Travel Tips

Today’s link up with Shay and Shaffer is all about travel tips.

Now, I almost scratched this blog post because I feel like my family very rarely travels anymore. I mean, my kids don’t even have passports! Which still blows my mind, because when I was a kid, I got my first passport at about 2 months old, and used it all the time until I was 18.

Growing up overseas meant that I traveled a fair bit with my family. We would spend four years in Niger and one year in the United States on repeat. About once a year, we would travel to Nigeria for a family vacation. Often we would stop over in Europe or Morocco on our long trips back to the States. These weren’t luxury vacations, but more like snatches of being a tourist since we were already heading in that direction. My family has explored Casablanca, Paris and London several times. I’ve also been to both Timbuktu (yes, it’s a real place!) and Kalamazoo! Haha! One time when I was about 15 my family missed our connecting flight in Paris. We had to spend two nights in Paris and I was SO MAD about it. I just wanted to get back to my home country and I did NOT want to be stuck in that stinky city with my family. Now as an adult I look back and just want to smack my teenage self- it was PARIS! We got to explore and see all the sights and all I could think about was myself. I think I did eventually pull through and have a better attitude, but I remember initially finding out we were stuck there and I was CRUSHED.

During our years in Niger we would also take occasional trips to other nearby countries- Senegal and The Gambia to visit my Aunt and Uncle/cousins, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, and Ghana for other mission related work or high school trips. By the time I was 18, I had traveled to 13 or 14 countries. But I was never the one in charge of planning the travel, so I don’t have many tips from those experiences!

Once I came back to the States for college, my travel basically ceased 🙁 We got married and started having kids, and while I don’t think that kids are a deterrent from living life, they do add some cost to the travel budget and we have always either stuck close to home or travelled to visit friends and family. We have been to Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Michigan a number of times. My brother used to live in Washington D.C. so we have also traveled there a couple of times. Our favorite family vacation was to the Sleeping Bear Dunes and Mackinaw Island in Michigan. Last summer Theo and I took our first solo trip without kids and flew down to Florida to spend a week there.

Now that I look back on my growing up years and how much we traveled, it makes me kind of sad that I’m not giving my kids the same sort of life. I don’t know…it kind of feels like traveling is a badge of honor and we certainly haven’t earned that badge! But! I have to remind myself that there are still so many years, AND it’s not like my kids are going to be lacking in childhood memories. I think that they will be just fine.

Here are some of the travel tips that I’ve collected over the years:

  • Talk to someone who actually lives in the area that you are traveling to, so you can experience more of the culture and life there
  • Figure out your families travel personality, and don’t try to put yourself into anyone else’s box. We have discovered that we HATE places that are tourist attractions. But we LOVE anything that is outdoor in nature. We also don’t like to take it slow and rest all vacation- instead we love to go out and have some adventures. We would rather cook all of our meals at our place and pay for some fun outings than experience the food of a region. It’s taken us awhile to figure out our family “vacation personality”, but now that we have, we are able to plan so much better/easier!
  • It’s ok to stay with people when you go on a trip. Listen…I know that this isn’t really the American way. But this the only way that I traveled so much as a kid. We would always try to stay with someone that we knew to save on lodging costs!
  • It’s also ok to not have a huge travel/vacation budget. My kids are just as thrilled going to a local free beach than they are playing at the beach in Florida. In the same way, we can easily hit up Kings Island instead of traveling to a destination theme park. Lots of money saved, and truly the kids are going to complain about something no matter where we are! Haha!
  • When traveling with kids, travel with a potty. This is my biggest travel tip and the biggest game changer. It’s so much easier to just pull over on the side of the road and have everyone use the potty than it is to stop at a rest area.

And that’s all my best tips! I can’t wait to read other travel tips, especially the ones that help save some money while traveling!

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