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.