International Travel with Kids Ages 5-9

Tips, Tricks, and How We Planned

We have now completed two international trips with our kids - over the last two summers.  A trip to the UK and a trip to France.  This is a new phase for our parenting career as these have been trips that integrated cultural exploration as opposed to tropical or Disney vacations. Below are our key takeaways and learnings.

Bonus content: Check out our other popular parenting posts (👨‍🍼My First Year of Fatherhood: Polished Memories and Work Travel and Mom Guilt) and if you are here for our writing on product management, check out our latest posts here.

Broadening the horizons is worth the work

It is a lot of effort to travel with young humans, but it is rewarding in new and different kinds of ways. I could really see the girls grow through these experiences and their worldview broadening. It was hard for me to keep this perspective in the moment - the whining and complaining about too much walking was real, but the following moment made me feel validated:

One of the big things we did in Paris, was the tour of the Louvre. It was a slog for the kids. We used Paris Muse, which was highly recommended as a kid-appropriate scavenger hunt tour of the highlights of the museum, but our tour guide wasn’t great. However, a few days later, as we were walking through Old Town Nice, our 6-year-old burst out:

“Mom, it’s like we are in the Louvre again” - she said as we passed by a statue. I looked at her puzzled and asked her why she thought that.

She replied - “The Louvre was full of statues, though this one does have its arms and a head, while many statues in the Louvre didn’t.”

This was a good reminder for me that kids at this age are sponges. Nothing is wasted or lost on them, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the moment.

Mixing culture with “kid first” experiences is a winning combination

We organized both trips to be 60% “culture” and 40% “vacation” to ensure that our kids were both learning new things but also had things to look forward to that they could relate to and get excited about.

In both London and Paris, we did the easy kid-friendly things - Hamley’s toy store in London, and summer carnival rides in Tuiliere Gardens in Paris. But we chose to go further both times and add beach/theme park days into the experiences.

So when we went to the UK, we paired 5 days in London with a long weekend in Brighton. While in London, we explored Buckingham Palace, a river cruise, Tower of London, the London Eye, and local streets. In Brighton, we focused on rides at a pier, a beach, and a slower rhythm that helped our kids (and us) balance the trip.

In France, we explored Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triumph and Montmartre, and balanced it with Paris Disney, and pool and beach days in the French Riviera.

Logistics - location, sleeping arrangements, transportation  and luggage

Location - We were very intentional about the location during our trips. This helped us minimize at least a little bit of walking and since we are living in a post-stroller life, this was important.

This meant that when we were in cities, we optimized for central locations with easy access to landmarks as well as public transit.  During the “vacation” part of our trips, we optimized for either pool on the property or easy access to the beach/other attractions. 

Sleep - For Adam and me, it is important that we have some space from the kids during our family travel at night - separate rooms mean that we all get better sleep. So both times, when we needed to stay somewhere for longer than a night, we got adjoining rooms (connected by a door in between) and 2 rooms when we rented a house.

Flights: fly direct if you can - As we are early in our international travels with our kids, we have gone out of our way to pick locations with direct flights as much as possible. This has minimized some amount of the logistics and risks of luggage not making it.  As our travel gets more advanced, we will need to take flights with layovers, but where direct flights were available, we optimized for that.

Luggage - Our strategy has been for every family member to pack their own carry-on and backpack. When we flew to London last year, we were paranoid about airline staffing shortages so we did not check our bags on the way to London. On the way to Paris, we checked all but 1 bag, in the carry on bag, we stored extra clothes for every family member in case any of the other bags got lost.

Transportation - our kids did great in subways and trains. We have now ditched car seats when traveling internationally, which has been an unlock (though here is a good portable car seat booster if you are looking for one).  While in the cities, we mostly used Ubers, Adam did book us a car service to/from airports since everything is smaller in Europe, so this helped ensure that cars would fit all of our luggage as needed. Ubers worked well enough in major cities, but worse in the French Riviera.

Finding childcare abroad is very doable

We have had good luck finding childcare through agencies when traveling - I was initially worried about what this would look like in Europe. However, there are babysitting agencies that I was able to find directly as well as ask hotels to recommend agencies. Most of them have a 3-hour minimum and a variety of payment structures. I used WhatsApp to communicate with the agencies as well as the babysitter day of and it worked well.

Dinner time was hard

The lowlight for us both times were evening meals. European meals take a long time and trying new food is not something that brings our children joy at this point of their development.  We also haven’t invested in teaching our kids to sit for long dinners and have a firm family rule of no electronics at dinner. Since we weren’t willing to bend on the electronics, here are the things we tried to make evening meals be more palatable.

1.  Find family-friendly places - We asked the concierge for restaurant recommendations that would work for kids. I did not know Paris restaurants have kids’ menus, but plenty do.

2.  We opted to have dessert somewhere else to break up the meal length.

4. In-room picnic/and or room service - One of the nights we went to the market and bought food to have a picnic in our room - kids got to explore what a supermarket looks like and the dining experience was much more palatable for us all.  Another night we did room service.

5.  Eat outside in town squares where kids can run around - we didn’t do this yet but will try next time

Don’t underestimate the walking

I had this idyllic hope that we will be able to wander through small streets without a destination and explore European cities together as a family.  However, because getting to most destinations requires walking (even if you are taking a subway for part of the way), the concept of aimless wandering is not a thing for our kids yet. Walking with a destination to a carousel or an ice cream shop definitely worked, but it required planning ahead of time. In the absence of a plan, this wasn’t worth our time. I look forward to everyone getting older and having this experience later in our travels.

Summing it up

The next ten years feel precious for us as a family to form memories and enjoy new experiences together. To make the most of this time, I find myself making lists of all the places we want to go as a family (and at what frequency). And while I know there is a time and place for “vacations” where we relax and savor each other’s company, I’m excited that we are now taking trips to expand our kids’ minds with new cultures and education. As we continue to live our life with intention, it has been rewarding to plan our time off with purpose and see our family thrive as we grow our repertoire of things to do as a family.