Getting Around with Young Children While Traveling

Getting around with young children comfortably takes equipment. Following are our experiences with gear we found essential when traveling with babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.

Getting Around with Babies

My husband and I were truly surprised at how happy our three-month-old babies were seeing the city of Vancouver from the comfort of their Baby Bjorns. The padded fabric front carriers left our hands free for securely holding onto a public transit pole or consulting a map and our kids loved looking at tall buildings and the people on the monorail. At the very least, both babies loved being snugly attached to their happy parents!

Babies Love Looking Out from Front Carriers

Getting Around with Toddlers

The amount of bulky baby gear we took to visit Prague and Budapest for two weeks with two eighteen-month-olds was staggering. We took two car seats, a folding McLaren double stroller, and two backpack child carriers. When the small taxi sent from our hotel arrived at the airport, we were actually glad the airline had misplaced one of our bags (which was delivered to our hotel later) because it wouldn’t have fit in the tiny trunk.    

Taking Kids on Public Transit is Easier Outside the United States

My mother routinely took three kids and a large clunky carriage on the New York City subway by herself, waiting at the top of the stairs for kind fellow travelers to help carry it up and down. You would think that taking a compact, twenty-first century stroller on the Muni Metro in “Transit First” San Francisco would pose no problem. 

Sadly, even in a city where buses have been retrofitted to carry bicycles on the front, many transit operators (and fellow passengers) act like any parent taking kids on the bus must have left the SUV at home for the day.

The good news is that it is usually far easier to take kids on public transit once you leave the auto-dependent United States. Countries that impose heavy taxes on gasoline understand that citizens of all ages have little alternative to relying on transit, so they are much more accommodating to families traveling via bus, subway, or streetcar.

Streetcar in Australia

We found this to be the case everywhere we visited. On streetcars in Prague, we saw a decal of a baby in a carriage near the rear door. Even though we didn’t speak the language, we understood it meant that caregivers with strollers were welcome to board there. Traveling on the elevator-free subway in Budapest, we were stopped by a couple of humorless fare inspectors who asked us to show proof that we paid our fare. Of course, they had no problem with us taking an open double stroller on the Metro.

Taking young kids on public transit is a great way to see a city. Parents avoid the stress of driving and parking in a congested area, children get exposed to an environmentally-friendly form of transportation, and everyone benefits from one less car on the road.  

Customer Service in Costa Rica

Costa Rica is a great vacation destination with kids. We went for two weeks in 2006 and relaxed on its warm, beautiful beaches; explored the flora and fauna of the cloud forest at Monteverde and the area near the Arenal volcano: and enjoyed thrilling adventures such as zip lining through the jungle canopy.  

Hotel California in Quepos, Costa Rica

With many businesses accepting payment in American dollars and many people in the tourist industry speaking flawless English, the country was quite welcoming to Westerners. This made it harder, however, to reconcile the fact that Costa Rica has a very different idea of customer service than the “customer is always right” philosophy that we take for granted in the U.S.  

Post-Tragedy Trip to Australia

Despite being nervous about flying a few weeks after the Sept. 11th attacks, our family's 3+ week vacation to Australia turned out to be a huge success.

First Day in Sydney

My mother-in-law, however, was dead-set against our going, convinced that we were unnecessarily putting her three-year old grandchildren in harm's way. But, Allan and I did not make our decision lightly.

Child Friendly Tourism in Turkey

"Turkish people love children!" I was told by the numerous guidebooks we consulted to plan our family vacation. Little did I know what this really meant until we landed in Turkey with our two-and-a-half year old twins.

Unhappy Passengers

Many times people stopped us in the street to tell us how happy they were that we brought our kids to their country. A few times, people threw candy for the kids from car windows. But the most amazing evidence was in some of the places we ate.

Playgrounds Save Prague Vacation

We knew when we decided to take our young twins on a trip to Eastern Europe that we weren't going to be able to see many museums or eat in fancy restaurants. Our eighteen plus months of being parents had taught us there were limitations to what could be accomplished when traveling with children. But we desperately needed a change of location so we chose Prague and Budapest, fascinating "first-world" cities with the added allure of a communist past, for our two-week trip.

At the Park in Prague

Our first full day in Prague, we joined a paid walking tour of the Jewish area of the city. Unfortunately, both kids were rather restless so we left the tour early and headed to a playground we had noticed near our hotel. We found it pretty interesting to watch Czech parents interact with their kids, noticing similarities and differences to American parenting customs.

Visiting National Parks with Young Kids

Yosemite was our first national park trip with kids, a three-and-a-half hour drive from our home in San Francisco. Our kids were five-months-old, and we were excited about hiking there with them in front carriers.

Hiking in Joshua Tree

Our most important discovery, however, was made in the Yosemite Gift Shop rather than the trail -- the Passport to Your National Parks spiral bound guide book. It listed all the parks and monuments in the U.S. national park system with spaces for official stickers and cancellation stamps from each park. We purchased one book for each child and made a goal of visiting as many national parks as possible.