This was to be our first family trip with James, as well as our first trip in over a year. But thing did not go exactly as planned…
Alyce had a week off in early March. In planning, we knew we wanted to take James somewhere to test out flying/travelling with him prior to our planned Italy trip (in fall 2015). It is still pretty cool in lots of places in March, so that led us back to one of our favorite destinations because we were confident that we would have good weather. California. And the weather was great.
The plan was to fly into San Francisco and rent a car. Then drive to Carmel and spend three nights there. Then spend a night in San Francisco in route to Napa, where we would spend the final three nights. All hotels, flights, wine tastings, etc. were booked.
But that is when things went awry. A couple days before we were set to leave, James came down with an ear infection—and that came with a strong recommendation against flying. We weighed our options, which ranged from completely canceling the trip to Alyce staying behind and meeting me with James if he got better…to any other conceivable option.
Ultimately, we decided to go ahead and go alone for an abbreviated trip and leave James with his grandparents for a couple days. Alyce would travel the first three days then head back, and I’d spend one night in San Francisco since we had used an award night that we could not get back.
This ended up working out well. While I wish James would have been able to make the trip with us, the few days Alyce and I had alone were very relaxing.
On to the actual trip…As mentioned, the weather was fantastic. Sunshine and spring time temperatures. If anything, it was a little warm in the middle of the day. Renting a car worked out great – driving is pretty easy in California.
