A family travel site
My son’s first flight, at just under three months. The first picture is him sleeping peacefully in his car seat. The second is him after we were told we have to take him out of his car seat for his safety. Yes, he’s awake now!
This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday Blog Hop at Have Sippy Will Travel.
Over at Gone With Family, Lisa and her daughter have an amazing collection of their Starbucks visits around the world. What a wonderful and personal souvenir of their travels.
This reminds me of pictures that have shown up repeatedly in my photo folder.
Letting our kids fly while staying in a hotel room.
When my son was 3 months old, we went on a weekend trip to Salzburg, Austria. We took a ton of photos of our new son on his first real trip. This was one of my favorites:
Last December we spent a few nights in Berlin. This time, it was my daughter who was 3 months. What a great time to recreate one of my favorite photos of my son, while also in a hotel.
I was so excited to recreate the Salzburg image, that I didn’t even notice until I developed the photos that we had this pretty view of Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt in the background. Love it.
So in February when we spent a few days in Amsterdam, I knew what I had to do when I saw our hotel view.
What started out as a fun, one-time thing has possibly turned into a new travel tradition. I can’t wait to see this collection grow.
Side note: Since I have our daughter over Amsterdam and Berlin, it seems only natural to do a alphabet capitals photo series. Should we go to Copenhagen next?
Our travel philosophy is simple.
We go anywhere, any time.
We like a good deal. We’re more inclined to travel somewhere during their low season. But, we will also go during high season (and shoulder season).
We love to jam pack as many cities into a short itinerary, or stay one place for a longer period of time.
We never go into a place ever thinking that it’s a one time thing. We always know we will return. There are a few places we’ve returned to time and again, and some places that we just haven’t made it back to yet, and even more places we still have to visit for the first time.
We like tourist attractions, popular family destinations, off the beaten path, the beaten path, and everything in between.
We travel near home and far from home.We currently (and temporarily) live in Germany. We tend to take advantage of our location by traveling throughout Europe now, but we go to other places as needed.
All that to say, we’re pretty open to things.
Now that we have kids, the only things we try to make double and triple sure of is their safety and comfort.
We encourage them to try new things. We foster that by remaining open to their interests. (Admittedly, our 7 month old hasn’t really formed an opinion on interests outside of napping and eating.)
We try our best to avoid things that we know will cause tantrums (less shopping and laid-back dining, more parks and playgrounds).
This is, to me, baby led travel. We adjust days as needed, with no real worries of checking everything (or even anything) from our “to do” list. And it seems to work for us. How do you make travel with your kids work for you?
Here’s why you should travel with kids:
They notice things that you just never will notice. Free from the worries of itineraries, packing, language barriers, exchange rates, personal safety, where their next meal will come from… kids have the chance to actually enjoy their surroundings.
Last weekend I was in Prague with my kids. My thoughts were generally along the lines of “this is one beautiful and one busy city”. My son, his thoughts were all about the transportation. He pointed out every single bus, tram, and train he saw. Free from the worries of everything else, he saw them all. (You will never notice the frequency of public transportation until you are with a two year old who loves anything on wheels or rails.)
As we walked and watched him pointing to the left and right, we confirmed each tram with a high-five (our way to combat the screams he would have emitted since we weren’t about to go on one just yet). Crossing the Charles Bridge, he raised his hand off to the right. We looked up, didn’t see anything. No high-five. Then he pointed again and we looked harder. Why, yes, there was a train. Way out there, heading away from the castle, yet still on the hill. I stared at it briefly, wondering how my son noticed it. It was far. It was moving in between buildings. As I thought about it, I had one of those moment where I stepped back and noticed the entire scene. It was dusk. The train was lit inside, going through the streets of Prague. There was just something beautiful about it, here we are surrounded by tourists in a very touristy area, but out in the distance life was going on as normal.
Then I turned around, and gave my son a high-five.
I was looking at pictures from Prague on my phone with my son, he immediately pointed to this tram. I didn’t even notice it, but later realized I probably took the picture because of the tram.
