“Family travel grows up”

“It’s no longer automatic that a vacation with the kids means a week in Waikiki or four days at Disney. Increasingly, parents are figuring out how to bring the family along on trips to explore the world in all its complex glory”… this is  the incipit of  an article from Conde Nast Traveller published in March 2006.

We encourage you to plan a trip in Rome with your family and we’ll help you through blog posts, special tours and tips ready for your children !

Here some interesting  passages of the article:

• Families that feel at home abroad raise children to have a global outlook.
• A bored child is never a fun traveling companion. So, from a purely selfish point of view, you want to make sure you have an endless supply of age-appropriate tricks up your sleeve (or more likely in your bag or their backpacks) to keep the dreaded boredom at bay.
• In the end, children are not very different from the rest of us. They appreciate lovely food and beautiful hotels, they prefer not to be bored and they like to be treated as reasonable human beings.
• When you travel with your kids, you have the added delight of introducing them to all the places you love and watching as they, too, enjoy the ride.
• Kids just wanna have fun. Ever notice that when a child is having fun, he/she doesn’t get cold or hungry or tired? The moment the fun stops, the whining starts. Forget the goal-oriented adult approach.
• The trick is to figure out not just where and when to go but also how to travel and what age the children should be. (…) make sure the destination and the activity are appropriate for your child’s character and interests.
• Street markets and grocery stores are good places to introduce kids to local culture, to find out what people eat, wear, make. When we hire a guide, we make it a habit to ask friendly questions about his or her family (…) Navigating a foreign subway system, eating at a restaurant where you can’t read the menu, and calculating a strange currency all constitute adventures for kids, especially if you get them involved.

And finally…our favorite statement: “It goes without saying that travel feeds a child’s curiosity and contributes to good citizenship by encouraging human contact and tolerance of cultural differences.”

P.S. [November 2021] I had the chance to personally meet the two authors of a blog post and travel guides dedicated to the art of traveling with kids, based on their own experience with two lovely daughters. Bill and Ashley travelled and lived internationally and “Family on the Loose” is the result of their extended experience in the field (and this is the link to buy it online).

We became good friends and we ended up writing another book together!