Heading Home and Final Thoughts

Our travel home was mostly uneventful. The car service picked us up at 7:40 and it was a short 20 min ride to the airport. The kids did great on the flight from Rome to Chicago. Ainsley watched Bluey and Tom & Jerry on repeat while the boys watched episodes of Survivor while Whitaker took a nap and played games on his iPad. Unfortunately our flight from Chicago to Madison was delayed a bit but we finally made it home. It’s so warm here it feels like we’re still in Rome except we have good air conditioning and ice water!

Final observations:

• Italy is really hot in the summer and nothing is cold except gelato. It was consistently 90+ degrees the entire time except in Greece. At every restaurant we asked for ice because it just wasn’t common in Italy or Greece. So, so hot.

• The cruise was once again a great way to travel with kids. There was always something everyone would eat. We’ve never had so much pizza in our lives during our time in Italy. The kids did a lot of different activities this time. They only did the ship detective once and spent a lot more time in the pool. They also did a few more of the planned events like towel animals and animation classes which was fun.

• Keely did an amazing job planning this trip for 17 people and finding activities that would interest everyone. Things as simple as getting to different locations isn’t easy when coordinating so many families and the car services all worked great.

• We had amazing tour guides for our big tours. Our favorite was probably Brando from the Rome food tour but they all did a great job keeping the kids engaged and educating the adults. Again, kudos to Keely for all the research that went in to finding these amazing tours.

• There were several unexpected cousin friendships formed during the trip: Griffin and Whit, Ainsley and Lillian, Liam and everyone. It was so fun to see which kids paired up each day or each activity. Twelve days is a really long time to spend together and the kids all got along well.

• Compared to our last family trip to Europe, we pushed the kids way harder this time. Due to the heat, we started most tours and port stops earlier than last time. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the evening activities all started 45+ min later than our last cruise too. Having the Frozen and Aladdin shows end after 10:00 pm and starting the next day’s activities between 8-9am resulted in even more exhausted kids.

• Similar to Barcelona, traveling to Italy and Greece with kids is really quite simple. People were very accommodating, bumped us to the front of lines when possible, and helped when needed. The streets are less accessible for strollers but otherwise it was pretty easy.

• Lastly, this amazing, once in a lifetime all family trip was only made possible because Mom and Dad wanted to do it with us. A million thank yous to them for making such a trip possible and for instilling family values in us that not only are vacations important but also the value and desire to spend time together as one big family.

Until next time!