!

Note: While the posts are dated when the events or travels approximately happened, the truth is I procrastinated setting this up until FDR's 1st birthday. The goal is to be caught up by the time we travel to Italy in July 2014. That said, forgive any strange leaps in verb tense or spotty details!