family travel blogs
Ok, so traveling is one of my biggest passions. If I could afford it, I’d go on a trip every month! I am by far not a frequent flyer, but last year I flew about 36.000 miles which I realize is once around the world, yay! Even though I absolutely loved the few trips I made alone or with my better half, we usually have to drag our girls along. They already flew a couple times around the globe in their short lifetime, which is almost unbelievable considering I was 18 when I got on a plane for the first time ever. I still remember this trip to Israel with 17 other crazy people from my school and a few leaders, all between 17 and 25 years old. We flew Sabena Airlines and it actually really sucked. We used to call it Sabena “Such a bloody experience never again”. Anyway, this Belgian airline definitely didn’t spoil my love for traveling and I flew to 4 continents already, South America and Australia are still on my list…. Traveling with kids isn’t always easy. One of our friends back in Cologne used to say: “Vacation with kids is no vacation.” I don’t agree with that anymore. While the kids were little, the focus was often only on the kids, but now with a 9 and a 12-year old it gets easier, you can do lots of activities together and you don’t have to be the 24/7 lifeguard anymore. That being said, I remember traveling with little monsters and I found tons of travel blogs for families that gives you great advice.
Here are a couple specialized for traveling with infants and toddlers:
delicious baby and dotting the map.
The big dream of my hubby and I is to quit jobs, sell everything that isn’t really needed, travel for at least 3 months, maybe longer and then find out where to live next. We would love to see Peru and Chile and even more of South and Central America. We have several countries in Asia on our list of possible destinations as well as Fiji, Australia and NZ. We actually made a family list last year of the 5 top destinations everyone wants to see and we already checked off Costa Rica and Alaska by now.
But that still leaves us with Paris, Guam and Antarctica… I guess we have to cut that list down eventually!? But well, you need to dream big and I figured this is something we need to do rather sooner than later and definitely before both our girls are crazy teenagers and the last thing they want to do is to spend more than 72 hours with their old, uncool parents. And this IS something I am concerned about. Traveling for three or more months will be A LOT of togetherness. I’m afraid I might choke my girls at one point because my lil’ angels are gonna drive me nuts!! There will be times when they just miss their peers, friends and most likely even school! And will miss these things, too! This is something to consider and to get ideas and inspiration I searched the internet for family traveling blogs. This is a selection of the ones I found and liked. Most of the families have rather young children. That makes a lot of sense because it seems easier to fulfill younger kids needs while being away from home than the demands of tweens or teens.
A German travel blog, not particularly for long-term travel, but I like it anyway.
For my German readers: I found this interesting series from Zeit. de about “Reisen mit Kind”. I’ll keep you posted about our plan and we should all keep this in mind:
Fill your life with experiences, not things.
Have stories to tell, not stuff to show.
