Traveling with children is not as scary as it seems. The main thing is to prepare well! Six OneTwoTrip employees shared their experience of traveling with children: how to travel by train, what food to take on a plane, what not to forget on the road and how to properly prepare for a trip with a young traveler.
Sasha Bezhan, head of the CRM department and dad of Katya and Polina (8 and 10 years old)
As a rule, preparation for travel begins a week before the start of the trip. We go shopping, choose comfortable clothes and shoes, and walk a lot. This helps you get used to long walks. On a trip, we always take our favorite carry-on suitcase, which is convenient for the children to ride on while we move around the airport. On the plane, children are often given special kits, which is always a surprise! For example, in S7, children were given sets with backpacks – the girls did not want to part with them.
A very important issue is nutrition. We try to choose restaurants with a children’s menu, it’s more economical, and it also makes children feel like special guests.
When traveling, we don’t forget about studying – this helps to consolidate the material and not be disconnected from the educational process. I try to give my children maximum independence: I book them a separate room or block. The girls do their own laundry, choose a restaurant themselves, order a taxi and prepare their look for the next day in the evening.
Tip: “anchor” the most interesting and unusual experiences. For example, having stayed in one cozy mountain hotel with low ceilings, we dubbed it “the gnomes’ hotel.” This phrase, like phrases from other trips, brings back a lot of memories of the trip.
Lyosha Teplov, marketing director and Marusya’s dad (2.5 years)
We travel with our child about 5 times a year. We’ve traveled by train, plane, car and ferry, but most of all we love the train. There you can calmly put your child to bed, run around the carriage, look out the window or play.
When I travel alone, I can take a reserved seat, but with a child we avoid this type of carriage. We traveled in compartments, SVs and in express train carriages. For medium and long trips we prefer coupes. We have a special playpen for the train, in which a child can sleep safely and comfortably alone, from the age of six months. On long trips, we buy the entire coupe to make the trip more comfortable. But we won’t go to NE anymore. The price is comparable to buying out an entire compartment, but mom or dad has to sleep with the child, and the shelves on the train are very far from king-size. On short routes, seated trains, for example, Sapsan or Lastochka, are quite comfortable. True, despite the opportunity to buy a child a ticket without a seat, we still try to buy it. When traveling, you want to relax, and not experience discomfort and embarrassment.
You definitely need to keep your child occupied with something on the road. We always take with us 2-3 small toys, one of which is a favorite, with which the child will definitely play, and something completely new, this always causes delight and attracts attention. We also always take books and coloring books. Now Russian Railways on some routes give passengers a small entertainment package when purchasing a child ticket.
Roma Rogachev, art director and Alice’s dad (3.5 years)
We traveled with Alice twice – when she was 1.5 years old and 3, and these were two completely different trips. Our experience has shown that if the first flight with a child did not go entirely smoothly, this does not mean that it will always be so. For the first time the whole family went to Bulgaria. The flight was only 2 hours, but it was a real challenge. Alice was capricious and crying almost the entire flight; nothing helped: neither persuasion, nor cartoons, nor toys. For our holiday we chose a small family town on the coast – St. Vlas. We stayed in an apartment because it was important to follow Alice’s diet and feed her homemade porridge and soups – fortunately, in Bulgaria it was easy to find the products we were used to. This is a very important nuance, take it into account when planning your trip.
The second time we went on vacation to Thailand. Everything was different here! Alice grew up and became more obedient. The ten-hour flight went without any problems: the baby watched cartoons and played with toys, and then went to bed and only woke up in the car on the way to the hotel.
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By the way, during a flight, jars of baby food can explode due to pressure differences at altitude, and due to low pressure, jars of cottage cheese and yogurt may swell. Also, be careful when opening bottles with straws: due to the pressure difference, they “spit.”
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Unlike Bulgaria, in Thailand we stayed in a family hotel. There were playgrounds, several swimming pools and game rooms. There were also no problems with food – we didn’t cook at all, we managed to find everything for the baby at the buffet.
Marina Malashenko, HR director and mother of Varya (8 years old)
When planning a trip with a child, you need to take into account what seems not so important if you are traveling alone: the time of departure and arrival, the airport from which you are departing, the presence of transfers, travel time from/to the airport. The trip schedule should accommodate the child’s schedule, then the trip will be as comfortable as possible for everyone.
When choosing a hotel, of course I look at its location and ease of travel to the places we want to visit. I definitely read reviews, check the availability of playgrounds, the presence of a swimming pool, children’s playrooms and animation for children.
Dima Zharsky, head of the development team (front-end) and Alice’s dad (3.5 years)
Alice had her first trip when she was 4 months old, then we flew off to live in Bali. The flight went well. We called the airline in advance, so they allocated a bassinet for the baby on the plane. Most airlines carry baby strollers free of charge. You can hand them over at the front desk or take them to the entrance to the sleeve, and compact ones can be taken with you to the salon. After the flight, you will receive the stroller at the baggage carousel or at the counter for non-standard baggage. You can also negotiate with the flight attendants to have the stroller brought to the ramp or arm. We did just that.
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As a rule, it is better to go to countries with a climate different from Russia for at least 21 days: during this time the child has time to acclimatize, gain strength and relax.
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Immediately after arriving in Bali, my daughter fell ill, cried a lot and did not eat anything. We raised the alarm, went to the doctors, but they simply prescribed tests without any treatment. A week later everything passed without a trace, so we realized that it was acclimatization.
Now we mostly travel around Russia, once every two months. Only plane, car for short distances. On the road, my daughter and I play games, color coloring books, and we used to tear up magazines that are in the back of the chair in front. It was the best entertainment, but children grow up, times change and parents have to come up with something new.
Sasha Lipatova, copywriter of OneTwoTrip and mother of Lesha (1 year 10 months)
My son’s first trip happened when he was two and a half months old, and since then he has visited four countries (even Italy twice). We try to travel abroad as much as possible before his second birthday: starting from the age of two, a child needs to buy an “adult” airline ticket with a separate seat, and before that he flies on his parents’ lap, and the flight costs a maximum of a thousand rubles.
I can say that it was easiest to fly with a very small baby: Lyosha slept the entire three hours of the journey to Greece, and he didn’t cause any worries on the spot, he just slept and ate. Rather, my husband and I, like new parents, were worried about everything, and we weren’t really able to rest. But a one and a half year old traveler already requires ingenuity from adults: he needs to be entertained and interested. Such a flight can be exhausting. A box with all sorts of new toys that we had assembled in advance helped us a lot: the little person got busy, and the big ones were able to breathe out for half an hour.
In general, in my opinion, a vacation with a child, especially a small one, is not a vacation, but a change of scenery. As an experienced traveler, on my first trips I was a little upset: it was not like our usual vacations with many hours of walking and exploring new places. A small child wants to sleep a lot, he needs to be fed regularly and his diapers changed. All this must be taken into account, so our favorite scenario of “leaving the hotel at nine in the morning and returning in the evening” did not work out either in two months, or in a year or two.
Nevertheless, I don’t regret at all that we take Lyosha with us every time on our trips: it seems to me that it’s important to show the world even to such a little one. Well, I can’t leave him even for a few days. And most importantly, it will only become more interesting: he becomes more conscious and sociable, expresses his opinion and is already able to share his impressions. So traveling with a child is very cool, in my opinion.
