KTMusings

I’m writing this from my own bed at 6:30am - we made it home safely and everyone seems to have slept through the night - yay and yay! We were awake almost 24 hours yesterday, made even longer for me … that dinner Thursday night that I said wasn’t good? Well, even worse, it gave me food poisoning. We discovered Thursday that the girls beds had trundles, so Lauren slept there and Abby slept in the twin above her and I slept in their room for the last night - got me out of the bed I disliked - ha! I woke up at 12, 1, 2 and thought I was just nervous about missing my 4am alarm, but then at 3 I woke up with terrible diarrhea. GI issues are never fun, but on a travel day?! Thank goodness Jeff travels with Imodium ever since his GI issues when we were in Costa Rica years ago, so I took some and got ready. I will spare any more details because I think I have coworkers reading this blog - hahaha - but it was a harrowing travel day for me.  So, Jeff is usually our Sherpa - he had a big backp...

Yesterday we enjoyed our slow start, girls watched tablets, I made coffee and read. When we left the apt we saw water bubbling up through some of the drains - turns out it was high tide and the water was already high, so it was coming UP through the vents it usually drains down into. We were mostly able to get around and avoid the puddles.  We wandered for a bit and then decided to do a gondola ride - they are pricey, but we figured we’re maybe only here once. Had we thought about it / asked about the  water we would have waited, but we didn’t know. We actually had to wade though a puddle to board (my leather shoes kept me dry, but Jeff got wet - we carried the girls over the puddle). We got started and soon realized what high tide meant for the gondolas - they barely fit under the bridges! In fact, the gondolier had to ask Jeff to go sit in the front of the boat to weigh that side down because of the high point in front - ha! And then he still had to practically dump us sidew...

We met Lucia at 9am and walked around Venice a bit more before getting on a private boat to head to Murano. It was a beautiful boat and we all sat in the small cabin. It took all of 3 min for Abby to get sea sick. We scrambled to find a bag (our ziplock full of PBJs - ha!) - she didn’t end up needing it, but I felt bad for her. We arrived at a private dock and sat outside for a few min to let her recover. Then a nice man took us into their glass blowing studio … it was HOT. We got to watch them blow glass for a bit - he explained they had two masters with them that day - one who was 83 and making gazelles and one who was 78 and making vases. It was fascinating to watch! He apologized for not having an apprentice there that day, apparently they generally do a short demo of making a little fish or something easy. He said the masters work from 8a-noon, though the one that makes colorful glasses works 8a-4p. The gazelle is actually made in pieces - first the head, then they keep that warm ...

We had a very good travel day yesterday - got up and had breakfast at the hotel (Abby takes down about 8 pieces of bacon! And some cucumbers - ha). We keep lucking out on the rain - it was supposed to be raining pretty good for our walk to the train station, but was totally dry. We sat around there (no chairs/benches anywhere!) for over half an hour since our train was delayed. But knew better what to expect and didn’t have the stroller (yay!).  I still had some surprises in my bag - I bought some mini play dough sets and the girls did that a bit and then watched tablets. We had lunch on board (PBJs, bananas, the snacks from the train) and arrived in Venice close to 1. We found a restroom - it took credit cards, which was nice, and I’d tap my card and then send the girls through one at a time telling them to wait for me on the other side!   Walking out of the train station right up to the Grand Canal, I couldn’t stop smiling! It was drizzling, but we got tickets quickly and ho...

Pretty similar day to yesterday - everyone slept ok,  made the most of our extra hour. We went down to breakfast (crowded today!) and then back to our room - the girls like to brush teeth after breakfast instead of before. We left about 9:45 to walk to the Leonardo Divinci Interactive Museum. It was pretty cool - had a bunch of Divinci’s inventions you could try out. Our tickets were for 10:30 and we got right in and spent about an hour there. It wasn’t a very big location, but had probably two dozen things to try out.  When we left we headed back to the Duomo plaza for gelato (what else?!) - the girls are getting good at picking two flavors for their cups! And Jeff and I even got some this time.  We then headed towards the Ponte Vecchio - I truly thought it was more souvenir shops, but it seemed to be all high end jewelry. And complete back to back people. Couldn’t even get a pic on the bridge (there’s one part halfway across where there aren’t shops and you can actually...

Everyone had their best collective night of sleep yet! We all slept through the night - I was awake at 7, but had my eyes closed and I even heard Abby climb out of her bed next to me and then climb back in and put herself back to sleep for 90 min (she later told me that was in the middle of the night - God bless the babies who can’t tell time yet!). We all got up about 8:30 and got ready and went down to breakfast - it was fair: Lauren had pancakes (reheated in a toaster), passed on her hard boiled egg (Jeff ate it). Abby tried something kinda like Frosted Flakes, but didn’t like them. She ate 5 pieces of bacon and they each ate a kiwi. I had coffee and a chocolate croissant and a little scrambled egg. Jeff ate eggs and bacon and then made a ham and cheese sandwich. And lots of OJ for the girls! We then walked towards the Duomo and the girls legs just wouldn’t work. They popped up a bit through Piazza Santa Maria Novella because there was a craft market and souvenir shops. Practically ...

Today was a travel day, and all went smoothly from that perspective - the rain let up for us to walk to a taxi stand with all our stuff and then our train was on time - we had 4 seats with a table between them for our 1.5 hour ride to Florence. When we arrived we were only a 10 min walk from our hotel. But the day was really rough. I think my anxiety around traveling with all our crap on a train meant the girls fed off that and were not listening, talking back, arguing over who got to ride in the stroller (answer - no one, I carried the darn thing from the train station to our hotel. Seriously considering leaving it here - I want it for getting through the airports when we get home, but otherwise it is definitely not good to have here). I lost my patience a lot as did Jeff.  We relaxed in the hotel room for a while when we got here and fhen left around 5 to find dinner. We were spoiled in Rome city center with everything open all the time, several restaurants we found here close af...