tips for your travels with little ones

before we left, i was nervous about the flight, how we would handle the taxi situation, whether to bring a car seat, how to plan the days, and on and on. 

love taza has a great one on traveling with babies here, and i completely agree with everything she said. i've written down other things we learned along the way, that we'll continue to use here in austin or elsewhere. the biggest thing is to stay loose, and the second biggest thing is to know that, to your child, everything is a toy. so be creative.

but most of all - don't trap yourself into thinking that it's too much trouble. because it's not. and honestly, it's when they're little that traveling is easiest. 

oh, and if you have travel tips (for yourself or with little ones), will you share?

provence

these are the last of our europe pictures. at least, i'm pretty sure they're the last of them. 

i wanted to start with - what i think is - the funniest picture of them all. the first picture of the post was also taken first. it was our first morning in aix-en-provence. among other things, you can see the picture on the wall is crooked, the drapes contrast the picture's crooked angle, and crap is everywhere. 

but the funniest to me is that every square foot of space in the hotel room is taken up by baby stuff. on the far wall, i couldn't even get out of bed on my side. i either rolled over to nik's or had to crawl to the bottom because there was just enough room for oliver's crib.

scan your eyes to the right (still against that far wall), and you'll see boxes that we had planned to ship home but never did because we're cheapskates and instead paid for it with sore arms. 

front and center: the stroller. we had to roll it to and fro every time we wanted to move around the bed. 

our hotel room was a jenga game.

we had a fantastic time in provence. we stayed in aix, and used that as a hub to explore from. and we learned from our mistake in normandy and rented a car. so, i've tried to note the areas we visited outside of aix mainly so i don't forget. it's so easy to do so, you know. 

this was the capstone to our 3 months abroad. we took this trip right before we left the country. so the night before we left for austin, we were on a train back to paris. we knew we were cutting it close, but decided to do it anyway. 

doing so pulled us away from the, "but we haven't seen this yet" back in paris toward the, "let's just get in the car and drive" feeling in the south of france. 

at the end of our stay, we were ready to come home. ready to settle, reestablish normalcy, find a rhythm to our day, and hear our own language being spoken. 

yesterday, nik and i got into the elevator, and nik shortened the handlebars of oliver's stroller. it's an old habit from paris' tiny elevators. i didn't catch it, but we both had a laugh when we realized what we did. 

to me, the joy of traveling is in those little moments that you don't think of until you realize that a city or a country or a lifestyle has changed you in some small way. that your life becomes a compilation of your experiences, and now useless habits bring a smile to your face.

our time in france meant that nik spent all day and every day with oliver for 3 months. that we extended the newborn bubble we were all living in. that we made new friends half a world away. that we visited with family, and made new plans for the future. that that that...

ste. croix beach.

aix-en-provence.

abbaye de senanque  + gordes.

chateauneuf-du-pape.

back in aix.

out & about

going through my stuff, i found this one that i failed to post. it has been saved for 2 months - to the day. 

all pictures taken in paris.

deauville | trouville | d-day beaches {kind of}

while in france, it was our goal to really see it. paris, countryside, north coast, south of france... all of it.  we were there for three months, so there's no way that we could say we saw all of it. but we saw a lot of it. 

when it came to traveling north to the beaches, we got a mixture of everything we wanted but not enough time. you know the feeling. 

and maybe because of that, this is the one part of france that we cannot wait to go back to. 

the long and the short of it is that we spent one night there, and that was not nearly enough time. and i don't even know how to tell you about our trip to the normandy beaches... we took half a day's worth of buses to get to spend four minutes in front of the memorial entrance before catching the first in a line of buses back to our hotel. 

essentially, talk to us if you want to know how to mess up your trip. 

regardless, it was emotional being in that region. people still hang allies' flags from the window sills. it gave {and still gives} me goosebumps. 

the best quiche we've ever ever ever had.

the best meal in all of france