Travelling with Children

Before we had children me and my husband loved to travel and we were determined to continue travelling despite the difficulties that arise from having little children. I will never forget the first vacation we went on with our 4 week old first born. We were camping around Big Sur, California and we left our poor child (unintentionally) in the tent all by herself when we went to brush our teeth. We just totally forgot that we had a child! We remembered her pretty quickly but it was certainly the beginning of our travels with children.

What we've figured out over the years is that the key is in the planning and you can't plan too much. We used to pack our vacations from dawn to dusk and make the most of every moment. We had to cut down by at least 50%. Kids need to be fed regularly and those short legs just can't manage a 4 hour walk across a city. Since the kids were of an age to understand and to care (around 4 years of age) we've always tried to have a theme to our journeys. Yes, of course it's an educational theme! Now that my oldest is 10 years old we have to find a different way to keep them occupied. Basically we have to find activities that interest them and of course for longer trips they have to keep a journal.

All of this takes a lot of time but believe me it is well worth the effort. To be on vacation and have grumbling kids who are bored out of their brains or tiered and hungry is a nightmare and makes it not worth going on vacation at all.
So here I've decided to keep track of our short and long vacations with the hope that they will be helpful to others who happen to be travelling in the same direction. Since it's summer I'll have to start with places we are going to but if and when I have the time I'll add in some blogs of places we've been and things we've seen.