16 Essential Tips for Traveling with a Family

‘Not all those who wander are lost.’ ~J.R.R. Tolkien

Traveling with a family is a completely different beast than traveling solo or as a couple — I’ve done both numerous times, and the two experiences don’t even seem related.

Eva and I just got back from a 3-week trip through southern Europe with five of our kids. It was a wild adventure, going through six foreign cities on foot and by train, speaking broken bits of three foreign languages, exploring cities and coastlines all day long, soaking in sun and history and wine.
We loved it. We exhausted the kids, but came back wiser, tanner, and better off for having seen more of the world and its peoples.

This post isn’t meant to give an account of our trip, but to share some of what I’ve learned about traveling with a family, in hopes that it will help other families who travel.

Here are some random things I’ve learned:

1. Pack light as hell. If you’re traveling in multiple cities, that means you’re dragging everything you pack around for miles. We each carried a tiny backpack (mine was 16 liters) with just a change of clothes, a book and a few toiletries. My packing list: a t-shirt, shorts, 2 pairs of quick-dry boxers, 2 pairs of socks, a book, deodorant, razor, toothbrush, 11″ Macbook Air. That all takes up very little space and weighs a tiny amount. In addition I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, underwear, socks and tennis shoes. There was a big contrast between us, with our small backpacks, and others who had roller luggage, big backpacks, suitcases and other heavy things they were lugging around everywhere.
   
2. Stay in central apartments. We avoid hotels, as we’d have to rent several rooms for our large family. It’s cheaper to rent an apartment, which also comes with a kitchen and often a washer/dryer and a living room. It’s much more comfortable. We will rent an apartment in each city we visit, and try to find ones that are central, so we can walk to the best areas from our home base, and come back for naps if necessary.
   
3. Walk everywhere (with some mass transit). The best way to explore a place is by foot, not car or tour bus. You cover less ground on foot, but you only really see a place when you walk it. Bikes would be next best, but not manageable for a large family. We have good walking shoes and are in good walking shape from walking around in our home city. It’s so much fun to walk through winding medieval streets, stop and drink from ancient fountains, grab a croissant or gelato whenever you like, see locals walking around, stop in a little shop if it catches your fancy, see nature up close. And it’s a good workout. We learn to use the local mass transit system a bit, when we’re in a city, so we can easily get to further areas and walk around there.
   
4. Get lost. You don’t really learn a place until you get lost in it. I always get a map of where we are, and try to orient myself, but I also like to put the map away for a bit and get a bit lost, so I can find my way through exploring and wrong turns. You also discover the most unexpected things when you allow yourself to get lost. Wander, explore, discover, be surprised.
   
5. Gelato will keep kids happy. Kids get tired walking, and bored of historical sites and museums. But if you buy them a gelato every afternoon, they perk up, and smiles suddenly appear as if from nowhere. After sampling a bunch of different gelato flavors the first few days in Rome, I discovered I always regretted not getting chocolate gelato. So I came up with a rule for myself: Always get chocolate gelato. I never regretted it for the rest of the trip.
   
6. Use your trip as a language course. Knowing we were going to Italy, France and Spain, we learned a bit of the languages before we left. The kids had fun learning to say hello, thank you, and where’s the bathroom, among other phrases. We never got fluent, but I think we all learned a bit about cultures and languages, and it was a great start. There’s no better way to practice a language than visiting the country.
   
7. Ask locals for recommendations. Guide books and the Internet are great, but the best recommendations come from people who really live there. Before we left, I asked for recommendations from locals and made a list. While we were in each city, I would ask locals we met for recommendations as well, and came up with some delightful discoveries.
   
8. Avoid tourist traps. We tried to avoid the most touristy places, though of course you can’t avoid seeing the historical sights like the Colosseum in Rome or the Duomo in Florence. But if you do go to highly touristed places, avoid the shops and restaurants that surround them. They are expensive, bad quality, and aimed at the tastes of tourists instead of locals. Walk 5-10 minutes to find something better.
   
9. Have something to keep kids busy on trains. I don’t mind train rides at all, but the kids get bored. So they each have some kind of device, like an iPod touch or game device, to play games, listen to music and watch movies. Not my favorite thing in the world for them to do, but so much better than complaints of being bored for several hours.
   
10. Naps are good. We tend to leave each morning for exploring, and then come back after a late lunch for a nap. The kids get tired walking around in the sun, and so do we. A nap of an hour (or three if you’re jetlagged) is a good thing, and we usually would head out when the day was cooling down for some evening sightseeing and dinner.
    
11. Buy groceries. We tend to buy cereal and yogurt and fruit for breakfast, along with coffee and maybe some things for dinner or snacks. This allows us to save money, eat something a bit healthier than pastries and pizza at least one or two meals of the day, and relax at home in the mornings and during our afternoon break. It’s one of the good things about having an apartment.
12. One or two days isn’t enough to see a place. I found 4-5 days a better number. In one or two days, you’re rushing through the major sites and don’t get to relax, or if you go at a slower pace you don’t get enough of a sample of a city to really know it. Of course, if you don’t have kids, you could spend a week or three in a good destination, but with kids I’d recommend a medium timeframe like 4-5 days.
13. Spice up the history lessons. Traveling makes history come alive. I will usually do a little research and then tell the kids stories about the sites we’re visiting. Still, they get bored with that sometimes, so you have to spice up the history with tales of wars, romances, pirates and tragic deaths. I’m not saying you should make stuff up (though I won’t tell if you do), but look for that stuff in the histories and highlight it.
    
14. Have relaxation days. While exploring cities by foot is great, sometimes you need a longer break than an afternoon nap. So we’d have days where we lounged around on the beach or parks most of the day instead of sightseeing, and it was a great way to recharge the batteries.
    
15. Wine makes things more relaxed. Eva and I would often have wine with lunch, and definitely with dinner. It made us more relaxed as we had to manage herding five kids around busy streets that we didn’t know, using languages we couldn’t speak. We smiled more, breathed easier. Also, red wine is like health food.
    
16. It’s a grand adventure. Things will go wrong. You’ll not only get lost, you’ll lose things, miss trains, find the place you’re going to closed. You can make the best of plans, but the truth is, you don’t control things. Life has its own plans. The key is to smile, accept the way things are, and see it all as part of your great adventure. And this is the philosophy you should convey to the kids, even before you travel, to make their experience all the more enjoyable and enlightening.
    
    
    Source
    
    
    Related links
    
    10 Essential tips for a Safe and Pleasant Hike
    
    11 Tips for Taking Children to Public Places
    
    
    
    

10 Essentials for a Safe and Pleasant Hike

If you’re just getting into hiking, everyone is going to recommend that you pack the 10 Essentials when you go for a hike. Then they list about 30 pieces of gear that you should bring with you, but they never actually tell you WHAT to buy. If you find this frustrating or confusing, or worse, you’re going for hikes without the 10 Essentials, I’ve pulled together a few sample gear lists for different hike durations  (up to 4 hours and more than 4 hours) that I hope you find helpful. These are suggestions based on my own brand/product experience, with an eye for low price and good cost/value performance.

My goal here is to help you understand EXACTLY what you need to buy, beg, borrow or steal, so we can get you outdoors and on the trail. I’m preparing to give a talk about the 10 Essentials at the AMC Spring Hiking Program based around thse recommendations, so if you have any feedback on these items or want to suggest others, please leave a comment.

The 10 Essentials

 

1. Map and Compass – You need to carry a map of the area where you’re hiking and learn how to find your  location on it based on the landmarks and trail junctions marked on it. It’s good to practice this, even if you’re just hiking in an urban park. Learning how to use a compass at a basic level soon follows. The first thing you’ll learn is how to find north which is quite easy and helps to orient your map so you can figure out where you are if you become turned around. That’s often all you need to know to find your way, but it’s nearly foolproof and doesn’t rely on batteries. GPS Receivers and Cell Phones are not part of the 10 essentials. You can bring them if you want, but nothing is more reliable than a map or compass.
   
2. Sun Protection – It’s always a good idea to carry a hat, lip balm, and some sunscreen to prevent sun burn when you’re out in the open. Sunglasses can also be very helpful, particularly in winter, to prevent snow blindness (which is temporary). If you’re very sensitive to sun, you should also consider wearing special sun-proof clothing.
   
3. Insulation – The amount extra clothing and insulation you bring on a hike really depends on whether you’re hiking near a city or in the backcountry, the average day and night temperature, and whether there’s a chance you might get stuck outdoors at night. For example, if you’re doing an all-day spring hike in the mountains, it probably makes sense to bring an insulated sit pad, an insulated jacket, sweater, hat and gloves along just in case you’re out after sunset.
   
4. Illumination – You should always carry a headlamp or a flashlight and some extra batteries. You want enough light that you can walk with after dark if you’ve been delayed, or that you can camp with if you decide to stop and wait until daylight.
   
5. First-Aid Supplies – When you go hiking, it’s important to bring a few first aid supplies along for yourself or for the other people you’re hiking with. The eastiest thing to do is to buy a small personal first aid kit from Adventure Medical for about $17. You can also assemble your own for much less.
   
6. Fire – If you unexpectedly have to spend a night out because you misjudged the distance you needed to hike, you got lost, hurt, or someone in your group is hurt, you want to have the option to make a fire. This means you should practice making a fire and have the means to reliably light one if necessary. The most reliable way I’ve found to make a fire is to use a fire steel, which is a flint-like device that throws lots of sparks, and a fire-starter like dryer lint or cotton balls that have been covered with vaseline. You can also carry matches for convenience, but these can get damp. Don’t waste your money on emergency matches that will burn 10 minutes under water; it’s just not necessary.
   
7. Multi-tool and Repair Kit – You don’t need a big knife when you go hiking. In fact, scissors are more of a necessity than a knife, so it’s best to bring along some kind of swiss army knife or leatherman-style multi-tool. That, a small roll of duct tape, and a few safety pins are all you really need to patch up broken or torn gear.
8. Nutrition – Hiking is exercise and you need to eat to keep your body going if you’re hiking for more than a few hours. It’s good to bring along healthy snacks with a good balance of carbohydrate, protein and fat or a sandwich if you plan on hiking all day.
   
9. Hydration – When you go hiking it’s important to bring water with you and to drink it liberally. I usually drink a quart of water before I go hiking and then drink 1 quart after every two hours. You’ll feel better if you stay hydrated, particularly if it’s very hot or very cold, the water will help you digest snacks or meals, and eliminate waste. If you go for an all day hike, it’s often good to carry a water filter or Chlorine Dioxide tablets so you can purify water from a lake or stream when you run out. I rarely carry more than 3 quarts on a hike (6 pounds of water,) and just resupply from natural sources as needed.
   
10. Emergency Shelter – It’s useful to carry an emergency shelter like an emergency blanket, emergency bivy, or regular bivy/sleeping bag cover if you get cold and wet or need to camp out unexpectedly. If this happens, it’s also important that you avoid lying directly on cold ground all night because it will literally suck the heat out of your body. It’s best to bring a foam torso length sleeping pad or sit pad that you can lie on top of to remain warm. The pad doesn’t have to be full length, just long enough to fit from your hips to your collarbone.

Other Suggested Essentials

Here are a few other items that are very useful to have when you go hiking.

• Toilet paper and a trowel to dig a cat hole so you can bury your waste
• Gloves or glove liners to keep your hands warm
• Rain jacket and pants. Great if it gets windy and they provide additional insulation.
• A piece of paper with that has your emergency contact info and a list of daily medications that you need to take
• Doggie bags, so you can pack out dog poop if hiking with your dog

Clothing Advice

Don’t wear any cotton clothing or clothing that is partially made out of cotton, bamboo, rayon, tencel, or modal because it is very slow to dry if it becomes wet and insulates poorly. Always wear synthetic or wool clothing because it’s far safer.

Choosing the Right Day Pack

You need to carry the 10 essentials in something, so you’re going to want some kind of day pack. I recommend something between 25 and 40 liters in size, depending on the length of your hiking trips. If they’re in an urban area like a park or under 4 hours in duration, you can probably get by with a smaller pack. If your hikes are longer than 4 hours in length, or you’re hiking in more rugged terrain, you’ll probably want a larger day pack so you can carry more food, water, and insulation.
Personally, I like daypacks that have a lot of external stretchy pockets and a minimally organized internal storage compartment. I put everything I will need during the day on the outside of the pack – water bottles, a wind breaker or rain coat, hat, snacks, and my map in the outer pockets, and store everything else I might need inside the pack.
Packing like this makes it very easy to quickly find things if you’re hiking with a group, especially if they have short rest stops and you’re always falling behind because it takes you so long to pack when the rest stop is over.