Potentially Last Trip for a While
 

Hello Everyone!

My wife and I are considering kids after we got married this year. I think this could be our last trip for a while and I'm trying to decide where to go. I am leaning towards Italy and have posted some thoughts in the Italy forum and got some great recommendations to potentially slowdown as we were trying to see too much. We tend to not do too much, but being our potential last trip till the kids are 10 or so has me thinking were to go. The last few trips we have taken have been beach focused as my wife loves the beach. I am picking this one as we just spent 10 days in Maldives and I'm beach burnout. I want some ancient history, won't mind a day at beach for the wife, so I thought Italy. However, we were trying to see too much. Now I can't decide if I should pick one city and really explore it.

The trip will be either March or October of 2022. We are thinking Europe, but have consider Japan(if open) for Cherry Blossoms, maybe China or Egypt. My wife is extremely nervous about the last two. She isn't sure about the safety of Egypt and China concerns her as such a big country though we both would love to see the Wall. We also consider an around the world ticket. We have almost all the points for the ticket and almost enough for 8 days in hotels, depending on the hotels we can find. Hyatts would be best as we have quite a few Hyatt and Chase points.

Any thoughts? Any ideas how to narrow our focus? I hope it isn't our last international trip for years, but I suspect we will be road tripping America for the next few years at the least. I wanna go out with a bang.

Just for help I forgot to tell time. We think my wife can get off 14-16 days. We did 12 for her honeymoon and it wasn't an issue. She gets almost 6 weeks of vacation, but it is difficult to take more than a week at a time and normally a few days like long weekends. We might be able to push it for a month, but that would make it late september to mid october or all of October. I don't know if I could do that, October is my busiest month. Just wanted to give some parameters. I can do some work virtually, so normally won't be an issue. October is conference season for my industry and that means in person most likely in 2022.

Thanks as always!

Why would having kids mean you can't leave the US for 10 years? My son is now 2 and from my experience flying would have been relatively easy until about 6 months, then from 6 months until now it would have been more difficult, because he currently needs a lot of stuff yet he won't be able to remember the trips - so in a way covid has hit at a good time as we did a long-haul at 4-5 months and hopefully it will be a lot easier to travel covid-wise in a year's time.

I flew long-haul with my parents around twice a year and I do remember the trips starting from around when I was 3 years old.

If you have 14 days then I would pick a max of 4 cities to visit, alternatively have 1 or 2 as a base and then take day trips out and back. With a round the world ticket you'll probably spend 3 of the 14 days on flying and associated activities and by the time you settled into somewhere it's time to leave. And if you aren't really going round the world what's the point?

Yeah I'm not sure why you would wait so long to get the kids traveling? I grew up traveling internationally and it's the best thing my parents could have done for me. Getting kids used to long-haul flights, time change, etc. is important.

With that said, so many questions to help you narrow in on something... Do you prefer cities or to be out in nature/hiking/etc, or a combo? Active trip or museums, fine dining, etc..? Do you care if you need to get visas? Think about the basic stuff first and then you will be able to narrow in on many places naturally.

To answer your two question - Yes, Egypt is perfectly safe. For China, with 14 days, I would narrow in on a region. I actually spent last October traveling around Sichuan, Hubei, and Hunan. The trains make it very easy and there is tons to see since, as you mentioned, it's such a big country. I know you mentioned the wall, but October was a great time to go to other touristy places such as Zhangjiajie (you can google it) because it's right after a big holiday there and it was empty. Very easy to fly around the country as well.

We don't like the idea of traveling internationally with kids. I am not a fan of bringing young kids on trips like that. We plan to travel with them in America and do road trips until about 10 years. That is just our personal preference as a family. It could change once we have kids, but we have seen our friends really struggle to travel and those that do always seem to spend more time at the hotel then actually doing stuff. We made a decision to limit travel while the kids was young.

I think some place with a rich and vast history would be great. It doesn't have to be specific to any timeframe. I love Ancient History, we won't mind going somewhere with Christian roots either. Egypt has always intrigued me along with Italy and England. My wife has heard a lot about Thailand being fun to go too, but I haven't really done much research on it.

We aren't hikers so to speak. We don't mind exploring a little, but we prefer cities or beaches. I don't think we would do hours of hiking, but we might do an excursion so to speak. Museums are great, but I prefer more real life stuff. Like Pantheon etc where you can walk up to it and not be in a building. I do like to mix them too. My wife is such a picky eater, she will try almost anything, but its hard to find something she actual that fine dining can be hit or miss for us.

ymmv of course but mine are at 600K flown miles as 10 year olds.. you will have to align travel plans accordingly - early on more focus on resorts and open space so my advice would be to cover cities, museums, crowded spaces now.. dining was particularly impacted ime..

btw you will likely find that air travel with kids is much easier than long road trips unless you get an RV..

and you aint getting into china in early 2022...

Azepine00 - why do you find it easier with air travel then road trips? I always figured it'd be easier to pull over and see something random, stop by a gas station or grocery store to stretch legs etc then being caged up on a plane. That is amazing that you have 10 year old who have flown that much. This is very eye opening so thank you for sharing.

I second the motion to reconsider international travel with kids. I was nine and my sister was four the first time our family spent a a summer living in a VW Camper in Europe. We did it again two years later, this time with my older brother along for the whole trip. (He'd spent much of the first summer in a camp in Switzerland.) We drove from Paris to Moscow in 1966. Things I experienced then have informed my whole life.

I had the opportunity to spend just a week in Paris with my grandchildren a couple of years ago. They were at a similar age to mine and my brother's on our second trip, so I got a glimpse of what my parents' summer must have been like. You'd have to significantly adjust your expectations and reduce your ambitions, but you could provide yourselves and your kids a bunch of indelible memories.

I will add that from personal experience, we grew up flying between NY and the UK because we had family living over there. My family started flying us over between the two as babies. Of course traveling with little kids is difficult; no one would argue against that (if they do, you know they don't have kids).

I will never forget the first time we went on a vacation with another family, friends of ours from the same town. We flew from New York to Greece. The other family had kids about the same age as my brother and me (maybe 9 and 7 years old), but they had never really traveled before. The other kids were a nightmare to travel with because they didn't know how to handle any of the changes. Meanwhile my brother and I were very used to it at that point and as such, my family was way more relaxed on that trip. We knew that if we didn't sleep at least a little bit on the flight, we'd regret it; stuff like that. Just food for thought, and of course it's a ymmv situation with kids.

Kids may or may not feel comfortable on drives - one of mine was fine the other cried quite a bit. That really gets to you if you have to drive for hours.. later "let it go" singing was cute for a few minutes but not when it was on a loop for miles and miles.. :D
flights were never an issue for us but I guess it is also ymmv - you ll have to check what works..

during pandemic we did quite a few rv trips and I wish we tried that when kids were younger - you may want to check that out..

Thanks for all the advice. The two posts are having us reconsider travel for the kid should we be blessed with them. I really figured road trips was the way to go and we do want to build memories with them. I didn't really get to travel much as a kid. One big trip to NYC the summer before my high school graduation. The rest were just trips in our home state or the neighbor state, we were not a "vacation" type family I guess. I do wish to change that for my kids. However, I thought and always think when I see kids on a plane why would you want to bring them on such a long flight. I am miserable, aren't the kids.. Anyway after the honeymoon this year and the 8 hours of a crying kid we made the decision to do road trips and explore America while younger before going international. My second thought and this lead to a question is I figured babies and anyone till about 7-8 won't really remember it. I guess that left us with the thought that would it be worth it..

For those of you that either A traveled as a 2-8 do you remember it or B if ya had kids that traveled at those age do they remember it? Perhaps we can find a way to continue our trend of one big international trip a year going forward and multiple local trips or road trips.

Thanks for all the advice this was very eye opening.

I certainly remember a lot from my family's long road trips before, during, and after the European trips. My sister was four and six during the European camping trips and has a lot of memories from them.

My first flight was the return from Paris, via Shannon, Ireland and Gander, Newfoundland, in 1964. We'd taken a small ocean liner on the outbound! So I had a mix of modalities and got something from each of them.

I definitely remember tons of trips from when I was little. We went all around France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the UK, and Italy before I was 10 and I can absolutely remember lots of it and have great memories from those trips. The first really "big" trip we did was to the Galapagos when I was exactly 10 (brother was 8) and I for sure remember that. The hiking, snorkeling, the boat, all of it. These are such big events in your life, so you'll be surprised at what they remember.

As an adult now, it's also fun to go back to a lot of places I have not been to since I was a child and remembering things, or seeing how they have changed over time.

Dreamwalker, wishing you and your wife all the best in your consideration of having kid(s).

As many had said up-thread, bring small kids on international trips has its joy and some hassle. We brought our 2 year old daughter on her first trip to Europe. We had done quite a few all throughout her high school years.

That said, with the exception of Egypt, I traveled a lot to Italy and China. Since 2008, I went to China on an average of 4x each year, until the pandemic. Italy is my top 3 most favorite countries. Ranking: Japan, Italy and China.

To go to China in 2022 in March or October, I’d pick October for the weather. However, China has involuntarily cancelled visitor visa (I still have 7 years left on my 10 year visa) last year. It is like pulling teeth to get one approved. Hopefully that will change in the near future.

I collected a lot of travel photographs from all places that I traveled to. You are welcome to check out these places in China with the link below. They might or might not offer some ideas.

https://stefanofoto.smugmug.com/Asia-AU-NZ/China

Let’s say you have 14 days on the ground in Italy (excluding flying), you can do 3 to 4 cities by train. Personally, I’d do 3, and use them as base for some day trips. Trains would be my main mode of transportation. Let say you fly into Rome (base here for a few days) and train to Florence (base here a few days) and train to Venice. Then fly home from Venice.

If possible (air fare wise), get open jaw tickets to avoid back tracking.

To see some photos from Italy, please use link below:

https://stefanofoto.smugmug.com/Europe/Italy

I had done a 30 day road trip in Italy, as part of a RTW DONE3 itinerary. Not suggesting you do something like that, but just to trigger some idea about places to go and what to see.

https://stefanofoto.smugmug.com/Trav...oad-Trip-Italy

Good luck in your planning.

Thanks for all the info. We have found some tickets that work for us for Italy. They are for early March and would be 15 days from touchdown to take off.

We would land in Milan and fly out of Rome. My birthday is in March so wife loves the idea of going then as we normally travel around her bday in September. What's the weather in Italy like in March? I need to discuss with wife she dislikes cold.

I am thinking something like this itinerary.

Arrival Milan early morning and stay a night.

Head to Venice. I wanted to stop by Lake Como but my understanding is it closed till April?

14 total days of exploration including landing early morning on arrival day. Not including departure day which is day 15..
MIlan 1 Day
Venice 3 Days
Florence 3 Days
Rome 3 Days
Pompeii 1 Day
I have 2 days left. I expect one to be burned roughly with all the train rides. Do I just add them to Venice, Florence and Rome or extend one more? Add Amafi Coast? Skip something?

I have to do Milan arrival and Rome. We are going for Pompeii and potentially Herculaneum. Doubt we can do both. I am considering Herculaneum over Pompeii due to lack of shade. I sunburn easily.

Any thoughts??

Allset2travel are those countries in order? Japan, Italy, China?

Ive never had to get a visa that I recall. What big travel locations require them??

You have packed way too much in for two weeks. With an allocation of one to three days per city you’ll either see nothing but the airport or train station, taxi, and your hotel room, or at most you’ll have a day to explore. Without knowing what it is you want to explore it’s hard to give advice, but I would keep it down to two principal destinations, with possible day trips to enhance the experience. Lake Como doesn’t close, it’s a lake. The towns around it are very nice a picturesque, for the most part. You could do worse than spending three full days in Bellagio, then spending the rest of your time in a city in Tuscany, or Rome.