Taking our kids to their first overseas vacation: the good, the bad and the beautiful

If you know me then you probably know that Victor and  I love love love to travel.  And we wanted to make sure that the girls would love to travel as well.  We’ve been talking about taking Mia and Alexa on their first trip to Europe – we wanted to make sure that they would remember and appreciate the trip but did not want to wait till they were ‘too’ old to do it.  We figured that 6 is a great age to do it, April is a great month to go and Czech Republic is a great place to visit (it was on our To Visit List for a while).   As I found out during my research, there are no direct flights between NYC and Prague so since we were flying through Poland we decided to add a stop there to our trip and that’s how our itinerary (Warsaw, Krakow and Prague) was born.

Mia and Alexa were so excited about the trip – unlike their parents (who tend to pack a day prior to the departure), the girls had Packing Lists going and their toys, books and games packed up and ready to go waaaay before we got our stuff together.

I am so happy to report that the love for travel did not skip a generation and Mia and Alexa loved the trip.

There were a couple of small hiccups (Alexa getting food poisoning and Mia crying on the day of our arrival that she wanted to rest in her bed in RIDGEWOOD) but despite that the whole trip exceeded our expectations.  They did great carrying their backpacks (and looks absolutely adorable doing so), they loved trying out new foods, writing in their journals, taking pictures, walking all over the place.   We went to a few museums (which they loved) and 3 classical music performances (which got a luke-warm reception from the girls).  Lesson learned – two classical music concerts in 5 days is a bit too much for 6 year olds….Although we did make it up to them and after two concerts took them to see a Magic Flute performance at the Marionette Theater in Prague, which they loved.

I downloaded a few movies for them on the iPad as a last resort but we did not even finish watching all of them.  The girls found ways to entertain themselves – from playing ‘restaurant’ or building ‘tunnels’ at the hotels, to the games of hide-and-seek in the Old Towns of Krakow, Warsaw and Prague, to writing in their journals and inventing ‘Mia and Alexa’ language (and cracking themselves up as they spoke it).   We did watch E.T. and Mary Poppins with them while having a cake in bed on two occasions:)

I love our ‘Victor and I’ vacations but we were surprised to find out that this family trip was even more fun (in some way more than others) than our couple-only trips.  It was so great seeing the world through the girls’ eyes, and watching them experience Europe for the first time.   And traveling with them also gave us an excuse to take it a little easy, not see as many things as we normally would, take long naps during the day, sleep in more and take a few ice-cream breaks:)  We’ve made so many memories and did so many cool things such as:

Getting new toys:

and taking carriage rides:

Lots of jumping off things:

Watching street performers:

and posing with some of them:

Taking TWO overnight trains (and doing lots of monkeying around!)

And seeing lots of beautiful sights:

Making ‘dragon faces’:

And posing for photographs:

Even getting bored sometimes:)

There were games in the most majestic settings:

and maps to figure out where to go next:

there were museums:

and selfies:

 And most importantly, we’ve made AMAZING family memories and got the girls started on their path as world travelers!

And if you are planning an overseas trip with your own young kids here are few things that worked for us:

1. Don’t pack too much into each day – make sure that there is plenty of time for breaks – ice-cream, snack, hide-and-seek, etc.

2. Have a ‘lazy’ day at least once during your a trip- sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast, watch a movie in bed

3. Take turns between doing what that the kids want to do and what you want to do – e.g. we went to a classical music performance (OUR thing) and a carriage ride (THE GIRLs thing)

4. Let the kids pick a restaurant

5. Buy cameras for your kids and let them take pictures – Mia and Alexa loved capturing the trip and Victor and I loved looking through their images

6. Suggest that your kids keep journals and ask them to write what was important to them at the end of each day

7. Give the kids their weekly allowance and let them pick their own souvenirs with it.  Mia and Alexa spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to get and loved little stuffed animals they chose

Hope these tips will have your make your family trip with kids even more enjoyable!