u/Mycastleismine

Hello fellow travelers! I’ve been searching past posts and have seen lots of good things about both of these hotels but would love some help deciding. Some specifics about this trip…we are spending most of our time elsewhere but coming to Milan for basically one day and then flying out the next day. So just looking at one night. We’ll have three kids with us (a teenager, preteen, and toddler lol) so we’ll be getting a suite. The only things we have on our agenda are seeing the lords supper and taking family photos outside the duomo (although not sold on doing that, we may do it in one of our other locations.) Influence me one way or another and if you have any tips specific to either of these hotels on how to spend the rest of our time I’d love to hear that too. Thank you!

I wanted to book a Venice hotel with points but looking at it through the Amex portal it comes out to over $8k (or over 1 million points) but booking through the hotel directly would be €5.5k (or about $6.2k) is it really that inflated or am I missing something? I’ve been saving these points forever and feel like the value is even worse after seeing this.

I wanted to book a Venice hotel with points but looking at it through the Amex portal it comes out to over $8k (or over 1 million points) but booking through the hotel directly would be €5.5k (or about $6.2k) is it really that inflated or am I missing something? I’ve been saving these points forever and feel like the value is even worse after seeing this.

I’m 3 days early (baby turns 1 this week) but he’s solidly into toddlerhood so I hope it’s okay for me to just go ahead and post here because we had no problems in the baby phase but his toddler traits are already starting to cause a lot of stress.

This was a third, unexpected but miracle pregnancy. We were told we could not have more children. My older two are 12 and almost 10. We had moved into older childhood and while I had wished for more kids, we’d moved past it. Then here comes our surprise baby and he is truly such a special gift to our family…I don’t want my complaints to minimize that.

But I can tell he’s going to be our hardest toddler, and that’s saying something after our second who was eventually diagnosed with ODD.

And I’m older. I’m turning 40 soon. And I’m realizing that the mentality I had that we would just bring him along to everything that was a part of this life stage and he would need to be the flexible baby, was wrong.

The screams are unreal. Multiple times a day my Apple Watch tells me that I’m at risk for hearing loss due to the decibel he reaches. If he doesn’t get what he wants immediately he goes into full blown meltdown.

He is such a picky eater. I’m so fucking tired of him screaming through every meal and throwing anything we try to give him. We can’t go to restaurants anymore. We used to go out to eat as a family like once a week and every time we try it’s miserable. It’s just gotten worse and worse.

I know these are toddler traits, I’ve had toddlers, I know it’s normal. But I’m partially grieving the easier life we had with our older kids if I’m being honest.

We have a big milestone family trip to Italy planned next year to celebrate our 15th anniversary, including a Mediterranean cruise and then 2 more weeks exploring the country. He will be 22 months. We planned this back when he was a reasonable baby. But now that I’m seeing what kind of toddler he’s becoming I don’t think I can handle it and I kind of want to cancel it. But I only have 6 years with my oldest before he’s out of the house and I feel like time is not on my side, so putting off these experiences until the toddler is older feels unrealistic too. I know my husband and I could go on a trip like this on our own but I want our kids to see the world and really don’t like to go on trips without them.

Anyways, I’m so happy that we have this child he really is a miracle for us, but the shift in what we can and can’t do with him has been hard. I think I just needed to vent, thanks for reading.

This is my third baby but my first to cosleep with. Something that has been totally different this time is travel—it’s so much easier!! No stressing about the pack n play, scared that he isn’t going to sleep in a new environment, trying to put him down for naps in an unfamiliar place…we just lay down together and boom, sleep. We’re planning a trip to Rome next year and the only thing I’m worried about is the flight, everything else I know is going to be just fine. I wish I had done this with my first two.

We are sailing on Legend of the Seas in May 2027 out of Rome for some milestone birthdays and 15th wedding anniversary and I’m so excited! We are staying in the family infinite ocean view balcony with two adults and a 13, 10, and almost 2 year old. But I have so many questions!

1. I’ve only sailed on a couple older ships before, and sailing on a brand new ship actually makes me kind of nervous. How likely will be it be that there will be lots of issues like the Star has had? Slides shutting down, etc. The Legend will be sailing for about 9 months when we go.

2. Looking for experiences with the Rome port. The itinerary says 8 pm departure, when do they usually board? And likewise, 7 am disembarkation…how quickly could we get to the airport for an 11 am flight? I don’t know for sure if that’s what time it would be because they haven’t released those dates but that is my best guess at what time it will be based on the flights they have scheduled through March.

3. We are probably going to arrive 2 days before boarding to help with jet lag and see a bit of Rome. Given that we will need to acclimate to a new schedule anyway, would it be beneficial for the time change and activities to keep bedtime later and do a later dinner? If we were staying stateside, I would stick to the earliest dinner because that’ll be better for the toddler. But I’m wondering if the time change would make bedtime later anyway. My only concern is port excursions, what time in the morning do they leave? If anyone has been in a similar situation on an international cruise with a toddler I’d love to hear from you.

4. I noticed the Legend must be picking up passengers in Barcelona a few days after we depart Rome…I never realized they sold two departures that overlap! Is that typical? Do you notice that and does it cause any type of disruption?

5. I am learning that there’s something called The Key and somebody in another thread mentioned that it’s not necessary on the legend, but I’m curious why? I want to make things as smooth as possible so I thought that could be good but don’t want to waste money if not necessary.

6. Are door decorations still somewhat common on European itineraries or is that just a US thing?

7. What’s the car seat situation on excursions? Has anybody flown with their own car seat and brought it on the ship? That sounds miserable but we’ll do what we need to for safety.

I think that covers everything for now, I appreciate any and all insight that you guys would be willing to share!