I have read dozens upon dozens of family travel blogs and magazine articles about the merits of family travel with beautiful photos, in exotic locations, everyone looking flawless and fabulous. What the guidebooks don’t tell you about, are the perils of family travel.
Always the optimist, I look forward to traveling with my family, but somehow when my clan travels as a quad, things never seem to go quite as smoothly as the articles I read. I feel like the Erma Bombeck of family travel writing.
As a midlife travel writer, I travel often. I spend an inordinate amount of time in airports, on planes and in rental cars. I have become accustomed to lack of food, bumper-to-bumper traffic jams, flight delays and cancellations, considering them job related inconveniences. I expect them and I plan for them. I take them with a grain of salt. While I am neither an advocate for or a fan of travel related problems, I have come to realize that throwing a tantrum isn’t going to change the outcome, only raise my blood pressure.
I am used to traveling without my family, packing for one, worrying about getting only myself from point A to point B. I have it down to a science. It is effortless.
Throw into the mix a spouse who hates to fly, an 18 year-old more interested in posting selfies than the destination and a 13-year old who thinks time revolves around her schedule and you have the perfect recipe for travel chaos.
El Presidente a.k.a. my significant other, hates to travel and would rather get a root canal than navigate the perils of air travel. I find his intolerance hilarious and he finds my lack of sympathy unbearable.
The 18 year-old takes the selfie to new heights, capturing her noggin in every possible location, only rarely do you get a glimpse at the landmark beside her as her pearly white grin takes center stage.
The 13-year olds focus is on becoming an 18 year-old and learning the art of applying mascara. Until it is perfectly executed, time stands still whether there is a flight to catch or not. In her world, there are no lines at security and the plane waits for her grand entrance.
We’ll never be the picture perfect travel family. We’re more like the Bickerson’s than the Brady Bunch. We’re the poster children for ‘What Not to Do’ in family travel. While we’re not your ‘go to’ resource for family travel you can always count on us to make you feel better about yourselves and the way your family travels!
How well does your family travel together?
We’re definitely not the Brady Bunch either but we do have good little travellers. My husband and I both love to travel and we’ve been travelling with our twins since they were a few weeks old. It helps that my family is in the USA and we travel back and forth a lot because my parents are too ill to travel. And, that the twins are still only 9 years old – still not too much attitude and selfies yet. No doubt that will happen soon!
We love to travel and mostly its as a single mum with a small child on my own. We love it, my son is a great traveller, sure we have tantrums but we have those at home too. I’m sure the teenage years will be a different story though