Before the end of my 18 week maternity leave, we wanted to do a big trip. We had always planned to visit our good friends Adam and Stacey in Rome, Italy. (Check out their neat website about living in Italy: https://yupstersinrome.wordpress.com/) So we went to Italy for a week! We went with Dash and his grandparents.
We had a smooth experience flying with a baby. It was Dash’s first international trip. It was my second trip to Italy and Care Bear’s first. I was in Italy for about 10 days when I lived in Hungary when I was about 15 years old.
We stayed with Adam and Stacey in their gorgeous, awesome apartment in central Rome.
We flew British Airways, 10 hours from San Francisco to London, then 2.5 hours from London to Rome.
For international flights, airlines have baby bassinets. They pull out like a table from in front of the bulkhead seats. We had reserved beforehand the bulkhead seats and had requested the bassinet. Dash’s flight ticket was 10% of an adult ticket price.
Dash slept in the bassinet for six hours, without waking up, in the ten hour flight. It was a physical relief for both Care Bear and I to have Dash lie down in the bassinet, instead of us holding him in our laps.
I had been bidding my time since I was little when I saw those bassinets in international flights until I get to use them. And I finally did! It was awesome.
On our first day, we went to the Colosseum. The line was about 1.5 hours.
Traveler tip: We were choosing between two ticket lines, one at the Colosseum and one at Palatino, another tourist sight. The same exact ticket from either lets you enter both. The Palatino line is much shorter, so get in line there instead of at the Colosseum.
Inside the Colosseum, there was so much to see, in museum-style display and exhibits. They used to do Hunger Games-style survival-of-the-fittest group death matches inside the stadium, with animals. Oh have we come a long way to more civility. Or have we not?! Widening inequality gap? Worsening pollution of Earth?
I digress.
In the afternoon, we walked to where Adam and Stacey both work, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN)! They live and work within walking distance to the Colosseum. So cool.
For dinner, we walked to a steakhouse in the Ghetto, where we had delicious Roman fare. It was a lovely stroll at night to and from the restaurant, through Rome’s ubiquitous and beautiful ancient ruins.
ALIEN TO AMERICAN 