Often people ask me how it is to travel with kids, especially with a baby and a toddler. They ask how we do it, but their eyes are saying: We admire you, but ourselves are much to scarred to do so. Most of them are surprised when I smile and full-heartedly tell them: Yes we do and no, it´s not that difficult, just different. It is simply just a different way of traveling. A kind of, which forces yourself to slow down, maybe to stay a little longer, enjoy the moment to the full, instead of rushing between hot-spots.
We love traveling, we always did and it never came in our minds to stop it, because of being parents. To be honest – there are enough changes and limitation, once you have kids! So should we stop exploring the world in addition? No, not an option at all for us!
Preparing a trip
We prepared ourselves for it and do plan our trips now a bit differently. Whereby differently doesn’t mean, delete destinations from our bucket-list. Nor did we change the way of transportation. Still on use: plane, car, bus, train, bike, boat or what ever brings us to the next destination. Sleeping in a tent, hotel, hostel, apartment , that´s all us! The two main things we changed is: calculating more time at one place and making sure travel dates are adjustable! Yes it is that simple.
Variety as a key for success
Variety is important to us. We try to avoid to bore the toddler, but also to include our interests and not to forget about the needs of the little one. 5 years of an age difference is quite something. And believe me, you don´t wanna be on vacation with our toddler when she gets bored. LOL. So far it seems we did good and our strategy worked out, so we had great travels. The worst things happened so far were, that we had to share beds, to make them more comfortable, abandon couple-time-evening-plans or just go for an extra ice cream.
Catching the signals our kids send out, on time, is an important key for relaxed travels. Maybe you have to extend a stay or leave a place earlier. Be aware your travel plans are a bit flexible, keep your mind open for things how they come. Take them as they are, don`t stress out and I can almost guaranty you, that you will enjoy your trip with your kids!
Conclusion
All in all traveling is a delightful experience for young and old. Each memory has a higher value in future, than 99% of the toys we buy our kids. Growing up traveling, makes our children more open minded. As they get in touch with different cultures, environments and people. Traveling with for sure means a change. You have more luggage, more responsibility, more to think about. We grow with our tasks. Learning by doing, step by step. Nobody is perfect, neither us nor our children are machines to program. We might resign our super crazy adventurous trips for a while, but we get something in exchange. Something very valuable, I think. We slow down, we change our point of view, we do things, we probably would not have done without our little travelers. We start enjoying the moment more and try to see the world with kids eyes.
Circumstances have changed, nor did our wanderlust!
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