Thu 28 Sep 2006
The last 6 weeks have been a whirlwind of excitement! Everything is still in flux post the holiday (including sleep patterns) but the washing has been done, the cupboards are packed and photos are downloaded.
Lucy loves to stand up. She can’t do this by herself yet so every time she is held she pushes her legs around until she is held upright. So we bought her a jolly jumper! She absolutely loves it and can dance around in it for quite some time whilst giggling and laughing. (She can also make spirographs with her dribble but that’s another story) We have the stand set up in the lounge room so she can look out across Jannali whilst she jives away to music.
Lucy is fascinated with her feet. She can stare at them for ages and (when she isn’t wearing a nappy) she can even put her big toe into her mouth. She can recognise both Andrew and I from photos (on the computer) and loves to look at her own photo as well. Mirrors are great!
Lucy is now starting to wear size 0 clothes. There was a panic last week in the hot weather as there were hardly any t-shirts or shorts in size 00 in the cupboard. Thankfully size 0 fits well for some things so I am putting a few smaller clothes into mothballs. As I’ve said before things move fast around here! Lucy is starting to look like her dad again. She certainly imitates him in some of her behaviour!
Lucy had her first trip on the Manly ferry on Saturday. We drove into the city and enjoyed lunch at the Lindt café in Martin Place (the chocolate mousse series we ate overseas is not here yet but the yoghurt series is). We caught the ferry and wandered along the corso dodging the construction work. At the beach Lucy put her feet into the sand and kicked it around everywhere (including in her eyes which didn’t particularly bother her) and generally enjoyed herself! According to Andrew the water was a bit too cold for swimming but it was a gorgeous day and we enjoyed the cool breeze on the ferry.
Tips for travel
Ok here are the tips for travelling with a baby. You can pick and choose from the selection below. If you don’t agree with any just ignore them. Happy to discuss any further if you want.
- The younger the baby the easier it is on the plane. Babies like to sleep and eat so if you have a bassinet and a good food supply they will be pretty happy on the plane. From discussions with other parents on the plane the flight over was definitely easier than the return flight as on the return the baby is much more alert and wants to play (due to being that month or so older).
Ignore ALL comments from other passengers. Your baby is likely to be much better behaved than all other children on the plane. They don’t want to run around, they don’t kick the seat in front and they don’t whine about the food.
I got lots of advice about feeding the baby on takeoff and landing. For the first couple of takeoffs we were fastidious about doing so. But then one take off Lucy was fast asleep and couldn’t be woken up. So we just let her sleep and she was fine. Landings are not as steep a drop as take offs are in ascending so we never fed her on landings and she was ok. We had the dummy handy just in case but she was fine. So I guess the tip is that feeding on takeoff and landing are good to keep the baby calm but not essential so don’t freak out if they won’t feed.
Bassinets. Check the bassinet size limitation on the plane. On Qantas it is 11.8kg in weight and 70cm long. Also Qantas will not guarantee you a bassinet until they do their final seat distribution which occurs 4 hours before the flight. So you can ring them ahead of time as much as you like but they still won’t confirm anything. The thought of holding a baby for 22 hours and 50 minutes was pretty stressful so it may be worth checking out other airlines that do guarantee a bassinet. They provided a baby blanket and offered Heinz baby food. We didn’t have to get the baby out of the bassinet during turbulence but we did have to have the seat belt on the bassinet at all times. Have a spare sheet or thin blanket handy so that you can tie it onto the bassinet to make a roof so that lights aren’t shining in your babies eyes. The Qantas adult ‘blankets’ were good for this. We had blue tack as well but tying it on was ok.
Changing time. Andrew changed Lucy on the plane every time – what a good dad! The tip for changing is to have everything ready to go in. Getting the bag out from the overhead locker and rummaging through every time was a pain. Make up several ‘change bags’ and keep them under your seat. I recommend: a nappy, a disposable change mat, a wipe, mittens and a nappy disposal bag. Put all the contents inside the nappy disposal bag. Put the mittens on the baby before you go in (to prevent them wiping their hands down the walls and then putting them in their mouth) and then you don’t need to bring anything back (except if you are reusing the change mat). You need to be careful that they don’t put the mittens in their mouth! And don’t reuse the mittens.
Have LOTS and LOTS of bibs. Also bring several jumpsuits for the baby and a spare t-shirt for each adult as carry on luggage.
Take up offers of help from people around you.
Don’t travel alone unless you have to. From observation on our flight it is do-able to go on your own but A LOT harder.
People are VERY friendly to babies and their parents. We met lots of people whilst out and about (though often we could only communicate in sign language and facial expressions as our German is extremely limited). It was free to take Lucy (and the pram) anywhere (except the international flight)
Budget European airlines do not allow free luggage for infants. Qantas allowed us 10kg for Lucy but said it had to be a separate bag (annoying because 3 bags, a pram and a baby are more difficult to manage than 2 bags, a pram and a baby). It cost us ₤5 per kilo in luggage costs. However we only encountered this in London as in Germany we were not charged any luggage costs despite being significantly over weight.
Most airlines allow you to take your stroller to the plane door (while you board on the tarmac). However we had the pram loaded up with the travel cot so we couldn’t do this. The pram is free regardless of weight (so stack it up with stuff but only if you are sure it is extremely tightly strapped in). But given its shape it had to go to the ‘bulky’ items checkin after the usual checkin, so allow extra time. At some airports this meant that the pram came out at a different spot than the usual baggage carousel so check around when you land so you know where to look. At Heathrow some luggage guys came out of a lift carrying the pram and dumped it on the floor in a painted on square for large luggage.
One of the adults should order a special meal. Let me explain. When Lucy was asleep and meals were served it was very easy. However if she was awake or feeding then there was no place to put the food tray and in economy they are NOT happy about coming back. On our flights the special meals came out ½ hour to 1 hour before everyone else. If one adult has a special meal then they can eat and be cleared away before the other adult is served. This way the adult that isn’t eating can hold the baby. Not very nice (esp. if you are the adult eating second) but potentially easier for everyone.
It was good to take all baby supplies with us. We filled up the space with chocolates for the return home. We can’t read dutch or german so it was a lot easier to have everything with us and then if we ran out to grab something from the supermarket.
We used many modes of transport (car, train, tram, plane, ferry etc). The difficult ones for a pram were buses, canal boats and punts! London underground tubes stations were a nightmare for prams but the German stations mostly had lifts for kinderwagons. We had the bjorn in the bottom of the pram and used it occassionally.
Fri 22 Sep 2006
G’day, we’re back! After 40 hours of constant travelling you can hardly imagine how good it felt to arrive back in Sydney on Sunday. We’ve had a busy week but let me finish our travel story off first then I’ll let you know what we’ve been doing since then.
Berlin
On our last day in Berlin we visited the Judisches museum, as well as a famous chocolate shop, and went to the post office. It was a relaxing way to end our holiday. That night we packed our bags weighing in at 28.5kg, 17.3kg, 9.3kg and 18.6kg (pram) respectively. Certainly a little heavier than when we left yet we had used up all the nappies, wipes etc. Must have been all those Lindt chocolates! We very much enjoyed Berlin – from the ampelman in the former east Berlin, to the historical monuments, the chocolate, and the Pergamon museum we have had a ball. Dad doesn’t want to go home.
We’re on our way…
But the express train to Schoenefeld airport was late, the easyjet plane to London Luton was late, and the airport bus from Luton to Heathrow was late. Lucky we had 8 hours to wait until our Qantas flight home! So we stayed at the Hilton at Terminal 4 for a few hours and had a sleep and a shower. We were then ready to hit the check in queue (a 3 hour wait).
Fortunately Dad joked around with the BA lady looking after the queue and she managed to get us on the customer service queue with only 3 people in front of us. Check in still took about 45 minutes but it was much much faster than the normal queue! People made rude comments about how much baggage we had but we didn’t care because they were just jealous that they had to wait longer. My cuteness has certainly made things easier in many ways.
Plane flight
We sat next to 5½ month old Jack and behind us was the exact same family that was behind us on the way over! (Mum had the mum behind her this time)
I slept for most of the first flight but was a little grizzly in between my two sleeps. Thankfully I was wide awake for our stop over in Bangkok. As we walked past shops, all the assistants left their places to greet me in the corridor! Shoplifting could have been going on and they would not have cared because they just wanted to meet and talk to me! They thought I was so cute and of course I loved all the attention. Mum and Dad were pretty spun out!
We arrived at Sydney airport to be greeted by grandpa, grandma and grandad! I was a bit cross due to staying awake for the last 3 hours but otherwise was ok. I had a quick nap at home before we all headed off to church.
Sonja comes to visit
I met my parents friend Sonja for the first time! It was fun to have her stay over so I thought I’d make the most of the time and make lots of noise at night time (feeding at 1:30am and 4:30am on Thursday morning). We all went to craft on Thursday but were feeling a little tired by then!
Mum and I have also been to the baby health clinic, as well as the doctor we have organised lots of domestic things.
Some news about me:
- I am 67cm long (off the charts for my age group!)
I am 6.86kg (90th percentile)
I can blow raspberries
I can roll from front to back and from back to front
I got my first handbag
I had my second lot of immunisation injections this week
Well that’s it for our travelling adventures for the moment. I’ll sign off now and hand back to mum who can resume blogging next week. (Poor mum is still jet lagged!) I think she might have some tips for travelling with a baby. Why you need tips I don’t understand as I had a great time. See ya!
Thu 14 Sep 2006
Guten Tag! We have enjoyed a lovely week of summer here in Berlin, Germany. It’s 26 degrees, the people are friendly to cute babies, and there are lifts (mostly) for the kinderwagon. Again there are lots of bicycles but we are mostly catching trains (waiting on the wrong platforms) and trams. Our main means of transport however is walking and both mum & dad have sore feet. They reckon they’ve walked 25km in the past week (Dad should know as he’s taken the GPS with us everywhere).
Why Berlin?
When mum planned this holiday a number of factors came in. The timing was set by dad’s work so that meant the first week was Cambridge for Auntie Kat’s birthday. The second factor was that we wanted to visit somewhere we hadn’t been before. The next factor was that we wanted to visit another Guggenheim museum. Having been to Venice, New York and Las Vegas we had two to choose from Bilbao or Berlin. Bilbao was extremely tempting but a beach holiday with a 3 month baby wasn’t sensible so Berlin it was. Amsterdam, situated between Cambridge and Berlin slotted in for week 2. So how was the Berlin Guggenheim? In a word, terrible. To say that the gallery space is the size of our lounge and study together is not a major exaggeration. It was tiny and only contained one work by one artist. If it was Vermeer’s Milkmaid or Rembrandt’s Night watchmen you could justify it but for anyone else it is a bit of a joke. So we looked at the wolves, used their facilities and kept our entrance euros (free on Mondays), left the building and kept walking down Unter den Linden without batting an eyelid. Thankfully Berlin has so much to offer that the 20 minute sidetrack didn’t waste our time from seeing other attractions. Berlin is a very interesting city that is undergoing a lot of change so much so that it will look quite different in 10 years time.
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
This camp served as a model for all other concentration camps and is just a 45 minute train ride from the Brandenburg gate. Inmates made bricks, counterfeit notes, and tested boot leather on a special track. It’s in the middle of suburbia so every one knew about it and people still live in the general’s houses (they’ve just added satellite dishes). It just felt wrong. We were expecting to be in the middle of nowhere and yet there is so much ordinary life going on around it. Equally ironic is that the Berlin police are setting up a shooting range in the former SS training ground!! The camp itself was massive. Only a small part survives today and even then it is in poor condition due to Russian and East German destruction and neglect. There are many sad stories from this camp. It was very eerie walking around the autopsy room, especially when it was empty of other tourists. Dad says these guys must have been nazis to make people work 14 hour days and only feed them vegetable soup and he was surprised that the gas chamber was so small and was only used once, maybe twice. Mum says dad’s not allowed to call her a nazi anymore.
We’re going to the zoo…
I saw giraffes, elephants, zebras, a seal show, two humped (bactrian) camels, chickens, kangaroos, gorillas and orang-utans but slept through the lions, pandas, hippos and a mongoose pulling intestines out of a rat. The cages were a bit primative, much like the old taronga zoo. Here they feed headless yellow baby chicks to most other animals and we saw them everywhere. Dad asked if the babies were bred from the chickens we had seen earlier in the day…
Walking around Berlin
On a walking tour we saw all the major sites including the Brandenburg gate, Hitler’s bunker, Checkpoint Charlie, Museum island, Gendarmemarket, Bebel platz, and the Holocaust memorial site.
We’ve been to Potsdamer platz a hundred times to do some shopping as well as look at the new building and unsuccessfully cache.
I’ve stood on the site of the old Berlin wall and had my photo taken!
Tuesday
- Took an elevator up the TV tower in Alexander platz. The tower itself is a monstrosity but it has awesome views. We enjoyed lunch in the telecafe revolving restaurant and watched the world go by (well Berlin anyway)
- Wandered around the Pergamon museum. A fantastic museum that I can’t do justice to in words now. We saw the Pergamon altar (much more detailed than the Elgin marbles), the restored gates of Babylon and the market gate of Miletus (being restored after WWII bombing). After 2 hours of wandering we were exhausted and gave up.
Wednesday
We did drei interesting things on Wednesday:
- Climbed the Reichstag. My kinderwagon contents had to be removed and xrayed and then I got a security pat down in my pram before being allowed into the lift to the cupola. What a drama! This was on top of getting to the Reichstag at 7:45am to avoid the crowds (we also got a tourist free photo of the Brandenburg Gate). The view from the top was excellent.
- Shopped at KaDeWe. A major department store with a great food court. Level 7 where the main buffet is located was closed but we still had fun looking at chocolates, chateau yquem bottles (1975), and cheeses.
- Visited theTopography of Terror. The site of several Nazi headquarters (Gestapo, SS etc) provided some chilling history lessons
Strange places to feed
I am still feeding 5 times a day. Given the first and last feeds of the day are at home, this still leaves 3 feeds that could be almost anywhere! Here are some of those places:
- punting on the river Cam in a downpour
- in the garden of the Rijksmuseum
- at a seal show at Berlin zoo
- outside the infirmary of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
- various museums and sights including Pergamon museum, and Topography of Terror,
- numerous trains, buses, boats, planes, cars etc
Supermarket shopping
We’ve been to four supermarkets so far – Plus, Netto, Aldi and Kaisers. Kaisers is like Coles but the other 3 are like Aldi in Australia (strange brands presented in cardboard boxes). Lindt is in abundance, sooo many different types including guava, ginger, cherry & chilli, milk & honey, orange & marscarpone just to name a few. We’ve tried a few pieces of schwartzwalder kirsch torte but haven’t been overly impressed.
We are leaving early Friday morning to fly to London, then home to Sydney. Until next week auf weidersehen. See you soon!
Fri 08 Sep 2006
Hallo! We are in The Netherlands, Amsterdam specifically. Everyone here speaks English very well but it can be a bit tricky interpreting Dutch on food packets. Too many people smoke here including in restaurants and boats. We are all healthy and well rested after a day of napping and cruising. Both Cambridge and Amsterdam are cities famous for bicycles but unfortunately I am too small to ride on the back or front! Fortunately both are also famous for water and I like sailing/punting. Here is a run down of the past week:
London calling
First stop is the British museum where we saw the Elgin marbles, the Rosetta stone, Sutton Hoo and the Lewis chess men. Last time mum & dad didn’t see the marble friezes because they thought they would see most of them in Greece. However by far the majority are in the BM with some flimsy reasoning for not giving them back. The chessmen were awesome and i bought daddy a replica set for fathers day.
We walked past St Paul’s cathedral to see the freshly cleaned facade. It was awesome! Then across the Millenium bridge to the Tate modern. Mum & Dad did a tour to see Dali, Warhol, Monet, Matisse(snail),and Pollock whilst Auntie Katrina minded me (as long as i was fed, changed, asleep and didn’t cry!)
Auntie Katrina’s 30th
- We had lunch at the Red Lion – a seafood and lamb feast (Kat, Inger, Mum, Dad and me)
- Afternoon cream tea at The Orchard. Very civilised.
- Thai for dinner (about 20 of us)
- Presents from us included cheese & bacon balls, a garden setting, plants,and a hep B injection.
- Mummy and Auntie Katrina wore their new monsoon dresses… Check out the shop at www.monsoon.co.uk I also wore a monsoon dress!
Amazing Amsterdam
- 35min plane flight but an 8.5hr journey door to door (including 2 caches) made for a long long day
- Tight security at Stansted airport meant we had to squash our carry on luggage into a very small space (and the security guy was amazed that we could!)
- Strange appliances… All in dutch. Combined oven/microwave and a combined washer/dryer were difficult to interpret!
- Swish apartment… Wide door(unusual), dishwasher and cable TV (watched the US Open)
- Pannenkoeken for breakfast with slagroom (pancakes with cream)
- Mum’s banana fetish – they are SO cheap
- Dad befriends the homeless … one person acts as a personal guide
- Supermarket (albert heijn) stocks orange and strawberry juice. Its delicious.
Sights of Amsterdam
- Rijksmuseum – Good tour included a model ship, Rembrandt and Vermeer. I had 2 feeds in the manicured gardens here.
- Vondelpark – nice green space for lunch and caching
- Van Gogh museum – didn’t enjoy this and cried the whole time
- Aalsmeer flower market – 1 million square metres of market, distribution space etc. Saw so many beautiful flowers but couldn’t buy any! Dad bought some for mum later on. Massive auction rooms were a flurry of activity, mostly for exports. 2 billion roses sold per year. 1 hour bus ride out of Amsterdam
- Amsterdam Historisch museum – not very pram friendly and we got here late so only saw a small portion of what’s on offer. Amazed at the changing landscape of Amsterdam over the past 300 years. Got Auntie Julie’s poster
- Anne Frank house – my favourite place. It was great to walk through the very small secret annexe and see where she had lived.
- Albert Cuypmarkt – grungy street market
- Canal cruise through the famous canals and harbour of Amsterdam
Sights of Rotterdam
- We took the scenic ‘sprinter’ train to Rotterdam via Gouda and the fast ‘sneltrain’ back through Delft, The Hague, Leiden and Haarlem
- Museum Boijmans van Beuningen – amazing place but doesn’t cater well for non-Dutch speakers. Dali, Van Eyk, Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet, Magritte (man with a bowler hat and an apple), ‘the tower of babel’. Amazing place with free entry and almost no tourists. The beautiful gardens provided a picnic spot for lunch
- Kinderdijk – UNESCO world heritage site where 19 17th century windmills have been located. Only one is open to visitors as the others are owned privately and people live there permanently. About 4 floors high the windmills are an awesome sight. Internally they do not meet today’s OH&S standards! We caught a boat there and back which was a relaxing way to travel esp. because it was SO hot. I was jiving away in a short sleeve jumpsuit.
Some more firsts
- meal at the pub (Blue Lion AND Red Lion)
- public transport… train ride, tram ride, bus ride, boat ride
- caching at Blackfriars bridge, and other spots
- sleeping for 11 hours straight and having to be woken up
We are traveling to Berlin tomorrow. Dag until next week. For a couple of photos check out the ‘baby photos’ link.
