Traveling with a Toddler: Is It More Difficult than Traveling Solo?

I hate it when I hear people saying: you can no longer travel like you used to after having kids. No, traveling with a toddler is not impossible!

Yes, there are some obvious changes you need to make when traveling with a toddler (or younger kids), but it’s not – and it shouldn’t be – the end of the world!

Guess what? In my case, I started my nomadic life (and continued with extensive traveling afterward) AFTER my son was born. We started with a month-long train ride across Europe when he was 2 years-old.

If you’re curious to see how that went (as well as where we stayed and how much we spent), I have a four-party diary of this amazing adventure:

• Around Europe by Train: Part 1 (Budapest & Vienna)
• Around Europe by Train: Part 2 (Munchen, Verona & Trieste)
• Around Europe by Train: Part 3 (Pula & Rijeka – Croatia)
• Around Europe by Train: Part 4 (Zagreb & Belgrade)

The main thing we learned after this trip is that fast travel is really difficult with a toddler or a younger child. Slow travel is a much better option – and we prefer it too.

So ever since, we started spending at least one month in the locations visited, like Budapest, Valencia or Prague. Still, overall, we traveled a lot more after our son was born, while he was a toddler.

You can travel a lot and have fun with kids. Or toddlers.

Traveling with a toddler: how difficult is it?

I won’t be that absurd liar who says that switching from traveling as a couple/solo to traveling with a toddler won’t change a thing.

Things will be much different, but not necessarily more difficult. And under no circumstances is it impossible to travel with a kid!

The biggest problem? You can’t really fast travel, as the little ones burn out pretty fast and they have a much slower-paced schedule that involves plenty of naps and breaks and a much slower tempo overall.

If you weren’t really hopping from city to city before… that you don’t even have to worry about this!

But I would personally suggest slow(er) travel at least. Being in one country today just to be in a different one tomorrow and leaving for the third one the next day is extremely tiring for adults, let alone toddlers or kids.

Even a few days spent in one location, before moving to a new one is difficult.

Plus, you don’t really get the chance to experience the culture, the attractions and what each place has to offer if you’re just racing from one place to another, ticking cities off your list to impress people on Instagram (or for whatever reason you might have).

When traveling with a toddler, I think that the minimum amount of time you should schedule for any given location is around 5 days. That’s how we did it during our month-long trip in Europe and it worked fine.

However, at points, it still seemed too fast, so I believe that ideally you should spend 1 week in each location. 2 weeks is better, one month or longer is even better as you and the little ones get the time to find their rhythm and really enjoy the place.

Toddlers have a pace of their own and especially different interests, according to their age.

While toddlers can easily be impressed with anything, as they go older, they will start developing their own preferences and it will be more and more difficult to drag them around to visit attractions they don’t really like.

They also need to rest more often, they need to walk less, they might not care about that museum or statue or castle or whatever you think it’s nice.

For example, when we visited a Zoo with our son, for the first time (the one in Budapest, which is pretty impressive), the only thing that really caught his attention was… a fly that landed on a flower.

He was fascinated by it, and not much impressed by elephants and giraffes and lions and anything else. He was two back then, so it’s understandable…

The ideas is that kids have their own personality and it is us who must adapt to their needs in order to have successful travels and return with amazing memories.

Don’t look at kids as weights you have to carry around, look at them as travel partners and everything will change. Everything will be better!

Even adults have their own perks and quirks and things that we love or don’t like so much. Yet, couples travel together and do it well… it’s not much different with a toddler, as long as you know what to expect.

What are the main challenges of traveling with a toddler?

We had two major problems traveling with our two-year old: his sleeping schedule reduced a lot of the time that we could spend outside, exploring or at least changed the times at which we could travel.

This was also a bonus: he usually wakes up at 6-7 AM and has to sleep at around 12-1 PM for a up to a couple of hours. Then he goes to sleep again at 7 or 8 PM.

This meant for us that we had outside time early in the morning and during the afternoon, missing the times when it was either too crowded or too hot (or both).

So even though we did have to adjust our schedule, it wasn’t really a big problem. As a bonus, when they’re so young, kids can sleep anywhere: carry them in a wrap, go in a park and hold them, let them sleep in the stroller… the opportunities are endless.

Just make sure they do get all the sleep they need. It’s extremely important at this young age!

Back to the schedule, when we visited Verona, we thought we won’t even make it to Juliette’s balcony because of the crowds, but we were shocked to see only a handful of people when we got in the area, randomly strolling around. That’s what happens when you arrive at the site early in the morning!

And we also managed to turn the Con that we had to be back home at 7 PM into a Pro: we used the evenings to catch up with some work (the advantages of building your own blog!) and do some extra planning for the following days.

Plus, it kept us well rested as we too usually went to sleep at 10 PM. You have to adapt and everything will be OK.

Also read: Solo Travel vs Group Travel – What’s the Best?

Now, the second problem that we had: the costs.

We did pay a lot more than we used to, mostly on accommodation, because we had the little one with us.

It was not because of him, though, but because of me: we HAD to sleep in separate rooms, in separate beds, because I am an extremely light sleeper.

Our son is like a tornado in bed so he keeps waking me up. Therefore… in order for me to keep my sanity intact, we had to have different beds.

This translated in extra rooms in most cases, but I am also OK with even separate beds or sleeping on the sofa in the living room.

But all these options are usually more expensive that hostels (ah, I never think I’ll EVER do that now that I have a son) or studios on AirBnb. And it gets even more expensive as they grow older, and they start losing freebies, discounts, need more space/food and such.

Now, if you don’t have anything about sharing a bed, you could still keep costs low: it all depends on how light of a sleeper you are, but be prepared to spend some more money when traveling around the world with a toddler.

There are extra costs involving food mostly – but at this age, they don’t really consume much. Even as they grow older, they still rarely need a full portion bought at restaurants and the increase in costs when cooking at home is minimal.

At the moment of updating this article, our son is 11 and only recently we started ordering an entire portion for him (which he usually is unable to finish).

But until he was 8 or so, we still ordered two portions and it was enough for the three of us (sometimes, there were also leftovers). Thank you, restaurants, for creating insanely huge portions!

The Bottom Line

If you have kids, don’t let them stop you from traveling the world if that’s what you want or what you dream of!

If you don’t have kids just because you think you won’t be able to travel afterwards, understand that it’s not true. You can still travel and have a great time with a toddler. You just have to change your habits a bit and adapt, but it’s all doable.

And trust me – when you see the happiness on their faces, the joy of seeing new things, experiencing new cultures, the same joy that you get when you travel, it will all be worth it!

So how to travel with kids? Just plan your moves, take it slow, pack your bags and leave. That’s all!

Now over to you: are you traveling with kids? Share your story and thoughts in the comment section below!