How to travel abroad with your family
Travel

How to Travel Abroad With Your Family

A family holiday is a great way to unwind. It’ll bring you all closer together, and, provided that you don’t neglect the planning stage, it’ll do so with a minimum of stress. Here, we’ll run through a few tips that’ll help you to avoid that unnecessary hassle, and that’ll slash your costs at the same time.

Flying at Night

If you’re prepared to fly when it’s night-time, you’ll find that the kids are a little easier to handle, as they’ll be sleepier. Evening flights tend to be that little bit more expensive, but if you’re planning a holiday well in advance, you’ll be able to book early, and keep things cheap. Be sure to account for the cost of transfers, too, both on the way out and on the way back; you’ll be able to catch a train from Gatwick airport to London Victoria, whatever time you land.

Don’t over-pack

Among the most common mistakes is to pack far more than you reasonably need. Masses of luggage is an annoyance you don’t need, especially when you’ve also got a family to corral and train tickets to keep track of. As such, it’s important that you don’t pack more than you need.

Some items, like suntan lotion, will be extremely expensive if you wait until you’re on a sun-drenched island before buying it. You may end up spending hundreds of pounds more on the stuff than you otherwise might have. It’s therefore worth looking into which items are worth taking, and being selective.

If you’re heading out on a summer holiday, then your clothes are going to be lighter-weight, and less space-consuming. Whatever the weather’s like, check to see whether the resort provides laundry facilities so that you can reuse the same clothes throughout your stay.

Leave Yourself Time

If you find that you’re having to sprint from baggage to departures, then you’re going too fast. This might have been perfectly manageable, or even exhilarating, during those days when you didn’t have kids to worry about. But now you have a family, it’s a no-no.

While waiting around in train stations and airports is no-one’s idea of a good time, missing connections is considerably worse. Bring along some means of entertaining yourselves during these brief spells of downtime: whether it’s a book or an iPad, it’ll make those short breaks go faster.

Research

A little bit of spontaneity can make your holiday that little bit more enjoyable. After all, if you spot something that you’d like to do, then you don’t want your already-packed itinerary to stop you from doing it. With that said, you’ll want to arrive with at least an idea of what’s worth seeing, and for that reason it’s worth coming up with a list of attractions and activities you’d like to try. Check when each of them is open, and arrange a rough timetable accordingly.

Claire x

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