SFP 174: Ambitious Travel with Kids

Right now, I’m tired. We just returned from a two-week international trip with our family. Today I’m sharing all the details: the plans, the obstacles, dealing with jet lag, letting go of expectations, and why we keep doing it.

Show Notes/Links:

* Packing videos on Instagram* Saccharomyces Boulardii (to prevent travel’s diarrhea)

Ambitious Travel with Kids – Episode Transcription

Hi there. It’s episode 174, and today we’re talking about ambitious travel plans with kids. If I sound a little bit tired, that’s because I am. We just returned from traveling. We were gone almost two weeks. And I knew I wanted to do a travel episode after I returned from this trip. I figured that it would be best to do it right when we got back, when everything was fresh in my mind. But actually my mind feels anything but fresh right now.

I also thought that it was important to do this because I found that when it comes to traveling with kids, that the saying, “Hindsight is 20/20,” is actually not accurate. For me, hindsight is actually really blurry because when I look back at the travel that we’ve done with kids, I usually only remember the good things. I don’t remember the hard parts. Therefore, I wanted to do this right when we returned so that I could keep it real and let you know what it was actually like in the moment.

I’m going to be sharing more details about our trip, the things that we did right, the things we did wrong, things that I’ve learned over the years of traveling with kids. And I’m going to end with a question from an audience member about traveling with kids.

I’ll start with a little bit of background on why and where and what we do when we travel with kids. For anyone that might be new to the podcast, my kids are three and five. Prior to having kids, my husband and I traveled a lot and we loved traveling internationally and domestically, and we knew that we wanted to continue with kids. I was worried if we stopped traveling, that it might be really hard to start again. So I was pretty motivated and ambitious right out the door when we had our first child, that we were to keep it up.

So we’ve made it a priority every year to take one big trip with our family. Our first trip traveling with kids was to Chile and that was when my son was just shy of his first birthday, and he was our only child. Looking back, it was peaceful and beautiful and simple, as compared to our recent travels, that is.

After that, we went to Spain. Then the next year we went to Costa Rica. Then we went to Mexico, to Central Mexico, Mexico City, and Oaxaca City. Then we went to Norway in the middle of the winter, cheap flights. Then we went back to Costa Rica. We just returned this week from Greece. We have become masters of traveling on the cheap.

Traveling on the Cheap

For the first couple of years when our kids were one and two, we always flew with them in our laps rather than buying seats. So we flew for free with them. And we always use Airbnbs. We like to travel during the shoulder season, so after the peak of the tourist season to get better deals on accommodations and flights.

We try to avoid doing a lot of expensive activities and take advantage of the outdoors a...