What’s the funniest thing that happened to you last year?
From my new blog in English
www.colorzz.co
Last year it was all about adjusting to life with new baby.
We started to travel again and added more hours to our flights gradually. First there were one hour flights to Long Beach and Park City, Utah from Vegas, then come December there was much anticipated trip to Miami with 5 h flight from Vegas to Miami Beach for Art Basel Miami.
We go every year and previous trip was when I was 30 weeks pregnant. This time all would be pretty different as we would have a 9 month old boy with us.
Our friends from Miami invited us to stay with them in their new house. As they had a toddler I thought it would be much more comfortable than hotel.
Surprises started one day before the flight. I called to coordinate the timing of arrival and found out that the girlfriend is pregnant 7 months with second baby and also is very sick with cold.
Yes, we didn’t talk to them awhile…Usually we catch up once a year during Basel time in Miami.
They just returned from France and moved in to a new house which was not fully ready.
Here I had doubts and asked my husband whether we should burden them and additionally not expose us to the possible cold.
Efi said, no, I will have free parking if we stay in the house, and during Art Basel time it’s worth it!
What I didn’t expect when we arrived was that the house was completely empty with only one sofa in the living room. The appliances were stolen from them previous week so our friends didn’t have even a fridge. They rushed to prepare our bedroom though and there was bed and a crib.
On top of that the next day my husband contracted very severe cold, cough and fever so I didn’t have a choice but move all my family to hotel in the times when hotels are triple price during the Art Basel week
Efi spent 3 days laying down in bed sick like I never have seen him before. Baby got sick too with fever and one day I felt very desperate that I didn’t take nanny to help me as my husband said he would help but I ended up taking care of 2 of them and moving my family by myself twice between hotels with all the suitcases and strollers.
The solution came with Inspirato, travel subscription service with whom I signed up immediately as they promised to put me in a nice 1 Hotel. It was sold out by the way weeks before and Inspirato still had access to one of the last rooms that was cancelled by another traveller. From there our time started to be much more enjoyable and my family started to recover. Between hectic days and crowds arriving to Miami the hotel gave us by mistake 2 rooms so I invited our friends for a weekend so they could escape their empty house and have some good time as well.
Instead of them hosting us it was opposite. We spent wonderful weekend together and even got to some art exhibitions.
One more funny thing was that when we got to Art Miami we didn’t realize that they don’t allow strollers on weekends, another new thing in 10 years of attending the shows. My husband was still too week to carry the baby through the halls of exhibits so we switched places while one was walking and another was sitting with the baby on outside patio.
Overall we enjoyed our time, walking on the beach, soaking in the sun and the ocean breeze, looking at the international crowds who descend upon Miami from different countries to see the latest from the art world. Next time hopefully we will not have surprises as I will plan our trips as I usually do and this first Miami trip of Liam will be a fun story to tell him when he grows up.