14 Tips For Travelling With Kids via christineknight.me #familytravel

We just arrived home after our epic around the world adventure with the preschooler. While all of our victories and mistakes are still clear in my foggy jet lagged head, I wanted to write down what I’ve learned about making international travel with a little kid a success. Here’s what I’ve learned after six weeks, four countries, five cities and eight flights with my three-year-old.

On The Town With The Uppababy GLITE

1. Take a stroller
Unless your kid is a strong walker, bring a lightweight umbrella stroller. We thought our 3-year-old was done with a stroller, but we didn’t take into account that we would be walking an average of 10km a day, and that our child would be battling jet lag as well as over stimulation in a new environment. She was exhausted. I cursed myself for giving away our trusty Uppababy G-LUXE that we’d use for previous trips, and got their lightest model, the Uppababy G-LITE, to make our trip easier.

14 Tips For Travelling With Kids #familytravel via christineknight.me

2. Pack well for flights
Be prepared to battle hunger, thirst and boredom on long flights. Take an empty water bottle and fill it when you get through security and pack dry snacks and liquids up to 100ml like yoghurt sticks. Security will allow small ice packs to keep dairy cool. Take lots of pairs of underwear, wipes and a spare set of clothes, plus some small new toys and activities that your child will love. Hand out the toys one at a time when a meltdown is imminent. Charge up the iPad with new shows and games. A flight is not the time to limit screen time.

3. Break up flights
We slowly made our way around the world in short flights to make it easier for our daughter to handle the travel. At the end of a five-hour flight she would be itching to get off and no iPad on Earth could placate her.

14 Tips For Travelling With Kids #familytravel via christineknight.me

4. Fly during the day
This is a big time waster if you only have a short time period to be away, but we found it really helpful in getting over the jet lag faster. We planned our flights to arrive at our destination and then go straight to bed. As a result, our daughter would wake up a few hours earlier than normal, but more like 4 or 5am rather than 1 or 2am.

5. Pack well for the kids
Things you should pack lots of: underpants, lightweight tees, shorts/skirts/dresses. Light is key so you can wash clothes and have them dry overnight hanging up in the hotel bathroom. I always pack travel detergent so I can wash clothes in the sink, and stain remover because I use it on my daughter’s clothes pretty much every single day. Clothing-wise, I prefer items that cover more skin over her chest and shoulders rather than strappy singlets or dresses to give her more protection from the sun. I never travel without sunscreen, either. I take a few small ones for my handbag as well as a larger one to leave in the hotel. Shoe-wise, even in summer I pack a pair of closed toe shoes for my daughter (which she wears on planes), as well as shoes that can be worn in water, such as Saltwater sandals. Always pack a small medical kit in case of scrapes, blisters, cuts and so on. We include child pain relief, mosquito repellant and stop-itch creams in case of bites.

6. Leave stuff at home
Anything fancy you don’t want stained or ruined on the trip, for both you and the child. Heavy clothing that takes days to dry. New shoes that haven’t been worn in. Delicate clothing. Expensive handbags or jewellery.

14 Tips For Travelling With Kids #familytravel via christineknight.me

7. Choose your locations wisely
We chose to visit cities that had lots to do within walking distance of our accommodation, or a short train ride away. After all of that flying the last thing you’d want to do is arrive somewhere and then have even more travel to do to see the sights.

8. Weigh up pros and cons of apartments vs hotels
We stayed in both apartments and hotels on our trip, and there are pros and cons to each. Hotels were great in areas where we wanted to be close to everything, such as Barcelona and London, where the apartments were a bit far to then commute each day around the city from with an already tired child. We all ate dinner together each night and pretty much went to bed at the same time too – it was a bonding experience. In New York we stayed in an apartment for two weeks that was central and found it the best of both worlds in terms of location and amenities. My preferred option would be a centrally-located apartment so we can do our washing and make basic food.

14 Tips For Travelling With Kids #familytravel via christineknight.me

9. Get hotel inclusions
Try to get breakfast included so you can fill up and grab some fruit and pastry for later, and make sure wi-fi isn’t an added charge. We stayed at Grosvenor House in London and had an amazing breakfast included (pictured above) but not wi-fi, which was a big, unexpected charge.

10. Plan less
Your itinerary with a little kid should list one single thing to do each day. Plan to spend more time doing that one thing, and getting to and from there, and don’t try to squeeze in single thing you want to see. You’ll be so tired you don’t enjoy it. The journey is part of the fun for kids, so allow time for taking a look at parks, buildings and trains on route to your actual destination.

11. Allocate down time
What worked for us was going out in the mornings to see and do something, and then returning to the hotel or apartment after lunch for a rest before heading out for an early dinner. We all needed the siesta!

14 Tips For Travelling With Kids #familytravel via christineknight.me
12. Find fun for everyone
We planned activities that gave everyone a chance to enjoy themselves. We visited cathedrals, playgrounds and also had a fancy high tea. With all of our needs being met, all three of us enjoyed the trip. My husband and I were happier to spend time doing “kid” things like the said playgrounds when we knew that we were also going to be able to visit amazing places like Sagrada Familia, too. Taking our daughter to places we wanted to see for ourselves also taught her to put up with doing things that made other people happy even if she personally didn’t care for it. This was a moderately successful lesson that we are still working on. We were actually pleasantly surprised with how she enjoyed a lot of “adult” sights, such as the Familia. I have a beautiful memory of my daughter dancing in a rainbow shining through the stained glass windows inside the cathedral that will stay with me forever.

13. Stay longer in less locations
We thought we had planned well with a week or two in each location along our trip, but it was still a lot of travel – too much. Next time, we will stay even longer in one place, like a month, and go at an even slower pace as our 6-week trip left us all exhausted.

14 Tips For Travelling With Kids #familytravel via christineknight.me

14. Break routines
At home I have a strict schedule for our daughter, especially with dinner and bedtime. No late nights, very healthy food, designated meal times. On our trip, however, we put the enjoyment of our trip before our daughter’s schedule to make life a bit easier. We ate out every night. Our daughter was in bed late and slept in. She ate way too much pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches. Bending the rules was fun for us all. Has anything changed now we’re home? Nope. We are back, without fuss, to our schedule, family rules and diet. Holiday success.

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14 Tips For Travelling With Kids #familytravel via christineknight.me

24 comments on “14 Tips For Travelling With Kids”

  1. Oh my goodness. These are great tips. But, my highly strung 3 1/2 year old would have me pulling outme hair. On the other hand my lil 18 month dude would be sooooo easy. Thanks for the advice. Zoe xx

  2. Some great tips here that we used while we were on our 5 week overseas trip. I agree about spending more time in the one place rather than moving around every few days. It gets trickier the more children you have, especially when they are different ages. I have an older child (aged 11) which is tough- she is too old for some things yet too young to appreciate other things.

      • My kids are aged 11, 7 and 5 so there is a bit of a gap between the eldest and the youngest. Sometimes you can’t predict what the eldest will like, because she is at that age where she still loves parks and playgrounds but sometimes I think she wants more from her travel experiences (but isnt old enough to appreciate everything like an adult would, of course).

  3. Great tips, down time is a huge one. Did you find any challenges with using a stroller anywhere you went? We opted for a carrier in Vietnam as strollers are not much good with motorbikes parked on footpaths but we are doing Europe with kids next year so good to know what places it will be worthwhile having a stroller.

    • The only challenges with the stroller were in Barcelona as there was nowhere to leave the stroller at attractions – so we’d need it to get wherever we went, and then she’d want to run around and explore and we’d have to cart the stroller around with us rather than being able to leave it at the entrance/exit. Every other location the stroller was fine as they are prepared for it and have places for you to leave it. Barcelona was not especially little kid-friendly!

  4. Excellent tips! I’ll have to remember these, my girls only little so we haven’t done a big trip, I’m looking forward to, but fearing, that first big trip! It looks like you have a ball on your trip!

  5. We’ve travelled A LOT with our boys and I have to say this is a great list! After a ridiculous trip to NZ we now have a self imposed ‘two night minimum stay’ at each hotel/apartment! I loved all your pictures on Instagram, looks like you had a fabulous trip.

      • The NZ trip they were just turned 2 and the baby only 8 weeks old. There’s three of them now though 5, 3 and almost 1. We’re off to Indonesia in December and it promises to be an adventure!

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