Elle’s in Europe 2025 - Day 1 - Wet Pants, Hot Rooms
It’s hard to imagine, but a month after Elle turned 1, we are off on our first European trip with her. Jenn and I were worried about what taking a 1-year-old to Europe would take, but given the opportunity to piggyback on Jenn’s work trip, we thought it was a great opportunity. On Wednesday, June 18th, we drove from our house in Newport Coast to LAX, dropping Frasier off at Hydrant Pet Hotel on the way. We arrived at the parking lot at 3:30 PM and took the bus to the international terminal. After quickly getting through security, we made our way to the Star Alliance lounge.
At 7 PM, we boarded the Swiss Airlines flight to Zurich. We had business class seats next to each other with Elle on Jenn’s lap. I felt sort of useless given how well Jenn was with Elle for the entire 11-hour flight. I tried my best to help, but Jenn was phenomenal. Elle got a little fussy at the start of the flight (it was past her bedtime), but slowly started to get used to being on the plane. About an hour into the flight, Jenn got Elle to sleep. She slept for about 5-6 hours off and on, with Jenn doing her best to sleep next to her. We all woke up with nearly 3 hours left of the flight. I had breakfast, and we both played with Elle. The biggest win of the trip was the busy board Jenn bought that kept her occupied throughout.
As we were coming to land in Zurich, we all fell asleep again. We woke up to Elle having peed through her diaper and onto Jenn’s lap. There was a nice wet spot on Jenn’s beautiful linen pants. Fortunately, it was warm in Zurich, so by the time we disembarked and changed, Elle her pants were mostly dry. We stopped at Starbucks, Jenn got a Switzerland mug (missing from our collection) and a muffin, and I had a caramel macchiato. From there, we spent an hour in the stunning Swiss lounge. Elle had a banana, and we enjoyed the outdoor terrace, which Elle continues to love.
We made our way to our connecting flight to Barcelona. Unfortunately, we had to get on a bus and upstairs to the entrance of the plane (not easy with Elle, a stroller, two backpacks, and a carry-on), but we made it into our business class seats for the 1-hour flight. Given the small plane, this just meant we had three seats, which made a world of a difference, allowing Elle to roam a bit more freely. Both Elle and Jenn slept for most of the flight while I listened to a podcast and had a light and delightful lunch salad. We disembarked the plane 30 minutes early and met our driver to take us to the W Barcelona, where we will be staying for 8 nights. Ironically, Jenn and I stayed here in 2015 right before our Royal Caribbean cruise.
The drive in was easy, and we had our bags taken by the bellman while we checked in. Everything was going well until it wasn’t. We heard some rumblings that there were issues with the air conditioning throughout the hotel. Once we heard that, we did notice it was rather warm in the lobby. The front desk mentioned it to us as we were checking in as well, and promised us it would be working by 9:30 PM that evening. There was no denying it wasn’t working when we entered our 20th-floor room. We unpacked only the essentials before leaving the room at close to 8 PM and going to dinner. Having stayed here before, we knew where a lot of the nearby restaurants were, so we walked on the boardwalk to a restaurant we found on Google called Bivio Steakhouse. They were very baby-friendly and gave us a secluded table so we could enjoy our dinner. Elle started with some goldfish and washed them down with a pouch. Jenn and I had a glass of their house red wine and started with the garlic shrimp. For our main course, I had their sirloin (given it’s a steakhouse) and Jenn had spaghetti bolognese. Both were good and gave us the nourishment we needed for our first few hours in Barcelona.
We walked back from dinner, hopeful but not optimistic about the chances of the AC being fixed. We arrived in our room close to 11 PM and found that it indeed was not working, and our room continued to warm up. According to Elle’s Baby Camera, it was 82 degrees. The hotel said they were still working on it but had no exact ETA. We decided to get a hotel room at the nearby Renaissance for the night. We packed all the essentials (which is a lot with a 1-year-old) and grabbed a taxi. We arrived at the hotel a little before midnight, checked in, and entered our very cold hotel room. We were all so tired that Elle went down to sleep immediately, and we were only a few minutes behind her. It wasn’t the easiest start to the trip but Jenn and I did a great job working together, and Elle was incredible from the time we left Newport Coast to the time she went to sleep at the Renaissance.
