How not to prepare for a big trip

Tomorrow we leave for Rome, and as always seems to happen, we are unprepared. Every time we take a big trip, David and I end up turning to each other and saying, "Well, I guess we're winging it!" We end up having a good trip no matter where we go, but to be a bit better prepared would be a good thing. It didn't help that Emilie, Rebecca and I had the flu for almost the entire week before our trip and it really did a number on us. I hardly ever got off the couch. The idea of getting the entire trip planned was out of the question for me.

Ideally, we would have bought a great guidebook with excellent maps a month ago and come up with a plan for each of our four days there. Our 2005 trip to Disneyworld was a great success due to our pouring through an unofficial guidebook months in advance, reserving dinners and shows ahead of time, following itineraries that shortened the time we needed to wait in lines and learning little tricks of Disney veterans. We vowed to always prepare like that for trips. Unfortunately, we have never been so well prepared since.

Several people we know, however, have been to Rome with their kids and they gave us some tips on places to go with them. It's a good thing, too, as I tried doing some research on the internet yesterday and was discouraged when almost every site I visited said, "Rome is not a child-friendly city. Italians love children, but there's not a lot for your kids to do there."

Through friends, we got a link for rental apartments in Rome and reserved one and we also went to the Vatican site and got the last set of tickets for a guided tour of the Vatican Museums available during our stay. This morning, with the kids off school for ski holiday week, there was a mandatory viewing of The Lizzy Maguire Movie, which takes place in Rome. We wanted the kids to be familiar with a few of the sights they would see, and the movie actually was pretty funny.

We could also rely on what we remembered doing from our previous trips to Rome. David and I had both been when we were studying abroad separately in college (we didn't know each other then), but traveling as a single college student is an entirely different matter from traveling with four children. For instance, my friends and I stayed in a women's shelter that rented out empty beds. We also ate just 2 meals a day to save money. There wouldn't be any of that with four kids. And to make matters even more uncertain, we would be flying standby.

David and I turned to each other tonight, shrugged, and said, "Well, I guess we'll be winging it."