Travels begin...

Well, we've arrived!  The flight went remarkably smoothly – the extra legroomseats were well worth the money, and we actually ended up on a row of 3 seats to ourselves which was marvellous!!! There were also a number of really lovely people who helped me at both ends of the flight with the bags.  The problems only really started as we got to baggage reclaim, where I think Baby J realised just how tired he was and he threw a complete fit, lying on the floor screaming and arms and legs flailing. Nice!!!  One of those moments when I stood there saying to myself ‘There’s nobody else here …. There’s nobody else here …. ‘.  He finally fell asleep in my arms and I managed to transfer him to the pushchair before having to try and manage pushchair and luggage cart – not easy when both seem to have completely independent steering!!!

I was so grateful that we'd arranged for a water taxi from the airport to the hotel – it was expensive but it was well worth the money!!!  Everything went completely smoothly on the trip to the hotel – apart from the fact that J decided he was scared of the noise of the boat engine so we had to sit inside instead of out in the sunshine.  Oh well, I still got some amazing views of Venice!

The hotel was great – the room was a good size and lovely and cool, if somewhat quaintly decorated, and the staff were absolutely superb and couldn’t have been more helpful. When J refused to settle for a sleep, they suggested where we could go for a walk and a lovely little place for lunch – except J fell asleep before I got the food so I had lunch on my own!   I changed my plans for a walk when I realised just how horrendously difficult it was to get the push chair over the footbridges, and we just stayed on the far side of the Grand Canal for a bit.

We had a very pleasant time – I mooched and window shopped a bit, and once J woke up I bought a lovely lemon sorbet – I had the sorbet and J had the cone, and then he had a great time chasing a flock of pigeons!!!  In the evening we had an early tea in a backstreet café before everyone came out for the big Italy v Spain football match, and J ate about 2/3rds of my adult portion of pasta!!!

The next morning after a good night’s sleep and a very pleasant breakfast, we were sat outside the hotel passing some time watching the boats go by (J was transfixed!) when lovely hubby appeared 45 mins earlier than wewere expecting him!  J treated him to a huge smile when he saw him – there was no doubt he remembered Daddy!  We had a very easy transfer to the ship, but J fairly quickly started to get overwhelmed when we arrived and he was very enthusiastically greeted by a number of the crew – they were lovely and welcoming, just a little too much when he already had no idea where he was.  He’s starting to show some signs of settling in – sleeping a bit better and a bit more willing to walk rather than be carried – but he’s still throwing some very impressive tantrums over the most ridiculous things!!!  Hopefullythese will start to disappear as we both settle in to life onboard a bit more….

Then next call was Split in Croatia – amazingly beautiful place, and we went on a walking tour in the city.  We visited Diocletian’s Palace, the only Roman structure to still have most of its walls etc standing,

the Catholic cathedral which was originally Diocletian’s Mausoleum (ironic as he martyred loads of Christians!), and the Temple of Jupiter.

It was all really lovely and interesting, but once J woke up he very quickly got overheated and het up (it was 35 degrees!), and we had to leave early to get back to the air conditioned ship.

Then 2 sea days – and I am already finding how restricted the ship is because of its size – there are very few places to take J out of the cabin.  So I’m going to haveto get my brain in gear and get a little more creative with activities!!! 

And we just left Istanbul - had a great time, and I'll blog about that in the next installment.  In the meantime hubby is working and J's getting up to mischief so I'd better go .....