The Pediatrician in Rome

Today we were supposed to do the Vatican tour, but after hearing about how crowded it is, we decided against it. We both agreed that taking James to such a crowded place with stairs and narrow halls would be really difficult. Also, as I mentioned in the last post, I was worried that he was starting to get sick and I kinda of wanted to take it easy and see how that played out.

When he woke up, he had a little low grade fever, and I decided to just pull the trigger and take him to the doctor. I think (actually, I know) that Justin thought I was overreacting and wanted to wait a little longer to see if things got better. However, he also knew that I was not going to be able to relax if I wasn’t sure that he didn’t have strep throat or an ear infection. Sooooooo, Justin somehow found a number to an English-speaking pediatrician, I called, and we had an appointment for later that afternoon.

Before the appointment we decided to walk to the Vatican just to see it, even though the tour didn’t work out. On our way, we passed through a market. I loved seeing all the fresh fruit, vegetables, meats, and cheeses. When we lived in Baton Rouge, I used to go to the farmer’s market every single Saturday morning. To say that I like markets is an understatement, and Italy seems to be the holy grail of markets. While we were there, We finally got James to eat something. He had a few pieces of watermelon, and I was thrilled. I’m pretty easy to please these days.

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The long journey to Rome

What a journey, but we finally made it to Rome!

To say that our travel day was a long day is a vast understatement.  I am so glad that it is over! Would I do it again? Probably, but time helps you forget some tortuous experiences.  If not, I think most people would only have one child, right? So here is how our day played out:

We left New Orleans around 10:45 am.  We had a 12:45 flight.  Besides a little traffic going to the airport, the morning went very smoothly.  James slept until 8:30. Of course, I was up at 6am to have some time to myself and make everyone a big breakfast to start the day off right.  Pancakes, eggs, and bacon, yum! James refused all of it and acted like I was poisoning him. Ok, great. Getting this kid to eat has become a giant challenge.

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Italy 2015 Itinerary

We’re here in Italy after a rough journey over (new plane, new seats on the plane, unhappy baby, etc.), but we made it and are glad to be here.  We’re going to try to keep up with blog – hopefully we do.  Chasing around a 15 month old occupies a lot of our time.

Alyce will follow up with more on our flights.  I just wanted to get a post in with out itinerary.  We fly into Rome and out of Venice, and this is where we’ll be stopping along the way:

Rome – 3 nights

Florence – 3 nights

Montalcino – 2 Nights

Castiglione Falletto (Barolo area in Piedmont) – 3 nights

Venice – 2 nights

That makes it 13 nights total, plus one night spent on the flight on the way over.  Here is the itinerary on Google Maps – though we are taking the train from Rome to Florence.

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Chicago May 2015

As previously mentioned, the California trip did not exactly go as planned.  We still were facing a trans-Atlantic flight to Italy in September and did not want that to be James’s first time on a plane.  Chicago was the perfect solution.

Several airlines fly non-stop to Chicago, and the flight is only about two hours.  Plus, flights were dirt cheap in May.  We booked on American for $105 round trip all in.  United had some flights even cheaper than that, but we missed them by the time we had plans nailed down.  This time, we went with three economy seats because first class was a lot more expensive.

James did pretty well on the flights.  He got a little antsy, but we broke out something he doesn’t really get at home – the Ipad.  That settled him.  He eventually fell asleep in both directions for about half of the flight.  The turbulence seemed to help with sleep; we were probably the only people on the plane hoping for turbulence.

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