After our six week stint in France, the past week(ish) has been a whirlwind with multiple trains, subways, buses, cars and even boats (Venice is always fun). Resilience has continued to be our main theme in the school of life that travel just gives so many chances to embrace. Our departure from France was complicated by a nationwide rail strike that we discovered on arrival at the train station (us and a few million other people). Since we no longer had a place to stay in France but had pre-paid our apartment in Turino, alternate travel was the name of the game. As chance would have it, there was a bus going exactly where we needed to go with only one stop and arrived at the same time as our originally scheduled train – win! So off to Italy we went, time for pasta, pizza and gelato.
Northern Italy came into our plans late which is why it was a short stay with lots of moving around. One day in each of Turino, Milano, Castelfranco, Venezia and Treviso. We’re getting better at estimating what and how much to pack into a single day, our set-up looks something like this:
- 4-5 hour outings trips are best, though we can stretch if required
- Figure out public transportation early, use it often
- Each day needs a morning snack, lunch stop and an afternoon snack, otherwise dad gets grumpy
- Museums need to be limited to around 2 hours per location, otherwise somebody gets bored and grumpy
- Playgrounds should be included at least once a day, twice is better to avoid everyone getting grumpy
- Gelato fixes most problems (including the grumps).
Through the week, the three favorites were the Automotive Museum in Turin, the whole city of Venice and our B&B/apartment in Castelfranco because of the courtyard and field for running around. Throughout this trip, we get to see amazing things (Paris, Venice – no explanation required), but we’re appreciating the value of simple things that mean so much, like having a backyard to play.
At the end of our day in Treviso, we caught the night train to Vienna. For the second time in a week, a rail strike was looming (this one in Italy), but we were boarding an Austrian train so we escaped delay. Riding an overnight train was a novelty we wanted the kids to experience (it turns out to be no more economical than a night in a hotel). The experience was everything we hoped for, although actually sleeping on a train that starts and stops and makes lots of noise was challenging. We arrived in Vienna a little tired but rested enough to explore this new city. More on that in the next post.