mikeandaubredoeurope

[mikeandaubredoeurope]

A note on traveling and diapers: your kid will burn through 3 diapers in one hour even though they’ve never done that before when you only have 8 diapers total (why did you only pack 8 diapers?!). They will also poop as the plane is landing so you can’t change their diaper for 30 minutes. And then they’ll poop again at the start of a 35 minute bus ride into the city which is followed by a 12 minute walk to your airbnb. 😂 But honestly if this is the biggest travel hassle than 🤷🏻‍♀️ we can handle it. Everybody poops. Especially babies. Especially babies who travel.

[mikeandaubredoeurope]

It was such a fun arrival in Barcelona last night! Everything is decked out for the holidays. Christmas, New Years, and then Three Kings Day on January 6. And it was PACKED. After spending New Year’s in Quito a few years ago when most things seemed to be shut down during this time, Barcelona looks promising. Mike said it’s busier here now than it was when he was here at the height of summer. There are people EVERYWHERE. And I’ve already seen plenty of strollers and babies. 🙌 Our airbnb has a washer, 3 bedrooms, a baby cot, dishwasher and kitchen, an elevator, and a bathtub. All things we didn’t need before but now need when traveling with a baby. 😆

[mikeandaubredoeurope]

2 planes, 3 outfits, and 4 buses later, and we are here! Barcelona, here we come. But first...bed.

[mikeandaubredoeurope]

The travel gods were on our side! I kinda feel like we cheated on our first international flight with a baby because we SCORED A WHOLE ROW TO OURSELVES!!! Now granted it was the bulkhead row so the arm rests don’t go up so it’s not like we could lay down with the baby BUT we still had two extra seats to hold our baby crap and a place for her to sit in addition to the bassinet that we booked. I mean… it was pretty awesome.

It was 10 hours of flying time and honestly it went by pretty fast. We were flying over Chicago before I even checked the time (which is about 4 hours in). To give you an idea of how time intensive a baby is, I watched a total of ONE 90 minute movie during a 10 hour flight. 😂 And they had good movies too! They shut off the lights for a solid 5 hours and baby girl slept in the bassinet for only one of those hours. (I really think she would have slept longer if loud coughing guy wasn’t seated right behind us. Just one single loud cough every 45 minutes.) She slept on me for about 2-3 hours. I slept zero hours. I was just kinda paranoid. Let’s be real, it’s still stressful to fly even with a well behaved baby. Also (here comes the typical parent talk), we went though TWO outfit changes (that’s 3 pairs of PJs, people!!) on the plane. 🙈

I packed enough food and diapers for the long flight but I kinda forgot about the fact that we had the connecting flight plus travel time to the airbnb. We ended up being fine with what we had (and were able to pick up diapers and formula at Heathrow just in case) but that was definitely making me nervous.

Something I didn’t consider re: a baby sleeping on the plane is that there is just so much activity going on in a plane so babies who love people will constantly have someone to look at and entertain them, which is both a blessing and a curse. This baby girl did not sleep at all on our 2nd flight, which was crazy because she had to be exhausted. 😆 But again, so many people smiling at her and walking up and down the aisles.

Things said to us by people on our flights (all after inquiring if we were visiting “relations”): “Oh, you’re brave.” “For fun?!” “Good for you.” “Wow.”

So 4pm departure time, 10 hour flying time, 11am London landing time, 2pm departure to Barcelona, 6:30 check-in time to our airbnb. Oh, and no sleep. Needless to say we were all exhausted when we arrived!!!

[mikeandaubredoeurope]

Mike and Aubre do Europe... this time with a baby! We’re headed to Barcelona and Madrid. Wish us luck. First up: 12 hour flight to London.