We took our new little family of four to London this week, partly to visit my sister and partly to show our five-year-old a slice of the wide world, and you know what, we learned something about ourselves on this trip: Turns out we are not travel-with-our-kids people. I've seen other parents who travel with their kids, and they seem to get a sense of fulfillment or a few magical moments that make all the struggle worth it, but for us, I think we'd rather just leave the kids home next time...
So, I've come here to document some of the successes and pitfalls of our experience so that any of you who might be considering a similar kind of trip with young kids can hopefully benefit from it. And with that, let's dive in. (For reference, my kids were five and a half and four months at the time of our trip.)
First, the plane ride to London was actually probably one of the more successful parts of the trip. I went in very prepared, and it all went as smoothly as I could have hoped. If you're flying with a lap infant less than 20 pounds, you can request an onboard bassinet with most international carriers. Delta calls theirs a SkyCot. You can call ahead about it, but it really boils down to a first-come-first-served basis at the gate, so we got to the airport a few hours early, and I watched the staff coming and going like a hawk until someone showed up who seemed like they'd be manning our gate and made sure to be first in line. Getting to the airport early also allowed us to get some dinner before getting on the plane. There was a dinner service, but since our flight didn't depart till 6:45, that's way after our usual dinnertime, and waiting would have made all of us cranky.
Let's talk about jet lag. First of all, let me say this: melatonin, melatonin, melatonin. We don't use it at home, but one at bedtime and another when kiddo wakes up in the middle of the night did wonders for helping us adjust. Second, the thing that actually really surprised me was when the fatigue hit. My girls were both totally fine for days 1 and 2, along with the first night (not on the plane, first night after arriving), but night 2 and day 3 was when the jet lag really hit. Baby was up every 45 minutes from about 11 to 4 on night 2, which was obviously terrible. I think on night 1 she was so tired from getting half a night's sleep on the plane that her body didn't care what time it was, and then night 2 is when the day/night confusion peaked. Fortunately, that was the night my older daughter slept over at my sister's house, so she wasn't affected by the multiple wakings (not fun for Mom and Dad, though), but even so, day 3 is when the jet lag seemed to really hit her, which was tough because the way I'd planned our trip was to relax most of the first couple days and then start touristing on day 3... So honestly, I wonder if it might have gone better to go go go the first two days and then take a day to relax.
Now on to touristing. My personal travel style when it's me and one or two other adults is to hit as much as possible in just a few days, and I have a big old list of things I want to do. We did not try to do that on this trip. Realistically, I would say two things per day is the max that's possible with young kids. I kept a pretty open mindset of things-that-would-be-nice-to-do-if-we-have-extra-time, and we didn't get to a single one. Also, my advice on planning your time, especially if you have any designs on public transportation, is whatever amount of time the map says or that you think it would take you to do or see something as an adult, double it and add half an hour. We kept making the mistake of schlepping our stroller around too much, thinking it would be nice to have to hold the diaper bag and jackets and other bags if needed, but honestly I think it was more of a pain than it was worth in a lot of instances, especially in the city. If we did it again, I would leave the stroller behind more and stick with a wearable carrier. It was still nice to have the stroller sometimes, though, so I wouldn't leave it home, just in the hotel or car more often.
One thing that surprised me a little was that the jet lag almost seemed to never wear off. My daughter seemed much crankier than usual pretty much the whole week, and she didn't seem to enjoy the things I thought she would as much as I thought she would. If you want to try out traveling with your kids, I recommend going somewhere where you have zero expectations or designs for yourself. An important part of making this kind of thing work is being able to roll with the punches and understand that you will not see everything, nor should you try. And you're honestly unlikely to get much chance to enjoy any of the sights for yourself as you're wrangling and navigating (two things that each take up your full attention simultaneously, by the way). It was difficult enough to get our daughter to enjoy the things she ostensibly wanted to do, let alone anything she didn't.
A funny thing happens when you're traveling with your kids, in fact, where it feels like the balance of power has shifted. My daughter is in this phase of epic sulks that can last anywhere from 30 minutes to several days. Case in point: I wanted to take a family picture on Easter, and she was not having it, so when I tried to insist, she got mad and not only refused to take that picture, but also refused to be in any family pictures for the next three days. And the thing is, if we were at home, we could spend some time to address this kind of thing, but when you're traveling, you have to keep moving because you only have two hours at Windsor Castle before you have to leave to make your appointment at the Cat Cafe, and if you can't get your kid to smile right now, you've missed your chance. And every 20 minutes you spend talking down a tantrum is 20 minutes you don't spend doing the things you came here to do. So suddenly you find yourself making compromises in order to keep the peace so that everyone won't be totally miserable the whole time and having a lot more sympathy for other parents of "spoiled" kids on vacation.
It unfortunately didn't occur to me until it really was too late that we might have had less overall crankiness if I had carried more snacks. This has always been my weakness as a mom, since I don't really snack myself, so I don't think to bring them along. But most of the times when moodiness was at its peak, I realized belatedly it probably had to do with being hungry. Not surprisingly, it's more difficult to make sure your kid gets enough to eat at mealtimes when you're on the go, so if I had to do it again, I'd carry more snacks and offer food more often.
To the point about time, as well, here's my advice: Avoid making appointments as much as possible. You often have to pay more money at the door than if you book ahead online, but when traveling with small children, often flexibility becomes extremely important, so if you can bite the extra cost a little bit, it's worth just buying tickets at the door whenever you can so that you're not stressing to get to a prearranged appointment. (Obviously, this isn't always possible, since certain things fill up or require timed appointments; you make do where you have to.)
With all that said, here are some of the things we did enjoy: our daughter's favorite (she says) was getting to spend her saved-up allowance money at Harrod's. She also talks a lot about the London Eye, and she "loved" the Cat Cafe. She didn't enjoy the bus tour with afternoon tea like I thought she would (although that was also on day 3...). She was more interested in the Shakespeare's birthplace mini museum than I expected, and she seemed to find Windsor Castle interesting but was mostly invested in the scavenger hunt activity they had for Easter. On our way to airport at the very end, she remembered that she had wanted to go to Hyde Park (to her, just "the park" that we had driven past a few times), which we hadn't gotten to, and was sad about that. The best parts of the trip, really, were the times we spent out at my sister's house, just being with family and not worrying about sightseeing.
Finally, a few notes about traveling with a baby. I actually found that to be the easy part. Ours is an exceptionally good sleeper, so other than the one difficult night, she did pretty well most of the time. We were able to travel with just a small pad (designed for safe sleep) that we just posted up on the floor for her. She's not super mobile, so that worked really well for us. She did have a bit of an odd mini nursing strike on day 4, where I couldn't get her to take a good feed pretty much the whole day, which was especially stressful because we were planning to leave her with a sitter that night (arranged through the hotel) and she doesn't take a bottle, but I ended up having time between dinner and our show to go try again, and she finally ate. It definitely was tricky in general trying to find time and places to breastfeed, especially when we were struggling to get to everything we had planned for the day. Thankfully, our baby was pretty chill and flexible (except when she didn't want to eat when I had time to feed her, but at least she didn't get mad about it later...).
So there you have it. We were part of a fairly large group and not the only ones with small children, but personally, it's not something we'll be attempting again soon. 😅
