Planning, Logistics and Keeping it Loose…

When we tell people about extended travel (with or without kids) we get a lot of comments about how they can’t imagine the complexity of planning something like this.  The truth is that these type of trips are extremely easy to plan — that is, as long as you do as little planning as possible …. or as your personality allows.  

We both love the adventure of ending up where we might least expect.  When we first started dating, our favorite thing to do on the weekends was to get in the car and just drive.  No reservation.  No destination.  We would put on some good music, pick the highways and roads on a whim and end up somewhere—sometimes nowhere—in California.  When we were tired of driving we would roll into a random hotel (way before yelp and reviews) and get a room.  Sure sometimes it turned out to be crappy and sometimes we would get into a town where no hotels had rooms.  But that was part of the adventure!

This was basically our around-the-world trip.  We booked a flight out of town to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, a hostel for our first night and a flight back a year later from Hong Kong (the cheapest flight home).    We had a general sense of direction and that was it.  Each day we would wake up, roll over, and ask ourselves if we were ready to move.  If the answer was ‘yes’, then we needed only to pick a direction.  Not having a plan gave us the type of freedom that we never felt at home and being on the road meant no standard responsibilities.  We were purely living life, and as we liked to say at that time, “letting life happen to us”.   During that trip, we hardly ever used guide books and would instead rely on travelers we met along the way.   if you listen closely, hostel bars are filled with stories of amazing destinations that live outside of the realm of guide books, and we would be off the next morning in search of adventure.  

Traveling with kids is definitely NOT like that, but we try to keep things loose so that we can still “let life happen to us”.  When we embarked on this trip we had a flight out, apartments booked at our first two destinations in Spain and then a flight to Budapest, Hungary (because we knew Spain would get too hot and this was the cheapest place to fly to in Europe!).  After that we had no idea where we would end up or where we would fly home from.   Eventually we booked a flight home from London (why???  yep, because it was the cheapest).  

To help us maintain freedom with 3 kids under 6, we did decide on two luxuries that we definitely didn’t use when it was just the two of us:  1) a car and 2) Airbnb. 

We knew from the start that our family is not ready to travel by bus. I myself still have nightmares of 10 hour border crossing days that involved 4 different buses and in some cases a long hike through no-man’s land.  Our kids are still small, there are 3 of them, and they can only walk / carry their bags for so long.  The time duration for them not whining is even shorter!  Having a car allows us to travel on our own schedule, make emergency road side stops to pee or in some cases throw-up, stay outside of city centers in more authentic neighborhoods, and best of all it allows us to explore beautiful remote villages.

Here is the car we rented for 40 days: a 2004 Suzuki Forenza.  We ended up finding a small family rental that allowed cross-border travel to non-EU countries which most rental companies forbid.  They specifically use these because they are sound mechanically and "no one wants to steal them".  

Airbnb has been another great luxury for us.   Our days of rolling into town and walking around for a few hours to find a place to stay are definitely behind us, for now.  It’s difficult to find guesthouses with two double beds and our kids are too young to stay in a separate space as they often need us during the night.  While we have stayed in some spots with a shared bathroom and kitchen it certainly wasn’t ideal.   

Having our own apartment has allowed us to save money and be more efficient.   It’s been great to skip the restaurants during breakfast and just eat eggs/yogurt/cereal at home so that we could get on our way with morning activities before the heat sets in.  It has also been nice to cook our favorites (like chicken soup) when we feel homesick or even to learn how to cook local dishes after going to the market.  

Sure these luxuries cost money but we have been able to manage our costs.  Our older car has only set us back 22 euros a day.  In terms of Airbnb, the most we have paid so far was $120/night for a really nice 2 bedroom apartment in Majorca, Spain that is part of a beautiful resort.  The least we have paid is $28 for another nice one bedroom in Brasov, Romania.  The rest has been a steady average of roughly $50 / night which gets us a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment big enough for 4 people (our 3 kids can share any size bed when sleeping perpendicular across it).  

Here is one of the beautiful apartments we stayed in for $50/night.  It had recently been completely renovated and everything was brand new and modern.  

In terms of flexibility, we only book one or two destinations out ahead so that we can still have the ability to change course and visit places that people recommend to us along the way.  During this trip we have still been able to extend stays, cancel or re-arrange with no issues on airbnb as most local hosts have flexible cancellation policies.   Plus, finding a nice place to stay a few days out has definitely not been a problem as more and more locals turn to airbnb.   Most of all, we love meeting our local hosts, supporting them and exploring their cities through their recommendations.