vacanze romane: We are back!

So we are back! With completely jet-lagged Gaia who eats pasta in the middle of the night and who knows when she adjusts to the home local time!

But we made it. We travelled here and there, took several flights, changed time zones, drove a few days and changed hotels. Almost like we used to do 'before'. Our motto was to find a right balance between her and our needs. And I would say it worked: not perfectly but not as bad as we could expect this kind of holidays with a 2-year old toddler would. It was of course challenging and we had our breakdowns (with the biggest one in San Francisco at the end of our trip). And of course we came back very tired but it was our choice not to spend 2 weeks on the beach (which, let's admit it, sometimes I was regretting). We wanted to do something for us hoping that Gaia would enjoy it too.

And she did! She loved New York the most and we have never seen her so happy. With so many diverse playgrounds, water sprinklers, carousels, bubbles here and there, she was the happiest child in the world. We tried to control her excitement to avoid later tantrums but sometimes it just wasn't possible (like after the visit to the Central Park mini-zoo where she fed animals and had nightmares after). She also enjoyed our time in Orange County in California where we met P.'s English family, relaxing time in Santa Barbara, playing in the sea; she was also fine in the Big Sur. And she was definitely not fine in San Francisco. A return to a big city, sleeping in a small hotel room was too much for everybody.

By the way, parents also enjoyed the trip! It wasn't a classical honeymoon but hey, we did everything other way around having a child first and marrying later so here we have the consequences. Obviously going without a child would be more relaxing but we cannot anymore imagine the trip without her.

I will post more photos and describe our trip shortly. At the moment, let's hope that the jet lag will be soon over!