We made it to Florence!

After 2 flights and 18 hours of travel…we made it to our first stop! Let me just say, trans-Atlantic traveling with a 6 month old is not for the weak. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and honestly it was about how I expected. I think I just didn’t realize that even if both kids fell asleep around at their normal time around 7:30 and slept the whole flight, that was only about 5 hours of sleep compared to their regular 11-12 hours per night! And that wasn’t even the rough part…the rough part was the fact that Brennan and I got about 1 hour of sleep each and had to function on that until 8pm.

I do think Silas is about the perfect age for this trip. He’s so inquisitive and independent, and listens to us (mostly). He’s having a blast, and it’s making the trip so fun for us.

First off, you might have read my other 2 posts about packing. It’s a lot of stuff, but we are going to be gone for 24 days! I decided to put the kids clothes in a giant suitcase instead of 2 suitcases in order to make sure everything fits in our tiny European rental car, which resulted in that suitcase weighing 70lbs at the airport…whoops. It wasn’t an issue at the airport because of status, but became an issue when Brennan had to haul it up 4 flights of stairs at our Florence VRBO 😂 and he was worried about getting in his workouts on this trip…HAH!

We managed to Uber successfully to the airport, check in, and got Silas some chicken nuggets before we boarded. We took off at 4:20pm for our 9.5 hour flight. I had done my research…we splurged on premium economy bulkhead and had the row to ourselves, complete with a bassinet and right next to two huge airplane bathrooms.

Ready to board!

Nuggets and fries since we didn’t think he would eat the plane food…we were right.

Clementine fell asleep shortly after we boarded for her last nap of the day.

Silas watched a little bit of Paw Patrol before it was time to put PJs on on go to sleep. As I mentioned earlier, we had a great setup on the plane! Clementine even laid in the bassinet and played while Brennan and I ate dinner.

Around 7:30, we told Silas it was time to put the tablet away and go to sleep. So that’s just what he did (again, perfect age to travel).

Clementine slept in the bassinet off and on the rest of the flight. The only downside to it is any time the fasten seatbelt sign was on, we had to take her out of it and hold her.

Silas slept through breakfast and woke up as we were deplaning in Barcelona…but not before the flight attendant gave him his wings!

And just like that, we were in Spain. It’s been 15 years since I was last in Spain but memories came flooding back, even just in the airport! The first memory being how slow-paced the culture is. You just think the Latin/Miami culture in America is slow…where do you think they got it from originally?! There were only about 20 people ahead of us in the customs checkpoint and it took easily an hour for everyone to get through as they were checking everyone’s bags so thoroughly (and keep in mind, these were just our plane bags, not our checked bags)! Brennan was losing his mind - remember, we are on 1 hour of sleep. He’s seriously questioning why we are coming to Spain on our last leg of this trip 😂 you’re doing it for me babe.

One major travel hack I did was put Silas in a pull up before he went to sleep on the plane - it ended up saving us while we waited in the customs line! We finally made it through and headed to the lounge before our next flight. We all got a bite to eat and Clementine took a nap, then it was off to our gate.

I would say the airline we took to Florence was comparable to Allegiant in the states. Packed, hot and crappy. At this point everyone is pretty tired and we’re just trying to survive this short flight. The flight attendant comes to our row and gives us a seatbelt that I needed to buckle onto mine that was for Clementine. Honestly, I’m surprised more airlines don’t require this but Clementine was NOT having it. The screaming and tears I was waiting for on the first flight finally came on this flight. Thankfully it was only for takeoff and landing and the flight was only about an hour and ten minutes.

Buckled in!

We land in Florence and immediately I think both me and Brennan have a collective sigh of relief. We are almost there. Then we look out the plane window and realize we have to get on a shuttle bus to the airport 😂 we were the last ones on the shuttle and it was packed, but a very nice older Italian woman gave up her seat for me and Clementine. I was so grateful! Our bags came out super quickly, and everything was accounted for. My pre-booked taxi driver was calling me and waiting right out front for us. He loaded everything as we hooked up the car seats, he showed us some of the famous sites around the city as we were driving to our VRBO, then he unloaded everything. Thanks to my Aunt Mary and her spare change from her Italy trip back in November, I had €10 in the diaper bag (the only cash I had), and the driver was so grateful for the tip! It’s actually so nice to be in a non-tipping culture. American tipping culture has gotten completely out of control!

We did wait about 10 minutes for the VRBO host to arrive (I wasn’t expecting to get our bags and get to the apartment so quickly - that was fully my bad). The weather was perfection - partly cloudy and mid-60s. Brennan and I were laughing at everyone on the street wearing puffy coats and here we were with our baby in a short sleeve romper without socks 😂 he finally put a blanket on her because he thought people were staring LOL. I mentioned preparing for blow outs on a previous post and she finally had one in the stroller as we were waiting for our host to arrive. Luckily, I had detergent strips and was able to put her clothes right in the washer!

Silas waiting outside our apartment in the heart of the city!

As our host lets us in the building, she looks at our luggage skeptically and mentions the unit is on the second floor and there are a lot of steps. Brennan was like - we can handle two floors NO problem. Well we learned quickly that second floor is actually the third floor when the ground floor is zero. It’s about 80 steps up to the apartment and as I mentioned earlier, Bren did all of the heavy lifting. Silas was literally crawling up the last flight with his hands - we were all so exhausted.

We get into the apartment and I immediately start unpacking and getting the portable crib set up. Clementine and Brennan fell asleep quickly, while Silas and I were going to go to the grocery store together. But as we were getting his shoes on, he took a tumble off the bed and skinned his chin pretty bad, so all of our Europe pictures will have a skinned chin toddler 😂 He he stayed back at the apartment and Brennan came back to life as I went to the store. I knew I couldn’t get much because I needed water bottles for Clementine’s formula and was going to be climbing 80 steps carrying everything by myself. The grocery store was quite an experience. The manager was super nice, helped me find eggs (not refrigerated 🧐) and asked if I was making carbonara tonight. I was like sir - I can’t even think straight enough right now to pick out groceries for dinner 😅 they did have amazing prosciutto, fresh breads (proudly claiming no palm oil), cheeses and PASTA! Oh and everything was in Italian and the phone service is pretty spotty in these old Florence buildings. There really weren’t any American brands I recognized, so it took my remaining brain power to buy the right type of milk.

I walk back to the apartment and Brennan quickly realizes he needs to go to grocery store and actually buy food. He finds butter (pictured above), pasta, Italian sausage, parmigiano-reggiano and red sauce and makes us our first dinner in Italy. It was SO DELICIOUS, you can just tell food here has better ingredients and is fresher than in America. Even Silas ate some butter pasta!

God bless my husband for cooking!

The kids took a bath together and were in bed fast asleep by 7:30. Brennan and I were finally able to take showers, brush our teeth and change clothes for the first time in 24 hours and fell fast asleep around 8pm. But for one short midnight wake up (both kids), they were both back down around 1:30am and still sleeping at 8:30am when we had to wake them to get our day started. Everyone woke up refreshed and ready to tackle our first full day in Florence - a subject for tomorrow’s post!