International travel

Yes, most definitely! We're glad you asked, as we personally love to travel both domestically as well as internationally. The caveat is that we are a very small team, so we can only expand so fast. That being said, let us know where you'd like us to expand to next! We're also always looking for people to help us write about new areas, so let us know if you'd like to help.

-brennan

I've only been on one trip overseas with my son (before my daughter was born) so I unfortunately don't have much to contribute right now. Most of my international travels took place before the kiddos came along. I was hoping to get some others (wink, wink) who could share some insight on where they've traveled internationally with younger kids so that we could plan our own trips abroad. I'd be happy to tell everyone about our experience traveling to Iceland with a 2 year old a couple of years ago but I don't know whether that's the hot spot that most traveling families want to hear about. If it is, let me know!

How about Canada? We went there with our son. I would love to see European reviews though.

We were in the UK two years ago with our then 18 month old daughter. It was a great experiance and this year we will be abroad more often than we are home. (New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and back to the UK)

We've taken our little ones to a few places outside the U.S., including Peru (Machu Picchu, Cusco, Lima), France (Paris, Normandy area), UK, Scotland (Edinburgh), Mexico, Singapore, and Malaysia. Out of those, I'd say that France, the UK, Scotland, and Singapore were my favorite destinations for kids. Obviously, those are the developed countries, so generally you'd expect to have an easier time of it with young ones. We're slightly on the adventurous side as a family, so the others were fun as well (more fun in a way), but you just need to be flexible and adjust your expectations accordingly. :) One interesting thing we found this past year was that Paris (contrary to what you might think) is extremely kid friendly in that we found the people themselves to be kid friendly. It seemed that our kids were offered an abundance of smiles and candy (sometimes a bad thing...!) at many of the places we visited. On the other hand, Paris isn't very stroller friendly, especially if you want to get around via the Metro.

It would be great to add this and I'm interested in contributing. We've been to the Philippines and Vietnam with our daughter and the Cook Islands, Honduras and Canada with both our son and daughter. We're heading to Europe for four months next year while a take a year sabbatical from my teaching job. My wife and I have of course done a lot of travel before kids.

I think lots of people will have experienced international travel with young children. If there isn't a seperate bit on this website for other countries, I'm sure the same parents here would have things to offer if you just say where you wanna go. We've gone to Amsterdam, Australia, Indonesia and Thailand. All the trips were part bravery, part ignorance, part uh-oh moments and made for great family memories!

It would be great to have international reviews! It would encourage more parents to take kids on international travels. Kids should see that the world doesn't end at their state border!

If you want to spark the interest in your young ones for international travel, give a try to Team Marco Polo. It's a humorous international travel show for kids: http://teammarcopolo.com (I recommend this language bit from "Paris" http://tr.im/sjsf or this history bit from "London" http://tr.im/swoX to start with)

We would love to see that expansion and I would be happy to write some reviews from recent trips to England and Switzerland. We are currently on a boat in the San Juans, en route to Desolation Sound and will be making many stops in Canada with our little guy. We do several trips to the 'Great White North' a year and I would love to both read and write reviews...let me know if I can help. Most of our trips take us into BC though, so it will be limited to that provence for us for the time being.

Oh, a couple of other things, as I am looking back at some of the other comments:

1) London is not stroller friendly at all, and left me wondering how folks with disabilities managed. This is mainly around public transport, and even some of the buildings. The people were nice enough, but places for kids were also really croweded, making it even harder for stroller access. I will say that diapers and wipes are half the price in England (I felt like that was the only deal we got the whole trip!), so no need to pack loads of them!

2) I was given some good advice by putting a question out to the community through the forums (much like this question). That brought back a few helpful responses.

3) If you are traveling with a little one I also have some really great tips on 'equipment' that we took that made things MUCH easier for us and they are really convienent to pack.

I would absolutely love to see information about international destinations. We just spent some time in Rome, Florence and Venice and were pretty much making it up as we went along with 2 kids.