Here are some lessons learned while taking our son to nineteen countries in his first sixteen months.

1. Introduce your child to everyone who can make your trip easier. I have been overwhelmed by the kindness shown to us as soon as people meet our little guy. The people checking you in might give your luggage “priority” tags, ensure you have the bulkhead, or snag a spare seat for your lap infant. Fellow passengers might entertain your child. The hotel concierge might give you a bigger room. The waiter might suggest a special meal.

2. Ride the red-eye and skip the stopovers as soon as they start to crawl. When he was four months old, our baby happily slept day and night in the bulkhead bassinet on our flights to Australia. After he was seven months old, I preferred to take long-haul trips while he was asleep, and pay a little extra to get there as soon as possible. Note that if there is turbulence, they will make you scoop up your baby from his bulkhead bassinet and hold him in your arms. This usually when I start wishing that we had paid for that extra seat.

3. Plan for luggage to be lost. I arrived in India at 3 a.m. with one baby but no checked luggage. Luckily I had packed the essentials (medicine, bottles, food, clothes, nappies, phone charger, power adapter) in my carry-on, and checked the car-seat and the stroller at the gate. My checked luggage caught up to us three days later.

4. Double food and formula if it’s in your carry-on luggage. The good news is that you can bring water (in baby-bottles) and baby food in your carry-on luggage. The bad news is often you will be forced to taste half of it. And then you will have to throw it out because it’s no longer sterile. I had some fruitless discussions at Heathrow over this policy, but somehow my flawless logic did not compel them to change their minds.

5. Pack a pharmacy filled with items such as painkillers, antihistamines, antibiotics, eye drops, saline solution, iodine, antifungal cream, probiotics, enemas, and antimalarials. Learn when and how to use them, and don’t hesitate to take the child to a doctor if you have the least bit of worry. When our son woke up in Punta Uva screaming with a nasty rash, we were so glad to have some antihistamines on hand to sooth his allergy.

6. Bring snacks and toys to entertain young bodies and minds. Normally, our son eats four times a day, with no snacks in between. However, when I was sandwiched between two angry old men on flight to Brussels, I resorted to all sorts of bribery to get him to sit still. He ate handfuls of cereal, then once he was full he fed the rest to me. I would have eaten a packet of the stuff if it kept him quiet. Stacking cups and Hide N Squeak eggs were favourites in Turkmenistan and Costa Rica.

7. Bring gifts for strangers. In many countries, we were showered with small items that locals would spontaneously offer as gifts to our child. In Uzbekistan, our son went home with new toys, jewelery, and food. The people would not accept cash, so we carried playing cards and make-up to give to them in exchange.

8. Pampers and NAN are everywhere, while baby food can be tricky. We never had to pack too many nappies or packets of NAN, as these items were always available in corner stores worldwide. However, baby food, especially containing vegetables, was scarce, especially in Central Asia.

6. Stay in one place. Plan for a minimum of two nights in every hotel. Staying in the same place for a week is even better. Not only does it save you hours unpacking and packing, it also cuts down on time spent in the car, and ensures that there’s a welcome bed waiting for your essential afternoon nap.

10. Nap together whenever possible. When we could, we just did some sight-seeing in the morning, and returned to the hotel after lunch. Travelling with a child is extremely exhausting. We rarely could sleep in, and often there were long midnight singing sessions before our guy adjusted to the time difference. Afternoons in the hotel gave us a chance to recover from the red-eye flight and rest our bones from a morning of child chasing.

A few photos from the last days of our India trip back in March, as we explored the opulent palaces of the maharajas in Jaipur.

Last week I took Hayden for his first trip to Italy to spend a few days with my parents in Venice before they embarked on a month-long Mediterranean cruise. I was a little bit nervous about travelling alone with Hayden, but he continues to be a very relaxed little voyager. He was happy to hang out in the arms of the airport security agents while I put all his bottles and baby food and stroller through the x-ray machine, and also with fellow passengers as I stowed my luggage in the overhead lockers. I had a bit of anxiety when his stroller wasn’t at the carousel at our final destination, but an airport employee saw me waiting and carried it over from oversized luggage. I am constantly amazed how kind and understanding people are when they see us travelling with an infant.

We boarded Hayden’s first vaporetto, and the small boat was buzzing with excitement, full of foreigners so thrilled to be in their dream destination. I could easily spot the honeymooners (the men playing with their wedding rings, and the women still sporting wedding manicures and perfectly waxed eyebrows). There were also older couples, returning to Venice to relive the romantic locations of their courtship. Once we arrived on the main island, I converted the Kelty backpack to a stroller, and the two of us ambled along the edge of the canal as we enjoyed our first taste of sunshine in weeks.

(Sadly I only have mobile phone pictures for this trip, as the DSLR was too big to fit in the backpack)

A few hours later, we were reunited with mum and Josef. They hadn’t seen Hayden since he was four months old, so he was very excited to show off his new skills that included crawling, clapping, and eating solids. We all traipsed off to find dinner, and Hayden sampled a Caprese mozzarella and tomato salad while I caught up on news from Australia. Hayden seemed really happy to see his grandparents again, and even scored some complementary cookies from the waiter.

We spent the next day visiting the quieter islands of Murano and Burano. We admired the delicate stitching of lace in Burano and explored the canals lined with colourful houses. On the glass-blowing island of Murano, we watched three brothers working together to create a beautiful floral chandelier, then visited the showroom for a sampler of all the different pieces from the island. Mum bought me a striking blue and silver glass pendant for my birthday, a unique souvenir of our holiday.

After three nights in our delightful apartment amongst the rooftops of Venice, it was time to say goodbye with one final stroll along the Grand Canal. After their cruise, we will meet up with them again in Spain for a week in the foothills of the Sierra Blanca.

From Trieste we caught the train to Venice. We stepped out of the station, and there in front of us was the Grand Canal. With only 60,000 locals, and 10,000,000 visitors each year, this city is a caricature of its old self. Still, as most tourists only visit for a few hours, we found some relative solitude at the edges of the days, the winding streets and masks in the windows reminding me of Labyrinth.

Our guide Maria took us on the Hidden Venice Walking Tour. With a brown cape swung around her shoulders, speaking of trading with foreign lands, she reminded me of a Venetian from the 1400’s. She showed us the church porch that protected Europe’s first bankers, and the nearby street to house Europe’s first insurance agent, gambling on those treacherous trips across the Mediterranean. We saw some of Europe’s first public clocks, divided into 24 hours, where XXIIII meant sunset.

We took a ferry across to Murano. Glass has been boiled, twisted, and sculpted on this island for over 800 years. We saw some extraordinary work in the Museo del Vetro, exceptional colours and inserts, the light shining through translucent pieces that had been carefully crafted centuries ago. It took us a while, but we finally found a Fornace that was offering demonstrations. As we were sitting down, the man twirled some glowing magma on a stick. With some pliers in his other hand, he pulled and snipped the liquid, encouraging a horse’s head to emerge. Four more strategic tugs created the legs, and then a few more swift movements produced the tail and severed the animal from its creator. The whole process was over in a few seconds. To his right, we noticed a mountain of pale blue horses, discarded from previous demonstrations, perhaps waiting to be melted and reborn the next day. I rescued one of the horses from the showroom, having seen the birth of his cousin.

We finished up with a late lunch – the food a little better than the terrible fare available on the main island, then accidentally caught the Vaporetto going the wrong direction, circumnavigating the picturesque island before finally arriving back at our hotel.