It Only Took Us 34 Hours From Door To Door

Yes, that’s right. We left our apartment in NYC at 3.30 pm and arrived at my family’s house at 7.30 pm of the day after (plus the 6 hours time difference).

Not bad. Considering that Luca only slept 2 solid hours through the whole flight and mommy zero, that we missed our connecting flight in Paris so we were basically stuck at the airport for 4 hours doing absolutely nothing (have you ever tried to entertain a baby for 4 fucking hours? I think I know by heart now every single gates and flight company at Charles de Gaulle airport, how many seats there are per gates and how many toilets and food stands).

Air France was great, they took really good care of us and the flight attendants where very good at entertaining Luca, in fact he had a blast. The only thing that really pissed me off was when we missed our connecting flight, first because we were an hour late from NY and second because they didn’t really tell me when I booked my ticket that the connecting flight to Italy was leaving from a whole different terminal and we had to walk about 2 miles, go through passport and security checks all over again…yeah that’s a bummer! But overall we really had a pleasant experience. Thank you Air France…and thank you Marian!

Luca was a trouper. He really enjoyed flying and never, ever cried on the plane, not even for a second. He was amazed by all the people around him, the gadgets, the toys the noises and when he was tired he would take a cat nap. I had people passing him around and playing with him on the plane, kind of a free babysitting service, which was very handy especially when mommy needed to eat or go to the bathroom.

Then once we got to Italy we had a 3 hours train ride to get to the Adriatic Coast. Even that was great. He mostly snacked, slept and made new friend. At one point I even thought about shacking him and asking him what did he ever done with MY Luca. This was not my baby. It was too good to be true.

Well, I knew I had spoken too soon and I was soon reminded of this. The first night was just a….nightmare. We slept together in my big bed and maybe was the unfamiliar place and fact that by then he was definitely overtired and over stimulated…he fucking woke up every single hour on the dot.

But with a lot of patience and a zombie-like face, mommy managed to overcome also this little obstacle and started dreaming about the peaceful weeks we had ahead of us.

(To be continued…)

DCP: A little suggestion when traveling with a baby, don’t carry 2000 pounds of stuff in your carry-on bag. I realized that all he wanted was to look around and play with whatever he had in front of him….even the food tray on the plane was unbelievingly entertaining to him. I still have a mark on my shoulder for carrying that stupid bag.