Encouraging your kids to enjoy the travel moment

Often when reading blogs about traveling with kids, you see suggestions for using DVD players and such like to entertain your kids while your doing "boring" things like moving from one place to another.

I have a suggestion: how about encouraging your children to enjoy looking at what they see around them? How about encouraging them to actually engage in their surroundings, to observe, to comment, and to experience? What is the problem with looking out the car/train/etc. window at endless stretches of countryside?

Apparently children HAVE to be kept entertained for every moment of their waking lives. Why? Why must we cosset our kids by keeping them in an entertainment bubble that means they basically take their home environment with them? Why even take them on a vacation, when you could all happily stay at home and keep watching your TV? If you want a travel experience, watch a travel show...

Or, how about actually TALKING with your kids? How about talking about what it is that you are seeing? How about getting them to comment on their travel experiences?

• What did you like best today?
• What did you like least today?
• Why did you like/dislike those things?
• What was the most surprising thing today?
• Do you have any questions about what we've seen so far today?

I know that kids can get grumpy and "bored" when you're travelling, and at those times its important just to maintain the peace. However, how about encouraging them to experience rather than just passively sit back and be entertained?

Favourite travel items: CD Audio books for car travel

A couple of years ago we did a week-long trip to the central west of New South Wales which involved long stretches of driving between Sydney, Narrabri, Coonabarabran and Dubbo. To entertain the kids (and ourselves!) we purchased the CD Audio book set of most of the stories by Roald Dahl: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, Danny the Champion of the World, The Witches etc.

What a great investment they were! They helped pass the time really well, and the narrations were fantastic, including many different voices for the characters.

If you can get hold of decent audio book CDs then I would thoroughly recommend them for long car trips.

Road atlases and navigating tips

I don't know if this will be really obvious to everyone else, but other places in the world (outside Australia) actually number the exits on their motorways. I mention this simply to make navigating in the car so much easier.

I have driven long distances across several countries and had Yvette navigating for me. We usually take with us the road atlases for the various regions we travel through. The brands we have used are:

• Philip's Multiscale Europe
• AA Big Road Atlas USA (and Canada & Mexico)
  
• Michelin Great Britain & Ireland Tourist & Motoring Atlas

Each of these are quite different to use, and have various benefits and drawbacks. With respect to motorway exits we found them numbered in the road atlases. There seem to be two numbering systems. The first (as used in Europe) is that exits are simply numbered in order from 1 at one end to whatever at the other end. The second numbering system (as used in Quebec) is that each freeway exit number is derived from the distance the exit is from the beginning.

Both numbering systems work well. And once you've worked them out they are brilliant for navigating purposes. The numbers are usually displayed on the large signs beside the motorway prior to each exit. I only mention all of this because if  you, like me, are totally unaware of such systems, then you will find it absolutely invaluable for getting around. Indeed, even the Google Maps driving directions use the exit numbers.

Yvette's sister tells of her experience in Germany:

When we were in Germany, we bought a map book of Germany in Australia before we left. Very helpfully in Germany every single turnoff from a major road is numbered, so we spent the night before we drove anywhere writing out the sequence of numbers we needed to take. Although we got lost once (because turnoff 35 JUST WASN'T THERE!) we used the map to get us back to the right place and back into our sequence of numbers.

Our experience was similar. In Quebec, once we worked out what all the numbers on the map actually meant (and how they corresponded to the directions) it meant that driving itself was much easier to manage. It did take us a few hours to figure it out, though - enough to miss a major turnoff and enter a city from a completely different direction.

The good and the bad of the various brands of road atlas...
(And while we're here, I'll just point out that different editions to ours might be slightly different.)

AA Good points:

• comprehensive coverage of each state of the USA and Canadian provinces
  
• the markings for 'scenic routes' were actually scenic! We drove Route 100 through Vermont and were not disappointed.

AA Bad points:

• huge format book - really much too large in size to take with you. If I could bear to rip a book (and I can't do it) I'd have taken out the relevant pages.
  
• the city and town maps are very scanty - you'll need extra ones for them.

Michelin Good points:

• manageable sized book
  
• distances in both miles and kilometres
• good city and town maps - much more useful than the AA ones

Michelin Bad points

• very cluttered maps
  
• sometimes it can be difficult to identify which distance measurements correspond to which roads - some of the numbers seem to 'float' ambiguously between a number of roads

Philip's Good points

• manageable sized book
  
• good introduction to each country in Europe
  
• very clear maps - less cluttered than the Michelin ones

Philip's Bad points

• city and town maps inadequate
• some of the marked scenic routes were NOT scenic, and some that were scenic were not marked as scenic in the road atlas

All had good motorway routes with exits marked clearly. Obviously, if you choose to travel on back roads there is less detail available in road atlases for those routes, but most of the main ones are marked, and usually with the national road number for the country it is in.

With a decent road atlas, and an understanding of how the motorway and road numbering systems work you should have less chance of getting lost. Despite all of our planning in this regard, we have been lost - but not often. Once in Ireland, trying to get around some roadworks that created a huge traffic jam, once in Quebec when we took the wrong exit and I had the wrong street address for the hotel, and once in Seville on approaching the city.

Actually, come to think of it, I'm going to have a whinge here. The road atlases show the big scale routes around a country, and often have city maps. What bugs me are the city maps - they infrequently show enough of the outskirts of a city to show where and how the motorways actually connect with the local streets. Once you leave the motorway and head into a town or city you can easily get lost until you can reorient yourself on the city maps. That happened to us especially in Seville, but it has happened before that too.

Car seats

If you’re going to hire a car, you will need a car seat for any child up to about 7, or any child that is short. You can usually hire one from your car-hire company, but they are often very expensive to hire. When we went to the UK a few years back, we found that it was cheaper to buy one for £20 when we got there, instead of paying £65 to hire one. We did an internet search for the closest baby shop to Heathrow (in Slough, if anyone's interested), then went straight there from the airport. At the end of the trip, we left the car seat in our hotel room with a note on it saying “free to a good home”. We had enquired about donating it to Oxfam, but they weren’t accepting any baby goods.

On our trip to the USA and Canada, we took our own car seats. As our children were a little bit older (though very short) we opted to take half-booster seats, which went into the checked luggage. On a subsequent trip to Europe, we shopped around and found some even smaller in size and weight which easily fitted in our cabin luggage with all our other belongings (we had no check-in luggage).

Check the regulations of the country or countries to which you will be travelling. In large countries, these regulations can change from state to state or province to province, so you will need to check the state’s individual regulations. Places to check regulations include current edition driving atlases or up-to-date travel guides. You may also be able to find the information on the internet. In many cases, other countries’ regulations are more relaxed than Australian ones, meaning you can take whatever suits you. But check if there are specific regulations with which you will need to comply.

If you do decide to hire a carseat, check very carefully that it suits your needs. I have heard horror stories of people hiring cars complete with outdated and unsafe car seats that stink of vomit or are covered in food stains and crumbs. Check as best as you can before you book, what the seat you will be getting is like. If the car-hire company promises anything, keep a copy of that promise in writing. When you pick up the car, check the seat over properly. Make sure you can install it correctly and safely. Insist on reading the instruction manual. If you are not happy with what is being offered, ask for a different seat.

If nothing is suitable, you have a few options. If you are picking up at an airport, don’t sign the car-hire contract, and go to another car-hire company, and see if they can provide for your needs. Or tell the staff that you will take the car seat to the closest baby-goods store, purchase a proper car seat, and drive back with the hire car seat and return it for a full refund of seat hire fee.

When travelling with kids, safety in the car is of paramount importance. Take or hire a decent car seat for each child who needs one, and comply with the local regulations. The driving speed on some motorways in Europe is legally quite high - unrestricted in places like Germany - and frequently exceeded by local drivers. Good car seats are essential.

Driving and kids

So here in Australia we drive on the left. Sensibly, they do so in the UK and Ireland - so it isn't that challenging to make that transition. 

Much of the rest of the world drive on the right, with the car steering wheel on the left, and the gearstick on the right of the driver, and the windscreen wiper and indicator levers switched over. This takes some getting used to. Driving straight ahead is fine, but turning corners (at intersections) is a major intellectual challenge to prevent turning onto the wrong side of the road. Learning to drive a car in "mirror image" is enough of a challenge without having to deal with kids as well.

On our trip to the USA and Canada, I drove from Albany in New York State to Quebec City, Canada through Vermont - and back. I picked up the car at Albany airport and it was pouring with rain. We also pretty quickly faced the horrific "spaghetti" of the freeways on the fringe of the city. Not a great start for basically a jet-lagged learner driver with two kids in the back. So how do we manage it?

1. The driver makes the rules, and all the passengers follow. The first rule (for the first day at least) is: no talking until I say so. That way I can concentrate on reading signs, taking directions from the navigator (a person that is, not a piece of electronic equipment) and generally finding my way. If travelling through the countryside, I tend to relax this rule after a little while - once I'm a bit more relaxed. But even then, talking must be quiet - and definitely no bickering or whingeing!

2. Have something for them to do. We pack a small bag of activities for them to do for the aeroplane, and this doubles as in-car activities. Books to read (though be wary of car-sickness), colouring-in, puzzle books, soft toys for imagination games etc. all make great diversions.

3. Towns and cities need concentration, especially when searching for accommodation or trying not to get tangled in the maze of streets that make up every medieval walled city in Europe! Kids need to understand that they are being helpful if they are quiet at this time, and that things will go much more smoothly if they co-operate. Our kids were extremely helpful in this regard when I got entangled in the streets of Seville and took ages to find my way out. They knew I needed to concentrate, and were extremely helpful in keeping the noise down in the back seat so I could get out of the maze.

4. Take breaks. This is as good for you as it is for the kids. Driving is tiring - Australians know this because we are accustomed to driving long distances. Get out of the car. Get some food. Find some grass or a park and let the kids run around. Kids cope with long drives so much better if they can have time to run around, rather than being cooped up in a car for hours and hours. If you are getting at all frustrated (whether because of the kids or some other reason), you need to take a break for your own sanity and driving safety.

5. If they're old enough, have the kids follow the trip on a map. They might like to work out how far there is to go, and be able to identify the towns along the way. They might be able to work out where you need to turn off the freeway in order to enter a town. Have them look out for parking spaces too - these can sometimes be difficult to find.

6. Try to never drive in really horrendous cities. That's why we picked up the car in Albany, and not New York City. Nor did we drive in Paris. We've driven out of Rome once, and into London (to drop off the car) on another occasion and learned from both experiences: just don't do it. It is not worth the stress. If you do, try arriving on a weekend. We serendipitously found ourselves driving into London on a Saturday and found the traffic - though bad - was better than it would have been during the week.

7. Learn to drive before you go. I drive a car with an automatic transmission at home. In Rome, we hired one with a manual transmission (to save money). In retrospect, I should have spent the extra and saved myself a huge amount of angst. I bunny-hopped that car out of Rome (with the police behind me laughing at my driving), and took 17 changes of lights to get it moving through one set of traffic lights in Tuscany. And I got it stalled under the toll barrier on the autostrada. Memorable experiences, but highly stressful.

8. Hire the smallest car you can for the number of passengers and luggage you have. It will be easier to find parking spots for it, and will most likely be more fuel efficient. A big 4WD or SUV is completely inappropriate in Europe: you will get stuck in the towns.

And if you're still not game, book organised tours - or get yourself a chauffeur!

The pleasure is in the planning...

Travelling takes planning. Travelling with kids takes even more planning. I know some people will just cringe at the thought of meticulous planning - it does lack the sort of spontaneity that many travellers enjoy. But with kids, planning can avoid wasting huge amounts of time in queues, travelling between sights and other frustrations.

I love planning the holidays, almost as much as taking the holiday itself.

Here's (roughly) what I do.

1. We decide on a destination. Our current thinking is Greece and Turkey - whittled down from an epic journey through most of Eastern Europe.

2. Then we make a list of all the most worthwhile places to visit. As a guide, I use the UNESCO World Heritage List, and a couple of excellent books: 1001 Historic Sites You Must See Before You Die and 1001 Natural Wonders: You Must See Before You Die. We add to this anything of personal interest - for example, I have made a point of trying to see as many of Michelangelo's works as I can. I think I've only got four to go. We try to get a mix of natural and cultural places so that there's a good balance. We add to that any places that look interesting or unusual from our travel guides. The DK guides are great for this as they are pictorial as well as textual.

3. Get a map, and locate them all on the map.

4. To minimise travel, we find a centrally located cities and towns to form as a base. Sometimes, you just have to drive each day to get around the places you want to see. For example, we stayed in Seville as a base and travelled to Granada and Cordoba as day trips. It just saves repacking the luggage and hauling it around every day, and locating the new accommodation every day.

5. Join the dots. Link sights to their closest base town and estimate how many days will be required in each location, and how much time will be needed to travel between base towns.

6. We often do a lot of tweaking at this stage: trying to re-order the sequence in which we visit sights, or changing the route or direction of travel so that we spend the maximum time seeing the sights and less time on the road (or train / plane etc.)

7. Be prepared to leave something out if you just can't get it in. You will need to prioritise which sights are the "must see" ones, and which are a bonus.

8. Plan "vacant" days. You'll never know what you stumble across once actually travelling. In Quebec, we took an unplanned trip out to Parc Nationale de la Jacques Cartier and had a wonderfully relaxing day walking some of the trails and picnicking by the river.

9. Sometimes you're just going to have to drive (travel by train, etc.) to see those things you want to see. In our planning, we seem to have the uncanny knack of having "must see" sights which are located at the furthest extremities of our destination!

10. Map out the whole trip, including timing for travelling and every sight you want to see.

11. Check the opening hours, times and days for every sight. This is REALLY important so that you know you can actually get into a particular place on the day you are there. Sundays in Europe can be a bit tricky, and watch out for museums closed on Mondays (though some have different closed days).

12. Take into account what your children can cope with: jet lag at the beginning, general "down" time, sleeping, rest times and their walking limit.

13. Book ahead where possible. This limits time in queues - thus minimising fuss from the kids, and you get more time actually enjoying the sights. Where you cannot book ahead (such as the Eiffel Tower), plan to arrive before opening time. We had breakfast at the base of the Eiffel Tower and were first out of the lifts at the top. No fuss for us or the kids. Some useful "book ahead" ideas:

• City Passes (e.g. Paris Pass - www.paris-pass.com) if you're wanting to visit a lot of museums etc.
  
• Individual sights (we prebooked the Alhambra Palaces in Granada)
• Ferries, especially car ferries (we prebooked the Stranraer - Belfast and Wexford - Fishguard ferries)
• Tours which take in a number of places of interest to you
• Hotels / B&Bs / Accommodation if you have special requirements, such as cots, family rooms etc.
• Any shows you might want to see
• Trains which require reservations. We have no experience using Eurail, so I can't comment on that, but we took the New York to Albany Amtrak service and we needed to travel at a specific time so prebooked tickets reduced stress and hassle

14. Map your driving meticulously. I have successfully used Google Maps for driving in Spain and Portugal, and MapQuest for the UK, USA and Quebec. Google Maps was very reliable for driving directions, though it does take a bit of time to figure out the street numbers, names, and scale of distances on the ground. Have a print copy for ease of navigation, and use a tiny font size to keep the whole document as small as possible.

Our last trip to Paris, Spain and Portugal was planned in great detail before we left. Some people wouldn't be comfortable with this, but we found that it worked brilliantly. It reduced our stress over unexpected inconveniences, and made travelling with kids inherently enjoyable. The kids appreciate the element of predictability that planning gives. We felt confident in what we were doing because we didn't have to do any planning on the run.

3 great travel games for kids

When you're travelling, the best games to take along with you are ones that you don't have to take anything for! The following three great games only involve your eyes, your brain and your surroundings. One assumes that you'll take your eyes and your brain with you anyway, and your surroundings are automatically provided...

I-Spy

One of the easiest games for travelling kids is I-Spy. The usual form of this game involves the words "I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with [letter of the alphabet]". This is fine, as long as your kids are old enough to know their alphabet! So when our kids were little, we used to go with colours - instead of "something beginning with [letter]" we'd say "something that is [name of colour]". This way, as long as your child knows their colours, or even just some of them, this game can be played by younger and older children alike.

Counting things
When I was little my family went on lots of long road trips for our holidays. We used to look for windmills - not the Dutch kind - the Southern Cross kind. We'd count them all day long. Depending on where you are, you could count cows, red barns, houses (if you're a long way from anywhere!), billboards etc.

Southern Cross windmill.

Image courtesy of Matt Bridger, http://gallery.hd.org. 

My children like to count yellow cars. They've been doing this for about 18 months now, and in all that time, they've counted well over a thousand. Every time they see one, one or both of them yells "Ack!" (it has become lost in the mists of time why they yell this, but they do...) and then the older one adds it to the tally.

Licence plate games
You can also play number plate (licence plate) games. Depending on the combination of letters you can see on passing cars or on the car in front, you have to come up with a phrase using the letters of the plate, as the initial letters of each word in the phrase. e.g. IWP could be "I wear pyjamas", "I want pesos" or "it will pour". You could try to come up with the funniest or most unusual phrase.

Another option is to use the letters of the number plate in a single word, in the order in which they appear. For example: "EJY" could be "enjoying". "TRV" could be "travel".

All of these games can be used in the car, waiting at airports, waiting in queues, and when watching the world go by. Don't fall for the mistake of getting just the kids to play them. Grown-ups can join in too!