Trip Report: Italy/Europe with a 3 Year Old Kid

I highly recommend traveling to Europe with your 3-year-old. No,seriously. It was awesome!

I don't know how to decouple our trip from the fact that she was there so I will be posting more than once on this.

First, what we did.

We flew SFO to Amsterdam and during our 6 hour layover, we stored our luggage and did a little sightseeing. It was my third time there and mostly we just walked around, excited to be back in Europe after 4 years.

It was a brutal journey from there. We flew to Bologna then took the bus to the train station (no train station at the Bologna airport), then took a train from bologna to Rome (a 2 hour ride that was delayed an hour). By the time we got to Rome I was about to crawl out of my skin from the exhaustion. Then we took a cab to the hotel.

During our 3 days in Rome, we saw all the usual tourist things: the Coliseum, the Vatican, Trevi fountain, the Spanish steps, and more.

Then we took a train to Napoli (Naples--I really don't get why there are different names). That was another couple hours. From there we had to take a hot, crowded, stinky, and slow train to Sorrento which took 1.5 hours.

We stayed in town of San Agnello, neighboring Sorrento. During our time there we did day trips to Pompeii, the Island of Capri, and a bus trip down and up the Amalfi coast.

After that we took a 3+ hour train ride up to Bologna and did a day trip to Florence and 1.5 days exploring Bologna.

Second, my reactions. The only reaction I will mention in this post is this:

Holy crap the first day of travel sucked! I don't recommend that to anyone! Maybe a student but definitely not a family or older adult. Fly directly to where you are going or stay for awhile where you land. Please. You will not regret it. Do you know who had the hardest time on that day of travel? Me. Who did fine? The 3 year old. So, yeah...

More reactions coming soon. And details about traveling with a kid.
It was not bad at all!! Really!!