Taking babies, toddlers and kids on holidays

[uqslug]

We are considering a trip via singapore to europe for 3 weeks then on to visit family in the US for 2 more weeks. I haven't found a lot in forums discussing os travel with babes this age. Is this because we're insane to do it? We're wondering about the logistics of travel in taxis (ie carseat), although we hope to rent a car in europe. Also, do most hotels offer portacots/cribs? And what about feeding? I'm breast feeding, but we do still give bubs a bottle of expressed milk/formula after his last feed before putting him to sleep for the night. We use cloth nappies exclusively at home but realise we'll have to use disposables for the trip. Any ideas about availability and cost of nappies and formula in Europe? Any brands you can recommend? And any ideas how to sterilise bottles quickly and easily? I have a microwave steriliser for the bottles and pump at home but this seems a bit bulky to take with us. Thanks very much for any advice!

[christy]

uqslug, maybe take some of the sachet packets with you of formula one that you use here if needed? That way you will only need to take a few with you. Most hotels have port-a-cots available. We just co-slept if they didn't when we've been away from home. Sterilising bottles... if the hotel is self-catering, they should have a dishwasher & I would just use that! Otherwise you could boil water on the stove and boil the bottle for 5 minutes to sterilise it. If they don't, I would ask the hotel if there was anyway to boil bottles once day or something. I'm sure they would have alternatives for you. Maybe room service could chuck the bottles in their industrial dishwasher... those things go to extremely high temperatures and would do a good job there.

Taxis, in most countries you can ask for taxi's with car seats. In the US you can hire car seats with the car rental company. Also its legal in most places to have the baby in your lap in taxi's.

I think more people don't think about doing big trips with babies because its full on.... but in hind sight. I think doing this at that age is easier than once they are moving more!! Toddlers are very hard to take on planes and overseas. Good luck!

[*Twinkle*]

This thread is awesome, very helpful!!

[lilima]

Hiya,
as far as travelling with my son in Europe, we did what Christy said, and took sachets of formula. As my son was 18 months, I wasn't too fussed about sterilising. most of the time we were in the UK where the water quality was good. i also bought UHT millk and definitely in Spain I used that as the water was terrible. We also bought bottled water. Avent does sell bottles that you can put a sterilised bag in, so you dont have to worry about sterilisation. Maybe worth looking at that?
Customs on the other hand, is another issue. They make to taste everything that you take for babies. So we had to open jars of food etc and taste them. i recommend taking some jars of food as that way you have something as backup if you need it.
We took an old car seat from home with us, but most places we caught trains. So we only used it when we hired a car for ourselves. Not ideal, but for the hotel transfer in Kuala Lumpar, DS sat between us with a seatbelt on, as my SIL travelled ahead of us with the car seat.
Almost every hotel has a cot, so you shouldn't have to worry there. We took a portacot with us, as we stayed mainly in self contained units or with friends so we needed one.
As far as baby products go, if you are going to be in the UK first, stock up at a shop called sainsbury or at tesco's. They sell everything that you will need. As far as Europe goes, there were still quality products, just a bit harder to read sizes etc. Most of the time I worked it out though. Every country we went to had fairly good baby products so you should be fine.
Most of all enjoy! we had such a great time with our DS

[Smoke Jaguar]

Travelled to Ireland in Jan with a then-19 month old. It was awesome. We did Melb-Dubai (via one hour stop in Singapore but DS was asleep for that!), Dubai-London, then short flight to Dublin. We borrowed a car seat from family for the car we hired, but the hire cost for a seat wasn't very high anyway. In London we used PT the whole time (well, when we weren't walking- weather was absolutely dreamy and we were only in Earl's Court, so walked home a few times, there for 5 days) and it was great. In Dubai we had a courtesy shuttle bus, and strapped DS into the back bench seat - there was no provision for children, tsk tsk, but then again, the traffic was horrendous there and speed not an issue!
I have to say that breastfeeding is the bees knees for travelling with a child. DS was no problem on the flights because we were almost permanently attached and I didn't really give a toss what anyone thought of me feeding an 'older child', either on the planes, in Dubai, in London or Ireland. And I never got grief for it
We co-sleep, too, so we didn't need to bring any other paraphanalia than our Ergo and original Phil&Ted's Kiwi Explorer (tubular steel, if anything's going to survive baggage handlers, these will!!).
I admit that I was dreading the flights, but the real problem was keeping DS happy in the car, travelling across Ireland. He hated getting in the car (from being a real car-kid at home) after the first week, but we had to drive from Dublin to Wexford (for a wedding) to Waterford, Waterford to Kerry (after car swap at Cork airport after the hire company changed our car to a far-too-small number last minute), then Kerry to Cork, Cork to Kildare all in a week and a half. And that's considering that I cancelled out planned trip to Clare and Galway from Kerry! So, maybe train travel and staying in centres with coach tours handy is a more child-friendly option in Ireland if it's a short stay, or else plan a longer stay (I'd suggest 6 weeks to see everything and be fair on the child for travel times).
Our Bob the Builder love affair is Ireland's fault. There is so much roadwork going on there that he came away saying his first word that wasn't 'mummy' and 'daddy' - 'digger'. Got home and he was excited by all things construction!
Heaps to do in London with children. If it's nice weather, you have all those parks with squirrels, museums for older children, the historical sites, the Eye...no need to be scared to travel there with kids
Pack a bag of activities for the plane cos the airline toys are always great. If you have a laptop, bring that for portable DVD purposes and basic photo management, emailing and web surfing where there's wireless available.
that's all I can think of as a brainstorm.

[Glamourcide]

Hi all,
Glad I searched this first because I almost started a thread in a different forum...

DH and I were planning to go to Brisbane (we live about six hours by car north) to see Kings of Leon mid-March, we were going to just go for two nights and leave DD (17 months, will be around 20 months by then) with her grandparents, but we missed out on tickets. I was so disappointed that DH promised me a 'real' holiday to Brisbane around the same time (March, that is), for a longer period of time (around a week, 4 - 7 days) and since we weren't going to the concert we could take DD with us for her first holiday.

I'm planning an intinerary so that we don't spend our days sitting in a motel room staring at the TV (hey, we can do that at home!), and although I've already got an amazing list of things to consider, I'd like to get some suggestions from mums with kids around the same age. We're planning to spend the first night of our trip in Toowoomba staying with my grandmother, but after that, we're looking for accommodation in Brisbane.
Our requirements for accommodation are just that it has private facilities (bathroom etc) including a reasonable kitchen, as we're planning on preparing the majority of our meals in the room - we are saving furiously but meals tend to take away from things like touristy stuff and SHOPPING!!, and most restaurants aren't really child-friendly - we can't live on McDonald's for a week. We are on a budget and would prefer to spend under $150 a night, and we don't mind at all booking a motel room that is just a double/queen bed and room for DD's portacot. The only trouble I'm having right now is determining the restrictions on motel rooms - the ones that only have one bed state that the maximum residency is two adults - does that mean we can have DD with us or is that '2 adults, nobody else in the room, too bad'? We are happy to pay extra for a child, we don't require a bed or extra room... I don't know how to explain it.
So, if anybody can tell me the right questions to ask or things to look for when booking accommodation online (I've used wotif.com to book accommodation before and found it great, now that there is a child thrown into the mix I'm a bit more confused!), I'd appreciate it. Also, any suggestions for motels that other families with toddlers have had good experiences with, I'd definitely love to hear.

[cheekyfrog]

Yay for this thread! Any tips for international flights travelling alone with a 4-5 month old? I'm planning a trip to Hong Kong before I return to work. I'll have to fly from Griffith or Wagga to Sydney and from there to HK. Also, has anyone travelled around HK with a baby?

[nic]

Hi all,
Glad I searched this first because I almost started a thread in a different forum...

DH and I were planning to go to Brisbane (we live about six hours by car north) to see Kings of Leon mid-March, we were going to just go for two nights and leave DD (17 months, will be around 20 months by then) with her grandparents, but we missed out on tickets. I was so disappointed that DH promised me a 'real' holiday to Brisbane around the same time (March, that is), for a longer period of time (around a week, 4 - 7 days) and since we weren't going to the concert we could take DD with us for her first holiday.

I'm planning an intinerary so that we don't spend our days sitting in a motel room staring at the TV (hey, we can do that at home!), and although I've already got an amazing list of things to consider, I'd like to get some suggestions from mums with kids around the same age. We're planning to spend the first night of our trip in Toowoomba staying with my grandmother, but after that, we're looking for accommodation in Brisbane.
Our requirements for accommodation are just that it has private facilities (bathroom etc) including a reasonable kitchen, as we're planning on preparing the majority of our meals in the room - we are saving furiously but meals tend to take away from things like touristy stuff and SHOPPING!!, and most restaurants aren't really child-friendly - we can't live on McDonald's for a week. We are on a budget and would prefer to spend under $150 a night, and we don't mind at all booking a motel room that is just a double/queen bed and room for DD's portacot. The only trouble I'm having right now is determining the restrictions on motel rooms - the ones that only have one bed state that the maximum residency is two adults - does that mean we can have DD with us or is that '2 adults, nobody else in the room, too bad'? We are happy to pay extra for a child, we don't require a bed or extra room... I don't know how to explain it.
So, if anybody can tell me the right questions to ask or things to look for when booking accommodation online (I've used wotif.com to book accommodation before and found it great, now that there is a child thrown into the mix I'm a bit more confused!), I'd appreciate it. Also, any suggestions for motels that other families with toddlers have had good experiences with, I'd definitely love to hear.

Gothmum,
We stayed on the gold coast at a place called Treasure Island. It is a caravan park, but they also have self contained units. It was a couple of years ago now, but I think we paid about around $160-$170 a night. They had a pool with a little slide, spa, games room, tennis court, mini golf, coin operated washing machines and dryers. We were quite close to Seaworld (think it was less than a 20 mintue drive) and Movieworld (only a few minutes longer to get to than seaworld) They also had a bus pick up out the front, which went to theme parks and then you also get picked up from the theme parks in the afternoon.
They are a part of the BIG4 chain of holiday parks. You can google for BIG 4, and see some of their other parks. we had been looking at another BIG4 park, but chose this one because of it central location to the theme parks we were going to.
If you are doing theme parks, do you know that you can pre buy your tickets online for a bit cheaper or from RACQ if you are a member.
As for accommodation in Brisbane, I'm not sure about that one. We stayed pretty close to the CBD in 2007, and I got a motel room for DH and I for about $185 by booking it through the net (over the phone was considerably more) but it wasn't self contained. I have no idea if you would find anything that was self contained in brisbane... maybe post in the QLD thread to see if any of the local brissie girls can help?

As for shopping... if you can, you have to check out DFO. It's out near the airport. Fantastic savings to be found.
Where we stayed at Treasure Island, there was a place called Harbour Town over the road, and it has the factory outlets too..plus a woolies (great so we could get food to cook a meal).

Nic

[Sallybev]

This thread caught my eye as I recently travelled around asia for a month with 3 year old daughter and 5 year old son. I got a real mixed bag of reactions from my friends when I told them I was going to do this, some thought it was a great idea and some thought I was crazy. Needless to say I went ahead and did it, we went to Thailand and Cambodia and had a fantastic time the kids loved it !! I just felt it was so beneficial even such an early age to see this other life and mix with completely different children. We still travelled as we did a few years ago on trains and ok our accommodation was a little more comfortable but not flash. Of course you have to be sensible at times as you would travelling anywhere in the world but I never felt that we were ever in any real danger and I did not let us get into any uncomfortable situations.

All in all I am very happy we did it, and would recommend it to anyone