Trains, planes and automobiles …

Six flights; three days of driving and eight consecutive hours on a train. Then there’s a couple of suburban bus trips and a few of those mini-trams up and down the hillsides of Lisbon; a weird half tram, half ski-lift type thing up the bank of the Douro; taxis to and from airports, and of course the many miles just walking about. That’s the long and the short of it. Fair to say we’re now very much looking forward to stopping in Valencia for five and a half weeks and maybe (no definitely) investing in a pusher.

What a terrible blogger I am turning into. Here I am summarising; generalising, clearly to make up for my general tardiness. My mum has already been on my case about the duration between entries, and now that pesky Reservoir Dad has linked in, applying more pressure to the whole travelling Dad angle … just when I thought I was becoming too obsessed with the little one … too much the kind of reformed human being people expect new parents to be … or am I really channelling my own expectations now that I’m a new parent. I don’t know. We’ll have to see. I guess that’s the kind of thing I should write down on these virtual pages. I don’t know. If I think about it too much I won’t get anywhere.
To hell with it; back to summarising, for the time being at least until I catch up … maybe I’ll make it really easy for myself and write a list.
Yes, a list. Here goes:

Five good things about travelling with an infant:

1.       They (babies) are reasonably light and portable and of course, self-cleaning*

2.       Priority boarding (cue jumping) on all planes except Ryan Air (where you get precisely what you pay for, and there are no favours for the small fry)

3.       Extra legroom that comes with the bulkhead (basinet) seats

4.       People tend to talk to you more readily and sometimes even entertain the child when she’s had enough of the folks. A mother and daughter from Granada virtually adopted her on the train ride here. We’d been trying to get her to settle lying down on a seat when really she only needed a couple of strangers cooing over her and she was perfectly happy.

5.       Banding together and sharing the load. This is the unexpected upside of a few things on the negatives list, but as much as I frown upon high fives anywhere off the volleyball court (where Top Gun really made them mandatory), the end of a long and well executed journey can often be experienced as a deep and profound sense of shared accomplishment worthy of a bit of hand slapping … 

* I know babies aren't really self-cleaning. I just put that in to make our baby sound really advanced

Bad things about travelling with an infant:

1.       They quickly become heavy and unwieldy, especially when carrying them up a long incline.

2.       Confinement: generally the trepidation of travelling with child is due to being in a confined space. It’s not the tantrums that you fear, but just not being able to escape to a private place.

3.       Difficulty in doing regular baby maintenance on the move: It seems like nappy changes are more frequent and explosive (necessitating full clothing changes, I mean it's not like babies can clean themselves) and they're particularly difficult in plane toilets, even with the fold down change tables.

4.       People tend to talk to you more readily

5.       Embarrassment when you find yourselves doing silly things you would never have done before, like wearing child carriers around like they’re a fashion item, or like high fiving in baggage claim halls in front of your fellow passengers.

So on the whole maybe the good and the bad balance out. In terms of changes to travel arrangements it’s all about planning, timing and flexibility: same three things that seem to be most important at home now the Pants wears the pants at our place. But it’s a lot better travelling because … well it’s just a lot better travelling. You’re all in it together. You’ve got time and space to enjoy it all. We get to a place, put the baby on the bed; she smiles up at us and starts sucking her toes. We talk about what we’re going to do for dinner, where we talk about what we’re going to do tomorrow. We pass the baby across the table and pass the time.