Since our baby’s birth 18 months ago, we’ve visited 5 countries. It wasn’t easy, but it was most definitely fun. I tried jotting down all the things that made traveling with the baby a bit easier and it resulted in two blog posts: Traveling with a baby (this post), and Flying with a baby

Research and Planning

In the pre-baby era, we did zero planning before going on trips. Ok, maybe we looked up what the most fun things to do at the destination were. But that’s it. Today, if there ain’t no Google Doc for the trip, it ain’t happenin’. No, really. We actually have a Google Doc for each trip. We use it for planning and also for writing down important information (flight info and confirmation numbers, hotel addresses, phone numbers, passport numbers, visa numbers, etc). Right before starting the trip, I make it available offline on my phone and other devices.

Following are some key characteristics of how we plan things. Figuring out how much of it actually contributes to a smooth trip and how much of it is OCD is left as an exercise to the reader:

• Research everything. Literally everything. What are the facilities available at the airport? What’s the layout of the airport? What time does the flight land, and how does that affect transportation to hotel? What’s the easiest means of transport when you have a lot of luggage and a baby? When considering different hotels, I actually look at the street view on Google Maps to see how the area looks – safety and accessibility is key.
• Don’t assume anything. This applies mainly to international trips – we are so used to the laws, social norms, infrastructure and economics of the country we live in, that we tend to assume they are the same everywhere. For example, Christmas markets in Europe shut down sometime mid-December, Oktoberfest is in September, Italy shuts down in August, the sewers in Mexico can’t handle toilet paper, there is no air conditioning in the Paris subways (or anywhere for that matter), and San Francisco is not the California they show on TV. Solution is, again, research, and talking to friends who have been there. TripAdvisor, personal blogs, Google Maps, Wikipedia and similar websites/forums have helped us a lot.
• For sightseeing, take the greedy approach. We make a list of things to do and rank them in order of the regret we will have if we didn’t do it. And then just go one by one through the list – we don’t optimize for anything else. No traveling salesman optimizations. We do it as if there was no tomorrow!
• Include some baby entertainment – proportional to age of baby. As the baby has grown older, the number of things on our todo list that are more for him than us has steadily increased. We aren’t in the Disneyland phase of life yet where kids own the entire vacation, but on our recent trips, we’ve been making it a point to visit parks and gardens. Luxembourg Gardens was one of our favorite spots in Paris because all three of us had a wonderful time there. Biergartens in Bavaria were the best in that sense – while we were enjoying the Bavarian beer, our 18 month old toddler kept busy with those tiny rocks on the ground for hours. He LOVES rocks.
• Always have a Plan B for everything that can go wrong (flight delays, luggage delays, etc). And Plan C.
• Low expectations. Low expectations are meant to be beaten. We are always ready to spend the whole day or even multiple days at the hotel if things go wrong. Probability of things going wrong is usually lower than that of things going right, so most probably you’ll have fun 🙂

Hotels

When traveling with the baby, I personally prefer hotels over AirBnb/short term rentals for several reasons:

• Service. When traveling to another country, you might not be familiar with the language, local systems, emergency services, etc. There’s always someone at the hotel to help you.
• No surprises. One AirBnb listing I saw in Paris was beautiful but while reading through the comments section I realized it was on the 5th floor with no elevator.
• King size beds. In my experience it’s easier to find them at hotels than AirBnb (esp in Europe).
• Housekeeping. Totally need it with baby.
• Room Service! For those days when going out for dinner isn’t an option.
• Other conveniences. Power outlet adapters, coffee, snacks, etc. Lesser things to worry about. Some hotels have babysitting services, but we’ve never used them.

The downside of hotels is that the rooms might be smaller, you most probably won’t have a kitchen and they might be a bit more expensive. A kitchenette is something we miss at hotels when travelling with the baby – we manage without it though. More in the “Baby’s Meals” section below.

We prefer locations that are accessible. With one exception (because the view from that hotel was fantastic), we have always stayed at hotels that were really close to the things we wanted to do. Of course, the direct trade-off there is size of the room. Our baby is much happier when the room is big and open (balcony is even better). Finding rooms that were decent sized was hard in the heart of Paris and in downtown Tokyo, but we managed to find some good ones – you just have to spend a lot more time than you normally would searching online for a hotel room.

Baby’s Meals

Transportation

The best means of transport varies a lot from city to city, and from route to route. In Tokyo, we did trains + taxis, in Paris we did walking + Uber. For longer journeys we prefer trains – the baby doesn’t have to stay put in one seat.

Car seat laws exist in most cities, but a lot of them have exemption for taxis/legal TNCs. I’ve always found it really hard/impossible to find official rules though (even for counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live!) and I’ve depended mostly on TripAdvisor forums. Last time I checked, New York City, Paris and Tokyo had the taxi exemption. One thing I’ve learnt is, you shouldn’t worry too much about this because these laws are usually reasonable – if you live in an overpopulated city where cars move at 15 miles an hour and there are thousands of taxis on the road, the people are definitely going to get the exemption passed. On the other hand, in low population, high income towns that have high speed roads (think Switzerland, Germany), the laws are stricter, but it’s easy to get taxis with car seats and their trains and buses are also great.

Strollers and Carriers

When our baby was less than a year old, we took only the ErgoBaby 360 carrier and didn’t take a stroller with us. During the trip, we felt we could have used a stroller in a couple of places, but otherwise not having to lug around the stroller was a plus. When the baby was over a year, we got a lightweight umbrella stroller specifically for travel. We use the Chicco Bravo stroller at home, which is very sturdy, but it’s also quite heavy. For travel, we got the Zoe XL1 BEST v2 (the picture on amazon doesn’t show the removable guardrail/armrest, but it comes with one). There are lighter ones available, but we wanted a stroller with a full size canopy because we were travelling in summer. It turned out to be a great decision. The stroller was easy to carry and held up very well, even on Parisian cobbled streets. There were some places where there was actual cobblestone without any leveling (I remember the area outside the Palace of Versailles) where it was impossible to use the stroller, but such places were very few and small stretches and not sure if even a more heavyweight stroller would have worked there. With a lightweight stroller, we at least had the option of carrying it in one hand.