Choose the perfect travel destination – TIPS
How to Choose the Best Place to Vacation
Ah, dreaming of the perfect travel destination. I love that process! There are so many places to visit and so little time. Sadly, there is not enough vacation time or money to do it all!!
When everything is on your bucket list, how do you prioritize?
How to Choose the Perfect Travel Destination – The fear
Parents often have a fear that vacations are limited to ‘kid stuff’. Beaches, water parks, and amusement parks can be GREAT fun for the whole family, but after a while….don’t you want to do something else?
Parents are afraid of kid meltdowns.
We worry about chasing people around while saying, “Stop that! Be quiet!” or with the older kids eye-rolling and heavy sighs. Read more about how to handle behaviors with traveling kids and Face your fear.
Parents want to visit far off, exotic places but worry that they can’t do that with the kids along.
How to Choose the Perfect Travel Destination – The dream
Everyone has a dream list – a bucket list of places they would love to see. What is on your bucket list? Paris? Rome? The Amalfi Coast?
Do you crave the exotic? The lush and tropical? The barren and windswept? Northern? Southern?
Does your list include diving into the country your family comes from? Genealogy vacations are interesting!
Go ahead. Make that list!
How to Choose the Perfect Travel Destination – The traveling group
How old are your kids? What is their attention level? Are naps still a part of your world?
Consider everyone’s physical fitness level. How long can everyone walk? Can your travelers handle uneven surfaces like cobblestones or an incline?
Think about dietary restrictions. Do you have allergies in your group?
Consider everyone’s activity level interest. Do you like to sit on the beach? Go, go, go on a tour? A few days of each?
My travel guides make the getting there easy and keep little ones interested while you savor the adventure, too.
How to Choose the Perfect Travel Destination – Lose the guilt
It is so easy to let guilt play into your choices for travel. Parents often feel guilty. Working parents feel like they aren’t with their kids enough. Some parents feel they are too hard on the kids, that school is too hard, that life is too hard. Sometimes parents feel guilty about what they do AND what they don’t do.
Too much mommy guilt to plan a trip to YOUR dream spot? Visit Amanda at Dirt and Boogers for a GREAT post on Mommy Guilt. If you can’t trust that someone with a blog name of Dirt and Boogers is down to Earth…who can you trust? 😉
Lose the guilt.
It is OK for you to have ideas and dreams of your own.
How to Choose the Perfect Travel Destination – Share your interests!
Share your passions! Be a real person who has ideas of HER OWN and show the kids that by planning your dream trip and taking the family. Show them what makes you tick and what makes your heart soar.
Show your daughters that moms can handle the day to day stuff like laundry and supporting everyone in the family and STILL have ideas and dreams. It is OK to serve people as a supportive mother and still get a vote and have opinions! Show your sons, who will marry one day, what a strong woman who has valid ideas looks like.
This lovely post by Entirely Eventful Day will help validate your feelings!
How to Choose the Perfect Travel Destination – The Plan
You CAN make it happen!
Why aren’t you planning the trip of your dreams? What are you waiting for?
The kids to be older? The kids to leave?
Think those amazing spots are only for empty nesters? Or DINKS without kids?
NO!! THINK AGAIN!
You CAN go and take the kids – whatever their age.
Don’t be afraid of having to visit only parks, McDonald’s, and children’s museums.
You CAN go to Rome and do as the Romans do WITH the kids. I have and so can you.
My travel guides make the getting there easy and keep little ones interested while you savor the adventure, too.
Click for guides on these fun destinations:
Austin, New York, Nassau, London, France, Spain, Vatican City, Galleria Borghese, Prado, Louvre, Canada
Call on The Educational Tourist for help planning the trip of your dreams!
Happy and Guilt FREE travels,
Natalie, The Educational Tourist
Really interesting post. As I am starting to contemplate growing my family with my husband, I have to admit traveling with kids is a big hurdle in my mind.
Read up….it takes planning but is even more wonderful that traveling without them. 🙂
i love being able to include my kids in choosing our travel destination, but i would definitely not choose a destination i wasn’t on board with too! i think it’s so important to make sure you think about where YOU want to go too!
I totally agree! I’m not a big fan of cruising for example. I think if I show the kids the world…there is still plenty they can see later on their own, right? They can cruise then!
I don’t have children but i can totally agree with not feeling guilty on going a triip with just the two of you. It’s important to have your “you time” for any good relationship or simply that little vacation away.
It is! It is also important and valuable to vacation with the kiddos! Fun and educational for the whole family to learn more about each other and build memories through the time together!