Yes, you read right - 8 flights to visit 6 countries, in 4 long short weeks with our almost 4 year old twins and we survived! It all started innocently enough - my husband's cousin is currently teaching in Zurich, Switzerland for two years, we had some frequent flier miles and thus we decided to take a European vacation. We are a strange close-knit family and frequently travel with our mothers (and therefore mother-in-laws) and so we booked our tickets. I have family in Scotland and we decided to hop on over to the island to visit them as well.
We were due to leave on Tuesday October 6th, and the Saturday beforehand my mother-in-law was over at our house. I was talking with my next door neighbor when I heard my husband yell my name in a voice that I have never heard before. I ran back to our garage to find my mother-in-law on the ground. "I'm fine, I'm fine" she kept insisting, until she tried to stand. My husband and I looked at her knee cap, and we could tell it was split in half. Hubby and mom went off to the hospital and she had surgery the following day. Strike two!
Both moms insisted that we still go on vacation, but we were doubtful. Who would take care of the moms, and was some higher power trying to give us a not-so-subtle message? Plus, now we would be half a world away from our two very best babysitters!!
With both moms situated with family members and both of them giving us their blessing to go, we were off on flight #1 = San Francisco to London. We have the go-go-babyz wheelie contraptions for car seats so that we could take the car seats through the airport and on the plane with us. We learned from a previous flight a couple of years ago to remove the wheels before placing the airplane seat belt in the car seat (short version of that story - it took us 20 minutes to unbuckle the car seat on the plane because of the wheelies on the back of the car seat, all the while with the flight attendants breathing down our necks!) We buckled the kids in, and waited for take-off. Well, three of us waited for take-off - my son passed out before we even taxied away from the terminal and we had to wake him up in London! My kind of traveler!
We had a 3 hour "wait" in London, and since we were staying in the same terminal we figured we would have plenty of time to kill - I even contemplated having my cousins that live near by meet us at the airport for a quick visit. So much for that - it took us nearly all of that time to navigate security (again!), customs, and who knows what else. We had our picture taken, and then verified again prior to boarding our next plane and I'm sure all kinds of behind the scenes security that we will never know off. Our next airline stated that our car seats were too big to bring on the plane and they happily gate checked them for us. The kids got a kick out of just sitting in the plane seats minus the car seats and enjoyed the extra leg room. All was well until we picked up the car seats in Zurich and realized that the friendly personnel in London that had taken our car seats had left them outside in the POURING RAIN! So when we arrived at night in Zurich, the kids had to sit in wet car seats. Strike three!
The kids adapted super well to traveling around Europe, and in the morning my son would ask me "What hotel are we staying in tonight Mamma?" Meanwhile, I would be asking my hubby "What country are we in?" I left all of the trip planning to him, and honestly sometimes I didn't know if we were in Germany or France or Austria or Switzerland! (He did all of the driving, so I was busy entertaining the kids on the long drives - not looking at the map.) The kids learned how to breeze through security at the airports. While hubby and I would be fumbling with the Go-Go-Babyz wheelies (they don't fit through the x-ray machine and have to be removed from the car seat), and removing the laptop from its case, and finding the plastic bag of allowable liquids, the kids would go ahead of us, grab a tray, take off their shoes (usually rain boots), place them on the conveyer belt, and walk ahead of us through security! They got a lot of cute looks because they were usually still in their PJ's dressed in coordinating outfits (yes, with their rain boots - it's all about convenience!)
Before the trip I had taken the kids shopping and let them pick out their own suitcases. My son's is bright red and my daughter's is pink. They fell in love with their suitcases and wheeled them everywhere. They even insisted on pulling them off of the luggage carousel themselves. After one flight my son's was just about the last suitcase to arrive, and he was quite worried that it would be left on the airplane.
Probably the country that I loved the most was Austria. We stayed in some quaint towns, met some endearing locals, and went on many ski lifts to the top of mountains. The kids had asked to visit Venice because of a Little Einsteins documentary show they watched. We treated them to a gondola ride which was cool, but when they asked us why they didn't have to wear life jackets I was stumped. Hmmm, I'll have to get back to you on that one!
We didn't have any hotel reservations for the trip and just decided day to day where to go. We usually only had two requirements for a hotel - a radiator heater (to dry the clothes on that we washed in the sink!) and internet access so that we could Skype grandma! The kids figured out pretty quickly that if it was night time where we were, it was breakfast time in California. Of course, in some of the smaller towns internet access was not available, so we would go without it for a few days. We survived and so did the grandmas. The other advantage of the internet was the ability to upload photos and share them with everyone back in California. We actually have a few videos of the kids saying "Oooh, Grandma wouldn't like this!"
My husband and I joked that we gauged this trip by all of the playgrounds that we visited. The playgrounds are quite a bit different in Europe than they are over here and the kids loved it. We found zip lines on a playground at 6000 feet and slides that knock your socks off (or at least the wind out of you!) The kids were puzzled at first as to why the other kids weren't talking with them at the playground. We explained that they didn't speak the same language and after our kids realized that verbal communication wouldn't work they did what kids do best - improvise! They had a blast playing with other kids in all of the countries that we visited and it was a great experience for them. Now when they hear some one speaking in another language, they ask me what language it is. Did we miss the grandmas on the trip? Absolutely yes! Did we perhaps partake in some adventures on the trip that we probably wouldn't have done if the grandmas were with us? Absolutely yes! Did we take full advantage of the grandmas when we returned from our trip? Absolutely yes!
This is an original post to Mad About Multiples.
When Pam isn't trying to get through airline security, she can be found at Gilroy Gardens or Mountain School with her kids.
