Travelling with Family

Hi everyone! It’s time for another Travel Tuesday! These are seriously my favourite posts to make, and today is no exception. This Friday I will be travelling to Portugal with my family, and so today I would like to lay out some tips and tricks for travelling with the fam.

Now I am pretty lucky in the way that I get along (for the most part) with most of my family, and especially my immediate family. The people partaking on this adventure will be both of my parents, my younger (by two years) brother, and my grandpa on my mother’s side. Now none of us have travelled with this grandpa, and he has never been out of the country, so he is kind of the wild card of the upcoming trip. None of us know if he is going to freak out or be completely chill, so that should be something fun to look forward to.

As I mentioned earlier I get along with my immediate family, so these tips are not going to talk about surviving family you don’t like (that’s a whole other can of worms). However I would like to share my top three tips to make travelling with your fam easier!

Tip 1. Pack some Snacks!

Now of course this is country dependent (and diet dependent), but most places will have some convenient, already wrapped, snacks to pack in your bag. The reason this is tip numero uno is because I don’t live at home anymore, so I know that my eating habits are not in line with my families. I am also someone who gets VERY hangry, and I think we all know the more people in a group trying to pick a restaurant the LONGER it takes and the more frustrated I know my mother gets when I get hangry.

I’m taking two “gomacro” bars with me – both to keep my hanger at bay, but to also provide myself with some vegan options (you never know if your dad managed to sign you up for a veg meal on the plane or not). So this is the second part to this tip! If you have dietary restrictions (GF, Paleo, Vegan, whatever!) bringing some of your fave pre-packaged snacks and help to lower the group frustration and give you some tasty options (there is nothing I hate more than people obsessing over whether I have enough options)

Tip 2. Lower your expectations

Now this tip is not to say “Give up all the fun things you want to do”, it’s more so that you should be more flexible. Everyone has a certain expectation of what the trip is going to be, some more rigid than others, and you can only benefit the trip by allowing yourself to be the flexible one. Your family wants to get up at 8 and go to the beach when you want to sleep? You can sleep on beaches. Getting dragged to a million museums? Try and make a game out of how many of a certain thing you can count, or talk to your family members and make up histories for the object. That way when it comes down to the important things you want to do, your family will have seen that you can give and take and they are more likely to give!

Tip 3. Bond!!

Seriously family trips are such an opportunity to bond with family members. Last year my brother and I talked for hours after my parents went to bed, pack some card games (seriously a deck of cards takes up no space!) and stock up on easy games to play! Ask your parents about how they met, what was their favourite job when they were younger, favourite pet- anything! Now’s the time to make memories!

(the Bro and I)

Happy Travels!

Kathleen

(p.s any Portugal people out there got any cool suggestions? leave them in the comments below!)