BootsnAll Travel Community

We are a family of four - Mummy, daddy and two wild boys aged 8 and 5, and all experienced travellers (by car and plane) But now we are planning a RTW Tour for up to a year - and I must say we are A BIT excited...
Has anyone experiences, must-visit-places, nonos, informations for families WITH KIDS???? The countries we'll go to: Greece, Italy, North-Spain, Southafrica, New Zealand, USA WestCoast, Canada WEstCoast.
We'd be ever so happy to talk to families who have "been there, done that".

All I'm thinking is, lucky kids! and, don't they have to go to school?

Wow! What fun for you all!

I traveled pretty extensively with my daughter when she was small, but I think a family is different.

Have you read "Monkey Dancing" by Daniel Glick? It's his memoir of a RTW with his two children. They are a little older than your boys, but I thought he did a good job of portraying both the joys and challenges of traveling with kids.

La

For a great blog of a family doing a RTW trip visit Groom's Globe Trek. They're home schooling their two children as they travel.

Thanks for the encouragement and links, sure to look into it. (hope I can get the book here in Austria).
Guess preparation could take years if one lets it, so much stuff that might help, might be good...I have already bought tons of books. But it's half of the fun, isn't it? And there's a deadline to it anyway, as we will start in may.

quote:

Originally posted by happyhormones:
All I'm thinking is, lucky kids! and, don't they have to go to school?

We are lucky here in Austria (compared to germany, where it is mostly against the law) - we may homeschool. It's one of the reasons we want to go on tour now, as the kids are in Elementary school where I ahve no problem teaching them. Later one might be tougher.

Unfortunately, I don't have any advice for you, but I just wanted to offer my encouragement and let you know that I think travelling with your kids is wonderful. They are indeed lucky and are going to learn and experience so much more than they ever could in a year of school!

Hi all, I just found this site today. What a great resource. I'm glad I saw this post, because we just made the decision to take our family RTW too. Our girls will be 12 and 14 when we leave, so our situation is a little different, but not by much. I'm wondering how you worked your budget out? The budgets for 1 or 2 people don't translate to a family budget, and we're just getting started with this. We're hoping to get to Austria in the course of our travels.

Oh, F4W, I saw a great tip for taking kids to "boring" art museums in "One Year Off". You go to the gift shop first, pick out post cards with paintings on them, then let the kids find their paintings. He swore they loved this and didn't want to leave.

I will look for "Monkey Dancing".

quote:

Originally posted by go girl:
Hi all, I just found this site today. What a great resource. I'm glad I saw this post, because we just made the decision to take our family RTW too. Our girls will be 12 and 14 when we leave, so our situation is a little different, but not by much.

Hey, Go Girl.

I've gone jaunting with three different tweenage girls in my time, and *every single one* started her period for the first time in some weird and inconvenient location.

I know that for RTW you pack light, but in your case, I'd consider some midol and a box of good tampons essential.



La

[QUOTE]Originally posted by go girl:
I'm wondering how you worked your budget out? The budgets for 1 or 2 people don't translate to a family budget, and we're just getting started with this. We're hoping to get to Austria in the course of our travels. [QUOTE]

Dear Go girl,
well, we kind of guessed our budget... Took the average "you'll probably get by on...." we found for different countries and multiplied that by 3 ( as our younger is still very young) for food, sleep and gasoline. Than some average rental-car fees (though we probably will go for a used bought car in Nz where we will stay 3 minths and probably in US too) and the flights calculation done here on this homepage... Can't guarantee that this will work out. But as we plan to stay at camingplaces, hostels, b&bs etc we should manage to be able to vary, according to how well we do... definetly will note on a daily base our spendings and how far we are in/out the daily budget (giving my elder some maths to do...)

quote:

I've gone jaunting with three different tweenage girls in my time, and *every single one* started her period for the first time in some weird and inconvenient location.

Yeah, that will most likely happen. And then I'm a woman in my mid 40's... Maybe I'll get some tranquilizers for my poor husband.