First holiday abroad with ds, what advice would you give?

[Ali5]

Off to Tuscany, self catering.
How much stuff do you pack and how much would you trust to be able to buy out there?
Any super tips?
(ds 11 months and just started very wobbly walking)
Thanks!

You can buy everything there if you really need to.

Arezzo, Perugia, all the biggish towns have hypermarkets (usually called "hypercoop") which are fab.

The Italians take their baby shops very seriously and most medium sized towns, eg Montalcino, Montepulciano, Umbertide, etc will have at least one very well stocked shop.

Whereabouts are you going?

Sounds encouraging!
We're actually staying in villa that's somewhere between Pienza and Montepulciano.
Have you been then with kids? Are restaurants etc geared up for children?

have you got your E111 health cards, or whatever they are, sorted?

Yes, we've been going most years for about 10 years.

The restaurants are very much geared up for kids, when our ds was small they'd arrange the food on his plate into a smile face, walk him round the restaurant so we could eat in peace, etc. The Italians worship children.

Yeah, we're going with my parents and my dad is super organised and made sure we'd got travel insurance and the travel card things.

Take about half a dozen tops/shorts etc and wash then dry in the sun (bleaches stains out), something to cover up in the cooler evening. Large sunhat. He can live off fresh fruit/veg, pasta and bread if needs be so don't worry too much and nappies etc should n't be a problem. If you can get a mini paddling pool and some inflatable toys and stacking cups (Ikea did some great ones a few years ago) so he can cool off sitting in a puddle ! Take a buggy which reclines, preferably with a soft ride for cobbles an light sheet /blanket and a large sunshade plsu a abck carrier if you have one for less accessible places like churches up hills.

Ah, was wondering whether or not to take the back carrier, ours is huge though, we borrowed it from a friend. It won't go in the suitcase and I can't see sleezyjet letting us put that in the hold along with the pushchair. We're not too worried about food, ds loves breadsticks so we figured that if all else fails he can nibble them for a week!
does anyone know about the food production in Italy - we get a veg box and buy organic milk coz I'm a bit funny about supermarket fruit, veg and milk. Wondered if it's the same over there.

Yes, you can get prob. more organic stuff in Italy than in English supermarkets. It's called "biologica", so anything with that label on means organic.

would recommend taking a small first aid kit with calpol sachets, insect bite repellant/bite cream, etc. always the middle of the night when you need such stuff and the last thing you want to be doing is driving around trying to find a 24 hour pharmacy. highly likely that you won't need any of it - but i always work on the theory that if i pack it, then i won't - but if i don't, then i will!

have a great holiday.

Mothercare do bracelets that have insect repellent in them. I've bought them for DS and they're brilliant - he was the only baby that didn't get bitten when we went to Egypt. You should have no problems getting anything you need out there and, when we went to Florence (DS was about 10m) he loved Italian food so we had no problems in restaurants.

Thanks!
Beginning to feel a lot less panicky now.
Thanks for insect repellant tip, been worried about that since I discovered you can't use any bite cream on under 2s.

See if you can get hold of Fenistil gel, think I've seen it here recently and definitely abroad It is suitable for babies /toddlers and is great on bites and stings.

Not the same as the Cold Sore one btw !!