venice preview

Once you settle into a routine with a baby it’s tough to venture outside of it. But then what? Then you’re stuck at home every weekend, doing the same thing you do every other weekend. Which is fine, but we’ve found that we need to get out in order to appreciate where we are. I’m sure you’ve felt the same at some point. Venice might not have been our first choice (I’ve already been there twice), but the wave of we-need-an-adventure came over us quickly and with friends already headed that way we decided to head that way too.

I have some tips for traveling with a baby, but most of all we've learned that you need to set appropriate expectations for how much you're going to see and do. There's no sense in having a pound-the-pavement attitude because you'll end up exhausted and on the other side of town with a cranky baby and no clear way to get back to your hotel. That happened to us on Saturday. We walked to the Jewish Ghetto by way of the Rialto Bridge and pretty much as soon as we arrived we each had our own mini breakdown - I was hot and hungry, Zach was getting sunburnt and Alice was tired of being in the carrier.  Eager to just get somewhere and quick we jumped on a water taxi headed in the direction of our hotel, but of course it took the long way home, typical. Anyway, we made it back, and stayed in the hotel the rest of the afternoon and devised a new plan for the following days: we'd let Alice nap at the hotel and we'd take little excursions into the city between naps. It worked remarkably well. Accustomed to leaving the hotel and not coming back until bedtime I enjoyed having moments throughout the day to regroup and relax.

We enjoyed Venice, but I think our next trip will have to be somewhere a bit more kid friendly. It was difficult to put Alice down in Venice; there were no green spaces and the courtyards were all stone and quite dirty, not to mention filled with overly friendly pigeons. (Why oh why do people insist on feeding the pigeons in San Marco? It makes me want to gag just thinking about pigeons pecking there way up someones arm.) I think I'll look into some beachside spots, with Sicily high on the list. More Venice pictures to come in the following days.