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.

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.