Have you ever made a mistake, when travelling? Something you wish you hadn’t done, or done differently or something a bit silly that just made your holiday not quite as perfect as you were expecting it to be?
I sure have and, while it’s never pleasant to make a mistake and even less to admit it publicly (we are all perfect and live happy, judgement proof lives, no? Facebook says so!), there is no doubt that mistakes have a great upside: we can learn from them.
I surely have learned from the mistakes I made when travelling with kids and they are actually one of the main reasons why I write this blog: what is expertise if not experience of what worked and what didn’t?
A good few travel bloggers have written about mistakes lately and so, encouraged by them, I feel like revisiting some of the ones I made too. I am taking this as an end of the year exercise: I am sure I will make many more mistakes travelling, but hopefully not the same ones: if any, I’ll try make them creative!
So here we go. From my very personal experience:
What not to do when travelling with children
Assume hotels and transport have a ‘kids go free policy’
When we first started travelling with our kids, we made some assumptions: surely a baby on my lap flys for free, surely we can all pile up in a double bed and save on the cost of an extra bed in the hotel etc. Turns out, it doesn’t exactly work like this.
Children under two have to pay sometimes steep airport tax (at least), the air fares for children over 2 is, more often than not, the same as the one for an adult and hotels might have policies requiring you to take an extra bed when travelling with more than once child (usually it has to do with fire regulations). There is no rule about this and the only way is to do your research each time.
I sure wish we had done that when we got our train ticket from Toronto to Montreal: used to train travel in Italy (kids go free there), we were feeling pretty smug about choosing train over plane when heading to Quebec: we were sure we would save tons of money this way, at least enough to make the additional 6 hours of travelling acceptable. Let’s put it this way: while looking at our 4 full-fare train tickets, at least we were on a greener means of transport….
Last minute document checks
A rookie mistake, but one of epic proportions that we have made not once but twice: the first time we forgot to check the expiry date for the Bear’s passport and showed up at the airport with an invalid one. Not our finest hour! The second time we moved in time, but a backlog in the system meant we would not have the Rabbit’s passport back before travelling.The Irish authorities put us a priority list and got us sorted in 48 hours, but still, we should have never left it to the last minute. Just remember: don’t assume children documents last as long as adult ones!
Overpacking
I have always been a light packer or actually a very light packer (I am known to have moved to Brussels for 6 months with what others would consider a weekend bag) but when we first started travelling with children we believed well-meaning friends who told us we would ‘absolutely need’ stuff and ended up lugging around kilos and kilos of bags. Take it from me: on a trip, you don’t need half the stuff you think and, especially with kids, you can really do without pushing oversized bags trough airport corridors: was that fold up bath tub that got stuck in the x ray machine at security THAT crucial?
What not to do when travelling with children: overpack
We made our worst over packing mistake last summer, when we went to Florence: overloaded with a stroller, a full size car seat, a big wheelie bag, 2 kids trolley bags and a rucksack each, we crawled out of the station and into the smoldering hot streets of Florence exhausted, before we even started the trip, and looking like a perfect target for pickpockets!
Not pre-booking seats on planes
Never ever assume that because you are travelling with children you will be assigned seats beside each other. When we travelled long haul, we arrived at check in early, but because of the option to pre-select seats, that we had ignored, we could not find seats together: not even 2! We were really lucky with this one because Aer Lingus shuffled other passengers around to accommodate us and they were all decent enough not to mind. This, I discovered, it’s not something they were obliged to do and I know of many other airlines who will not accommodate this kind of last minute request. We are pretty chilled out travellers, but even for us not be sure we could sit together was a stressful experience and one I’ll accept paying to avoid
Not foresee downtime
I am a great believer in planning cultural activities with young children but as much as adults can’t do child things all the time children can’t do adult things all the time, so factor in some free play: playground, pool, play centre even just park. My favourite day in Ontario was the day trip to the Niagara falls, but the kids adored the hotel playroom! We agreed to one day there and the following day we were rewarded by great mood from both kids
Always plan downtime: this is us taking it easy in Montreal’s city parks
Confuse family friendly with ethical
This one is really close to my heart. The mark ‘family friendly’ is very often used to mark activities that are fun for children but possibly unethical or detrimental for the environment. Dolphin shows are the perfect example of an activity that is cruel and unsustainable, many restaurants use the words ‘family friendly menu’ to indicate international, rather than locally sourced, sustainable food. When you go for family friendly, don’t take it at face value: question it like you would question anything else and make sure it’s not only friendly to our family but to families of the animals and of the people who live in the community we are visiting. This is the story of when we got this point very wrong.
Now that I confessed all of our mistakes, tell me: what are the mistakes YOU made when travelling with children? Confess in the comments below!
Thank you pixabay for the picture at the top of this post! Hope you enjoy your coffee!
So 100000000000000000000000000000000000% agree on this. I made a huge mistake on putting the WRONG dates for our hotel near Frankfurt Hahn going to London. 🙁 It cost us a nice pretty penny… which SUCKED Royally.
Meh. I don’t have children. I don’t travel with children. I can barely keep up with my stuff and my documents, the poor kids would not have it easy with me as their mom!
Great tips, and good to read 🙂 Hope to be traveling with children too one day (the traveling is there, the children are not yet) so great to bear these things in mind 🙂
I adore all those who can travel with kids calmly. Traveling alone is such an experience and of course mistakes will come even if we tried to avoid it, so how much more with kids? I can’t imagine myself that I can manage it the way you did and will do.
Everything seems a little bit more difficult once you have children 😛
Haha, great stuff. I cannot wait to travel with children…
Oh man, I am so glad we are child free for the foreseeable!! ha ha! Although reading all about these travelling families does give me hope for the future!
I can imagine all of those things would lead to trouble. Overpacking is something I never do on my own, but with a kid along, I’d want to take everything, just in case.
We don’t have any children right now but we hope that ours will be also travel-kids. And of course we will remember your tips! 😀
What a useful article! Definitely going to try pre-booking seats next time I travel- can’t believe I had not thought of it yet!x
How many parents also ‘temple out’ the kids? This was one I often saw when I lived in Asia.
We all learn from experience, bitter experience at times!
Traveling as a family is one of our greatest joys in life and I agree with everything on your list. Your last point especially resonates with me. When we lived in Mexico we would see families paying to have their children hold wild animals for photos. Most people don’t realize that this practice is illegal and the animals are drugged.
I think not to overpack is a good tip for everyone! I’ve certainly done it more than once.
I guess everyone makes mistakes when travelling. The good things is that you can learn from those mistakes and hopefully next trip won’t make them anymore. However, I always make the same mistake and that’s overpacking 😀
I hear you!! Now I have packing light down to a fine art but it did take quite a bit of trial and error to get this proficient at it 😉
Everyone makes mistakes while traveling, that’s part of the fun! We always laugh and say it wouldn’t be the adventures of Shelly and Al if it wasn’t a cluster.
Haha absolutely! I always try to laugh at mishaps thinking they will make for fun anecdotes: sometimes it works, sometimes…. it doesn’t! But that’s ok too 🙂
I dont have any children to travel with but can say that I truly respect those who travel with young kids as I can imagine it takes lots of patience! Traveling wouldn’t be the same if there weren’t some mistakes along the way!
Absolutely! And they often make for the best travel stories 🙂
I will never learn about over-packing. I always feel like I’ve been successful and then my son dresses himself in the same pants everyday… and rotates between two shirts. Whatever. And you’re so right about family friendly things. Dolphins and the like are something we’re faced with too often and it’s a tough conversation that I’m tired of having.
I just don’t get why airlines are allowed to do that with seats. I’ve been given a seat between a small kid and the mom a couple times this last year. I am fine with switching seats, but there’s no point to bother half of the plane when they know kids are there (not even to earn a couple of dimes)
I don’t travel with children. But a big mistake I made recently : packing everything in one cabin suitcase and a handbag for 6 weeks in India. Even if it was great to take only the things I needed, it was obvious it wasn’t for me : 1. Being on a bike with a suitcase is very uncomfortable, especially when your driver forgets you have one : backpack is awesome. 2. Traveling close to locals often makes them gifting me. My friend in Adilabad offered me several indian clothes. I had to take an extra plastic bag to put some of my stuff : backpack is awesome. 3. Traveling in a tribal area means you’ll have the opportunity to buy beautiful handicraft. I couldn’t even find place for a small bronze statue : backpack is awesome 😉
Totally agree: backpack is awesome 🙂 I have a loyal backpack that has come with me on many trips and I can’t wait for my kids to be old enough so we can travel with one backpack each – that would be SO handy!
And when you travel internationally it all get so much more fun!
Great suggestions. I’ve encountered a few of these on my own and learned the hard way. Definitely know if kids are included in the price for accommodations and such. Well done.
That is a real tricky one and especially on booking engines, I find, it’s not always at all clear what the charges for kids are (especially if more than one). I’m sure the list will grow longer the more I travel but at least I hope I won’t fall in these very same traps again!
You hit the nail on the head with the family friendly does not equal ethical point. So true!! Always question everything. Wording can be very misleading. Ethical travel is near and dear to my heart as well.
I know, it’s incredible how easy it is to think something is harmless when it’s all but! I think we are making progress and a lot of work has been done already , but the road is still long and especially activities ‘for children’ are still often incredibly cruel on the animals . Such a contradiction.