As a former intrepid traveler who spent a year travelling around Asia after university, a summer in the former Soviet Union and who would not have hesitated pre-kids to jump on a plane to go to Europe for the weekend (not to mention the fact I was travelling all week every week for work, it’s been hard trying to quell the travel bug since becoming a parent. We’ve still travelled a lot to visit family, being both from Western Canada, but that’s not quite the same as setting off to explore new cities. But since our youngest turned five, we’ve set ourselves a goal of taking the kids to at least one new place a year so we can share the delight of discovery and exploration with them before they are old enough to want to do that without their parents in tow.
But travelling with kids is a different kind of travelling—the itinerary needs lots of stops for snacks and diversions along the way, and parents must keep in mind that they can’t log as much walking time as they might like to. So in order to maximize our time on a recent family long weekend in NYC to visit some friends, I turned to Lisa Crossfield of Tonic Travel who offers tailored itineraries and trip planning for New York, London, Toronto, Whistler and Vancouver (all places where she and her family have lived). A mom of two, Lisa knows what works for families and what doesn’t and she put together a perfect itinerary for our special weekend, complete with highlighted brochures for the museums so we would know where to focus our energies, a map of the best playgrounds in Central Park and suggestions for where to get a snack for the kids all along the way. With none of the usual travel stress to drag us down, it was a great trip and I’ll always enjoy the memories of the kids’ awe in seeing the Empire State Building, Lady Liberty, the giant blue whale at the Museum of Natural History, all the candy at Dylan’s Candy Bar…the list goes on.
Seeing a new city through your children’s eyes—wonderful. Having a savvy itinerary so you can maximize your time and minimize your meltdowns—priceless.
Comments
I completely agree that travelling with kids adjusts travel plans, but it does not mean that ravel is out of the question. I have found that creating a schedule with more downtime breaks and include time for naps make the trip a lot nicer as well as eating out at their dinner time instead of too late, makes all the difference in the world, plus eating earlier means the restaurant is usually less busy and the staff more relaxed.
It’s true about the restaurants not being crowded and I definitely enjoyed having earlier dinners and then still being able to get to bed at a reasonable time!
We just had a great trip to Portland, OR from Vancouver, BC with our 3.5 year old. We loaded our bikes and her trailer onto the Amtrak train to get there. Train travel is great with children - they don’t have to be strapped into a car seat, and there’s lots to see. With our bikes, we didn’t have to worry about car seats in taxis, and Portland has a great public transit system which is free in the downtown core. We stayed in a one bedroom suite with kitchenette, breakfast included. Our daughter slept on the floor in the bedroom, a “campout” adventure. We made time every day to go to a playground, and visited the public library, which has storytime every day at 2pm. Only downside was the 6:00 am check-in time at the train station in Vancouver.
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