Little Footsteps in the Big World

At the end of last year my husband and I were talking about Metallica concert, they're doing a 2018 world tour. He asked me one brief question: "they'll be performing in Vienna and Milan. Which city would you prefer?" My answer was sure: "Vienna. We can do the zoo too with the kids. They've been dying to see giant pandas". "Alright, Vienna it is" he added. Then we realized that Metallica would perform on Saturday, March 31, and that it was long Easter weekend. All of the sudden I got the urge to invite two other families to do a long weekend trip. And all of the sudden it was twelve of us, out of which six were children. What the hell was I thinking?? We have been doing long Easter weekend trips for ages. We just always did it. We'd leave on Friday or Saturday, bring the whole Easter breakfast with us and arrange them on the table nicely on Sunday and we'll have nice Easter Sunday somewhere new. But we've never done it wi...

Oh it's been forever since the last time I wrote a post! I returned to work in January after a year of maternity and parental leave, so I'm basically now juggling between getting back in the game with my job, doing my PhD research (that is more or less abandoned), driving my two kids around (who unfortunately attend two different kindergartens, go to french classes, sport training and painting classes) and co-managing the household (forgotten laundry, overcooked dinners, sticky floors, messy kitchen) with a husband who's on business trips a lot. On top of that, we found out recently that we're moving abroad (hint, hint!) so things have been quite stressful More coffee wine please! Remember two business trips that happened during my maternity leave, to China and to Azerbaijan ? So my first business trip now that I'm officially back at work was to the Netherlands. Or as my firstborn said, to the Neverland (she's quite shocked to find out that I was visiting Pet...

It's pretty often when I see memes on my facebook timeline with similar phrases to "vacations with kids are basically business trip". And in my personal opinion, it's also the other way around: when you have kids, business trips are basically vacations. Well don't get me wrong, I enjoy traveling and vacationing with kids. As you might have noticed from my previous posts, we travel and vacation a lot with kids. However though, like most moms with babies, once in a while I wish I could just have a night away from the kids to just sleep for eight (or even six!) hours straight. And business trips, for me, are the answer to this. Of course I could easily have a night out with the girls, or with my husband, and leave the kids for a night to the grandma (or a sitter). And I do that, now and then. However, my needs sometimes extend beyond the need to sleep alone. I also miss being just by myself sometimes. Not being someone's mother, or someone's wife. I used to...

On my previous post about our story of cruising with little kids , I promised to write a separate post for tips and tricks for cruising on budget. I mentioned how we took the cheapest cabin available in the ship. The price also covers all meals and access to most facilities like pools, gym, theater, library, etc. Of course, you'd have to pay extra for spa and its services like massage. The good news is, kids don't pay until their 18th birthday, and they get their own beds in the parents' cabin. So if you're not crazy about private balcony or windows with sea-view, take the cheapest inside cabin for your family and spend most of your time on the outdoor deck. You'd literally just sleep and shower in the cabin. Apart from the main price of the cruise, these are our tips to keep your experience low budget: Research well to avoid taking their official shuttle Most cruise ports are located a little far from the city center or the old historic port of the town. B...

Two years ago we planned to go on a cruise. After a couple of years of saving and planning, we booked to sail in late summer of 2016. But then I got pregnant with our youngest and we had to delay sailing until I give birth. We re-booked for late summer 2017 and we finally sailed last week with Costa Pacifica , with two little kids instead of one. The ship departs from Savona, Italy, 800km from Zagreb, where we live. With the toddler and the baby, we knew it would probably be the drive from hell, so we decided to drive during the night, when both of them are asleep. We left home at 3am on Wednesday, and got to the port of Savona only at 1pm with five breaks from driving. Someone was hungry, someone needed the restroom, someone was crying, and all that. The deck where we spend most of our time At the port we were welcomed with valet parking, handed them the car key and our suitcases. We walked toward the terminal and were given priority boarding (yay!) and walked directly into th...