It’s only been four years, and what started out as a catch-all blog for my various travels and projects has turned into a full-fledged family travel blog now. I figured, it’s here, it’s pretty, why not use it to document our International Baby and his adventures in the Kelty Backpack Carrier?
Traveling to Italy came about in probably three different ways. I got bitten hard by the travel bug when a certain someone who used to work for me quit her job to become a flight attendant. I wouldn’t say I was gripped by envy – I’m not exactly cut out for the “friendly skies” – but I was definitely feeling some kind of way about having kept my feet on terra firma for over two years due to pregnancy and lack of funds.
Normally when I want to travel, it ultimately fizzles out because I have a difficult time deciding where to go and committing to it fully. This time, the destination was easy: my sister, Kathleen, previously featured on my 2015 European Adventures, is currently stationed in Italy, and I’ve never been there! A text to her around Thanksgiving asking for a good late winter/early spring time frame was all it took, and then came the question that would be asked constantly over the ensuing three months: “Is Ollie going with you?”
Finally, I had a really hard end of 2018, personally and professionally. It’s a busy time of year in both of our careers, it’s always a loaded time emotionally for my husband, and I was going through a work transition that was taking a lot out of me. It’s no coincidence that Justin and I pulled the trigger on actually making it A Plan during the week between Christmas and New Years.
Passports were acquired/updated in early January, and I waited until they came in before booking the tickets in February. After that, it was all up to Kathleen to do the planning, which she seemed happy to do.
We were set to leave on Monday, March 25th, out of Jacksonville with a layover at JFK and then a redeye to Milan. Gambit went to his previous trainer’s house, and Lucy went to stay with her grandparents and her Uncle Shane; my dad was obliging enough to drive us to the airport that morning, and both parents were nice enough to host Justin’s dad and his wife for dinner the previous night so that all of the grandparents could get a hit of that sweet sweet Ollie before he jetsetted to the land of wine and pasta.
People tended to ask us if we were nervous about traveling with Oliver, especially since this was his first time on planes, and I admitted to a lot of anxiety involving the flights. Ollie is a rambunctious and active kid, if he’s sitting still doing nothing, we know he’s sick. The thought of strapping him down for an eight hour flight was daunting.
The first flight went perfectly, he was interested in takeoff and watched out the window the whole time, and ate some apple sauce from a squeeze pouch to help relieve the pressure in his ears. Once we were steady, he was happy to sit still and play a shapes game on Justin’s phone. It was only a two hour flight, so it barely registered.
Transferring flights took a while; we were flying Emirates to Milan and their desk didn’t open for another hour, and Ollie had fallen asleep in the backpack carrier as we changed terminals, so he got some sleep as we waited to check in.
We grabbed dinner at that famous New York eatery known as “Buffalo Wild Wings,” maybe you’ve heard of it, and then we got some post-security supplies for the plane, namely apple juice. {Having never flown with a baby before, I didn’t know that most airports let you go through security with liquids if they’re For The Baby; I had assumed this only applied to breastmilk or formula, but even bottled water and juice would’ve been accepted. The money I could’ve saved!}
We waited at our gate and were shocked to board a mostly-empty flight. There were maybe ten people in our entire section, and we had our four-person row to ourselves. We also had the first row of seats so that Justin could have leg room, so overall, it was perfect. Ollie fell asleep very early in the flight, Justin and I took turns holding him and dozing, and it worked out perfectly because Ollie woke up around the time we landed, 11am, which is close to his normal wake up time. By now, it was Tuesday morning in Italy.
And Ollie took time to appreciate the view.
Kathleen had booked us our train from Milan to Venice, and then the connecting train from Venice to the town she lives in, which is Sacile. That left it up to us to get tickets from the airport to Milano Centrale, and that went super smoothly, especially considering I only have a college education of the language. We made it in plenty of time to catch our long train to Venice, where Kathleen had booked us seats in a group of four and we had to share with a woman who boxed us in and generally made Ollie miserable, as he wasn’t able to flail and move around freely as he would’ve preferred. It felt interminable, but we took turns dozing and Ollie napped for a bit.
Changing trains in Venice was easy, but the train itself was not. It was a regional train with very few cars but lots of commuters, so we stood with all of our luggage for about 45 minutes before we – finally – arrived in the beautiful town of Sacile, and I immediately spotted my sister’s smiling face on the platform.
She lives within a 7 minute walk from the train station, but she was nice enough to bring her car to pick us up since we’d been wrangling our luggage all day. By now it was dusk, around 6pm, and we loaded Ollie up in the car seat she’d borrowed from a friend and drank in the sight of Sacile coming to life that night.
I would describe her living space as a townhome, since it’s attached, though most locals seem to call it a house. It’s a total of four stories, but she doesn’t have access to the cellar, so she lives on the other three floors. It’s pretty much quintessential European living, but with modern touches, and even though we spent a lot of time discouraging Ollie from climbing the stairs, it’s truly an enviable house.
The best part about the house, though, is the view.
She has a small balcony that overlooks the canal, and the canal itself is the typical view of Sacile – seriously, if you Google it, the first image that pops up is the exact same view from her balcony. She really lucked out in getting this place, but that’s a story for her to tell.
We decompressed and unpacked as she showed us around her place, and then asked if we wanted to go to dinner. I was looking forward to this.
She informed us that we were eating “old person early” in Italy – 7:30pm – but it was okay because we were jetlagged and tourists so it would be fine. I laughed, but when we got to the restaurant, it was definitely 100% empty. Undaunted, we settled in with Ollie in a cute little high chair and ordered some pizzas.
Well, it didn’t last long. This was the first of two times that a meal was marked by Ollie throwing up. This time, a string of mozzarella got stuck down his throat, and being 18 months old, Ollie panicked and gagged. We were about halfway through our pizzas and only a quarter of the way through the wine, but since Kathleen lived right around the corner and we were tired anyway, we just scooped him up, paid, and left. (We went back out with a clean baby to get some gelato, because as they say, When in Sacile!)
That night was fun because after we got Ollie cleaned up and re-fed, he got some valuable facetime with his aunt whom he’d only met once in his life. And Kathleen got to show off her VR game where we smash cubes with lightsabers in time to music as we ate our leftover pizza and drank Limoncello! 10/10 highly recommend after your baby ruins your meal by throwing up.
This is what we used for Ollie’s bed, it’s the Guava Lotus Travel Crib which is a bit more affordable than the more popular BabyBjorn version. It folds into a backpack and it was what I carried on my back while Justin carried the actual baby on his. It was very comfortable and Ollie slept well in it. I wish we’d gotten this as our original playpen when he was born, instead of the oversized Graco one we’d registered for, but eh, you live and learn.
The next morning, Kathleen took us to Aviano Air Force Base to give us a tour of where she works and a very general outline of her job. We took pictures on the way in and then no more pictures, because she works in intelligence (ba dum tiss!) and a lot of what she deals with is classified, so even though I made a ton of jokes about annexing the moon and such, we didn’t take pictures as she took us on a two hour tour of her base.
After a tour of the base, we headed up into the mountains to Lake Barcis (bar-chiss) for lunch and a hike. Kathleen had sent us pictures and videos of this lake before, since it’s only about 25 minutes away from where she works, but we still weren’t prepared for how beautiful it is in person.
We ate at the restaurant by the lake, a mom-and-pop place that was crowded with people. I got a delicious pork cutlet in a lemon sauce, and Justin got an herb chicken with zucchini on the side, which is notable because the zucchini is what made Ollie throw up during this meal. At this point we were getting worried that he had a bug, or nerves were making him struggle to keep food down, but ultimately he didn’t throw up during any more meals for the rest of the trip.
We were better prepared for this incident and got him cleaned up. After lunch and table wine, we walked over to the lake.
It was actually low that day, there had been a bad storm a few weeks before we visited that filled the lake with debris, and the process of cleaning it out involved draining it down to a manageable level, so it was slowly refilling by the time we saw it.
And then it was time to hike!
It only took about 5 minutes to make it to the first overlook.
It was a suspension that jutted out about 20 feet with plexiglass at the end so that you could look straight down at the steep drop below you.
It would’ve been really easy to just turn around and be happy with what we’d seen of the lake, but there were two more overlooks and the hike was an easy one, so we figured, why not?
The second overlook was not as scenic of the lake, but looking straight down into the gorge was pretty cool.
And eventually, we made it to the last and best overlook.
It was situated on a hill with a spiral staircase at the top.
And Justin insisted on doing a #sponsored photo with his Salomans.
The hike back down was cool, we saw some kind of wild animal cross the path in front of us at one point (something like an elk? a deer?) and Ollie took his afternoon nap.
When we got back down to the car, we opted to walk to the village of Barcis rather than drive, since we wanted to let Ollie sleep, and it was a very scenic walk around the lake.
Barcis was a ghost town, Kathleen warned us that we were a couple weeks too early for tourist season, so nothing was open but it was still a scenic walk through a very pretty town.
By the time we got back to the car, Ollie was awake again, so we loaded up and headed back down the mountain.
We stopped at a vineyard where we intended to do a tasting and a tour, but their English speaker was on vacation, so we did an abbreviated tasting and ended up with a couple of bottles of this really delicious red wine.
And ended up with probably one of my favorite photos of Ollie I’ll ever take:
That night, we had plans to meet up with Kathleen’s coworker, Sondra, an Australian-born Italian woman whose husband is a farmer. First, we had drinks in the square in Sacile, where Justin discovered his great love for spritz Aperol. This will be recurring in the next few posts.
After drinks, we headed to Polcenigo to a pizzeria called El Mordisco, where we learned from a very emphatic Sondra that Italians do not drink wine with pizza… so… it’s a good thing I’m not Italian.
Justin got a pizza with French fries on it and Ollie stuck to his little crunchy snacks that we’d picked up at the commissary on the way off the base earlier in the day; we didn’t want to risk another vomit session.
When we got back, Ollie ran his pre-bedtime laps between the staircase and his aunt Kathleen in the kitchen, then he went to bed relatively easily, at which point it was time for us to drink limoncello and smash more musical cubes with lightsabers.
And then the next morning, we had an early train to catch to the Cinque Terre.
And Ollie was ready to go!
You, Me, and Ollie! 