Travel Lessons with My Family

Travel Lessons with My Family

In the past year or so I’ve traveled more than ever, for both work and family reasons:

• A tour of southern Europe with 5 of our kids
• NYC (with a vegan tour)
• Maui with all 6 kids
• Japan, on an awesome train trip and cherry blossom festivals with Tynan and some new friends
• NYC with all 6 kids, again sampling the vegan delights
• Portland & Eugene for the World Domination Summit and to visit family
• Los Angeles with all 6 kids

For me, a person who enjoys staying home and enjoying the simple pleasures, it’s been a bit crazy. I don’t normally think of myself as a traveler, but the evidence is against that. I’m a traveler now.
And during it all, I’ve been taking notes. I’d like to share them with you here — my lessons learned in the past year or so of traveling.

Traveling Lightly

For me, the traveling lightly philosophy isn’t just in what you pack (though that’s a good part of it), but in how you approach travel.
Here are some lessons learned:

• For most people, a backpack of 24-, 18- or even 16-liters is enough. I’ve traveled with a 16-liter backpack for weeks with no problems. I think we tend to bring more because of fear that we might need more.
• Wash clothes in the sink and hang them overnight. Bam. You just eliminated the need to bring a lot of clothes.
• My packing list: I wear jeans, underwear, a T-shirt, socks and shoes (of course), and then pack 2-3 more underwear, another T-shirt/workout shirt, workout shorts (that I can run and swim in), 2 more pairs of socks, minimalist running shoes (that don’t take up much space), a Macbook Air and iPhone (with Kindle app so I can read books), cords and some toiletries. If it might be cool, a sweater or jacket.
• I wear the same jeans over and over, and just wash them once every week, hanging them up at night to air out.
• Packing lightly means traveling more easily, not having to drag around a roller bag or luggage. Honestly, you don’t realize how much this costs you in energy and happiness until you go without all the weight. Trips become easier, packing and unpacking takes a few minutes, and you aren’t tired or grumpy.
• Traveling lightly also means you don’t plan out as many things to do, but instead just research possibilities. What do you do each day? You look at the possibilities, and explore. You might just walk around and see what there is to see. Don’t worry about a schedule.
• Traveling lightly also means avoiding the tourist traps. Some tourist attractions are genuinely worth seeing (great art and architecture), but otherwise, just see the city and people watch. You avoid the lines, and again you are lighter and happier.
• It also means resting. Built into each day: slowness and rest stops and picnics and lounging in parks and stopping to just be in a place.
• Walk a lot to explore, and try public transit. Also go for a run. These are the best ways to explore a city.
• Finally, let go of expectations. If you’re going to a great city like Rome for the first time, you probably have an idea of what it is like. You’re wrong, and because it won’t match your expectations, you might be disappointed or frustrated. Instead, go in with curiosity, to explore and to really see. You’ll enjoy every trip much more.

The Funnest Stuff

Here are some highlights that I’ve loved:

• In New York City, definitely don’t miss Hack the Museum. My friend recently started these super fun tours of the Met, and I took my whole family, not because I like tours (I usually hate them), but because they make a normal museum experience into an extraordinary one. Highly recommended.
• In Portland, go on a run in Forest Park. Really lovely, miles and miles of trails through a real forest, right within the city limits.
• In Japan, go during Cherry Blossom season, because it’s gorgeous. It gets crowded, but people watching is part of the fun. You also don’t need to go on the exact weekend when they have the festival, because Cherry Blossom viewing (hanami) seems to go on for weeks. Go with a few friends, lay down a blanket or tarp, bring Japanese picnic food and drinks, and have an amazing time.
• In Rome, St. Peter’s Basilica blew me away with its grandeur.
• The Cinque Terre in Italy — five towns tumbling down cliffsides into the Mediterranean, linked by a train and walking trails — were beautiful and worthwhile.
• Sunbathing on the beaches of Antibes (southern France) was very nice, and I loved the romance of being where Hemingway and Fitzgerald also played around with their hip friends.
• In NYC, we truly love Candle 79, Candle Cafe, Hangawi, Blossom, Dun-well Doughnuts, Babycakes and the Cinnamon Snail. Vegan heaven.
• People watching: Central Park in NYC, beaches at Antibes and Barcelona, Osaka Castle, Ueno Park in Tokyo, Hachiko statue at Shibuya Station in Tokyo, Williamsburg flea market.
• In Japan, you can buy a weeklong train pass and ride the bullet trains everywhere. Tokyo is amazing, but there are other great places, from Osaka to Kyoto and Uji to Miyajima to an organic tea farm outside of the town of Fujieda, that you should definitely see. Bullet trains (shinkasen) are amazing.
• Portland has amazing vegan food! My new friend Ami Baio, a Portland vegan, took me and some friends to some terrific places: Canteen, Portabella Vegan Trattoria, Blossoming Lotus, SweetPea bakery, and the vegan mini-mall! Oh my goodness. All are highly recommended.

Traveling with Kids

Traveling with kids isn’t always easy. But we love traveling with ours. Here’s what we’ve learned:

• Talk to them before the trip about mindset. We explained to them that things will go wrong, we’ll get tired, we’ll walk a lot, we’ll get lost. It’s all an adventure. If they have this adventure mindset, things will go much easier.
• Talk to them about complaining. Again, we’re on an adventure, and complaining isn’t a part of that. Instead, be grateful you’re in this new place, exploring and seeing amazing things.
• Bring sketchbooks. We brought sketchbooks to NYC and would take breaks in the park and draw. Lots of fun!
• Walk a lot at home, for training. Our kids walk a fair amount here in San Francisco, so when we travel and walk a lot to explore, they don’t tire so easily. They still tire, but at least they’re in decent shape.
• Rest. Kids need rest. Build that into the plan each day.
• Gelato — they’ll go anywhere if you reward them with gelato!
• Let them help with the planning. If you’re just dragging them to places you want to see, then it’s boring. But if they helped plan out the trip, including a list of places to see, they’ll be more interested.
• Be each other’s tour guides. When we went to MOMA, we each picked an artist, learned about it, and then had to explain the artist to the others, like a tour guide.
• Get an apartment. We used AirBnB to get apartments in each city. It’s more comfortable for a large family, and cheaper than getting several hotel rooms, plus we could get groceries and cook at home for some meals, rather than eating out all the time. Also, there’s often wireless internet and washer/dryer (if you choose well).
• Kids can travel light too. Our kids each brought a small backpack each, one that they could carry (our younger ones had really small backpacks). They’re responsible for their own stuff. We’ve experimented with this on several trips, and it works out well.
• Give the kids responsibilities. They’re not passengers sitting back enjoying the ride — they’re helping plan and find their way around public transit and pick restaurants and get us to trains on time, etc. They’re learning to travel, and as adults they’ll be really good at it.

These are just a handful of the lessons I’ve learned. I’ve loved every place we’ve visited, and have met some lovely readers in each city, and it’s been excellent. Thank you to everyone we’ve met.

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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
    
    
    
    

Planning Your Greatest Family Vacation

The tricky thing about family vacations is that they include your family. And with your family comes school and work schedules, video games and cookbooks, rock concerts and the big football game that can't be missed. With these conflicting schedules and widespread interests, you'll definitely need time to map it all out.
The goal is simple - make everyone happy with an unforgettable trip to the perfect destination. Achieving that goal can be daunting, especially when all the travel planning falls on you. But it is obtainable, as long as you know what your family enjoys and what travel options you have at your disposal. In the end, seeing your children's faces light up makes it all worth the effort.

Before planning your family's next vacation, check out this advice from ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents). Some of the most travel-wise people in the world, ASTA members know that planning the perfect vacation is easier with time and good advice on your side.

Great Family Vacations Start with Great Family Planning

At the heart of every good, stress-free vacation experience is the perfect plan. If you want a perfect plan that your entire family will love, then get them to help you make it. The more input you get from each family member, the better. Your children may surprise you with some of things they suggest to do on vacation. If the destination or activity is already set, have your kids research online or at the library for exciting things to do while you're all there.

Once the family plan is in place, keep your kids involved by putting them in charge of at least one aspect of the trip. If they're good with maps, make them the navigator. Do they have an eye for photos? Make them the official vacation photographer, in charge of not only taking photos during the trip, but also of compiling the album once you return. They will enjoy the responsibility of the project and the trust you give them to accomplish it.

Setting Your Sights - Where in the World Will You Go?

In The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda says, "Adventure, excitement…a Jedi craves not these things." Well, a Jedi might not crave them, but your kids do. The good news is that there are millions of exciting adventures in this world for you to choose from. The bad news is that there are millions of exciting adventures in this world for you to choose from.

Paring down the list is priority number one. Consider your budget, timeframe and expectations. Are beaches calling your name? How about something in the park variety, be it an amusement, theme, water or National one? Is international travel in your future? Family friendly cruise or resort? With all those in mind, check out these options below sent in by travel agents around the globe.

Follow Your Sense of Adventure at a National Park

America's 388 National Parks are not just the great outdoors, they're the greatest outdoors, and always a family favorite. From glaciers and geysers to canyons and deserts, there is something that will wow every age group. At the tip of your travel tongue may be Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, but dig a little deeper and you will find many surprises.
Your children will actually enjoy learning at a National Park. They'll become minor geologists in the dark depths of Kentucky's Mammoth Cave. Watch their eyes erupt with wonder at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. History comes alive by tracing footprints at Antietam National Battlefield or watching oil droplets bubble to the surface of Pearl Harbor above the USS Arizona Memorial. Experience white water action over class V rapids through magnificent gorges and valleys at Gauley River National Recreation Area. Or, conquer the ice age as a family by hiking along Glacier National.

National Parks are perfect for kids. Most of the larger parks run Junior Ranger Programs, allowing kids to participate in fun activities while learning about the area's natural habitat and historic significance. Other parks offer nature walks and wildlife talks specifically geared toward children to show them that nature has more to offer than video games.

All Aboard! Cruising Family Style

Cruise ships are a family vacation planner's best friends. Picture a floating, mega-resort with tons to do for everyone in a confined space where you know your kids are supervised and safe. Many cruise lines offer voyages designed specifically for families, with expanded activity programs and shore excursions for all age groups and waterslides, ice rinks and climbing walls that keep kids and parents happy for days.
Some cruises have even developed onboard programs that not only feature family together time, but also arrange crucial alone time for parents. Together, parents and kids can participate in mock game shows, story hours, treasure hunts and other activities. Later, adults can schedule a massage or spend time on the sun deck knowing their kids are enjoying a host of supervised games and activities. To find a family cruise line to your liking, talk to a travel agent who specializes in cruises.

Something Wild This Way Comes - African Safaris

For something a bit out of the ordinary, many travel agents rave about African safaris. There's a long list of wilderness adventures available in every degree of comfort, adventure and budget. Safaris range from luxury holidays, where elegant lodges and fine wines share time with tracking giraffes from a sturdy, open-roof vehicle, to mobile camping safaris where you follow predators or stake out the great wildebeest migration, sleeping in tents at a different locale each night.

Just mention the word "safari" to your kids and watch their eyes grow as large as a lion's as they roar with approval. Each safari is judged by the thrilling wildlife it encounters, and many come through with high marks as they safely bring your family into the playgrounds of zebras, lions, elephants, hippos, rhinos, gorillas, cheetahs and a whole ark-full of other animals. So many beasts roam these lands that the ground itself feels alive.

Travel Agents - Your New Favorite Aunt

When you're ready to make the most of your next vacation, open your arms to a new member of the family - your neighborhood travel agent. Your travel agent can save you so much time and money while relieving stress that you may want to invite him or her over for next Thanksgiving.

Money is a big part of any travel experience, and the more value you feel you're getting, the more you'll enjoy yourself. Travel agents understand this principle more than anyone, which is why they work within your schedule, budget and expectations to produce an incomparable vacation experience.

Doesn't a family as great as your own deserve an equally great vacation? Contact a trusted travel agent and start planning your great family vacation today.

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