Family Travel Advice

Is there anything in particular you want to see/do? What are your interests?

Patrick, Both countries have interesting histories and lots to see. As the previous reply mentioned, could you provide more information on the interests of your children? Also, is there a particular reason you chose those two countries? One possibility might be to spend five days in each country. Good luck with your planning!

Either way you go, I'd pick1-2 places and set up home bases there. We took our kids (and my sister came with her kids) to Ireland last summer. We spent a week in a cottage in Doolin and spent time on the Burren, saw the Cliffs, went to the Aran Islands, and took a day trip to Bunratty. Then we drove over to Dublin and spent 2 days there. Finding accomodations for a family can be expensive if you're moving every day or 2. Find a cottage or apartment, it'll cost less than a hotel or B&B, plus give you a kitchen and a washer and dryer, and more room to spread out.

Personally, I'd take one country or the other. Ten days can be used pretty effectively in either place, five days each might turn both into a blur. How are you with language? If you speak Spanish, Spain will be more rewarding than without it. Although you can easily get by with English, it's much harder to interact with the non-tourist industry locals when you don't speak the language. Another factor is the weather. In summer, I like to go further north to enjoy the exceptionally long days and comfortable weather. In the cooler months, I prefer to stay south. Overall, only you can pick which country is higher on your priority list. Both countries have interesting history and plenty to see and do. You won't find a nicer group of people than you will in Ireland but you will see more cultural differences in Spain.

Patrick - both would be great but I agree with poster above that if you are going in the summer then Ireland would be my choice as Spain would be much hotter. We took our kids to Ireland when they were older but they made their first Europe trip when the youngest was 9. Ireland has lots of outdoor activities and coming from Colorado maybe that would be more of interest to you. We hiked the area in the Burren, spent 3 days in Dingle enjoying driving around the peninsula, scuba diving & swimming, did the Newgrange tour out of Dublin, and loved walking around castle & abbey ruins (i.e. Rock of Cashel area). Having said that we visited Spain this year (just husband and me) and really enjoyed it - it WAS very different from our other European trips, we just didn't know as much about Spanish history. And we did take our kids at a young age to Italy in the heat of summer and they did just fine - but you really have to tailor your trip with young children anyway and the additional heat issues could be the reason to choose Ireland instead.

We've done the same thing four times with almost the same age children. If this is your first trip to Europe with the children then I would definitely spend all 10 days in Ireland. And I would be inclined to do what was already suggested; Rent a cottage for a week near the southwest coast and spend the other 2-3 days in Dublin. The cottage rental plan has so much going for it for families that we always make that our preference when the schedule allows. It is MUCH less expensive. It is MUCH more enjoyable for the children having room to run and play and call home for a week. It makes YOU feel at home in the house and in the culture. It cements memories in a way that no stop & go itinerary can (and without a clear memory of doing it, why bring the children at all?). I would not do anything more than Ireland unless you had a minimum of 2 weeks and preferably more. Children won't enjoy whirlwind European tours like adults do and they generally don't get as much out of cities as adults do (and to a child there is really no difference between a city of 50,000 and a city of 5,000,000) which is why Ireland works particularly well.

Just to be more specific, the kids in our group ranged in age from 3 to 17 (there were 7 of 'em). They all had a blast. As has been mentioned, there's tons of outdoor stuff in western Ireland to do. There weren't a lot of playgrounds, but there was an awesome one on Inisheer, the closest Aran Island to Doolin, with a zipline. Dublin's got a decent playground in St. Stephen's green. Dublin's great for the history and culture, but, for all the kids, the time out west in Doolin was their favorite.

Wow. What fantastic information. Thank you all so much. I really appreciate it. As a family we do love outdoor activities. The adults would enjoy museums but they would quickly bore the 11, 8, and 6 year olds. Non-stop sightseeing would also likely become old for the kids. Love the cottage ideas. The beaches in Spain seem enticing but not sure in June/July. Our Spanish is weak. Our initial plan was Ireland but the idea of changing to Spain arose out of concern of not enough activities for kids in those age ranges in Ireland - pools, parks, exploring. Love the ideas for Ireland. Have been to Italy, France, and London before kids so this will be first effort with kids this age. Thanks again all for the info. Any other thoughts are very much appreciated! Patrick

I have a few basic suggestions for travel with younger children. Regardless of the foreign destination, I'd get the kids involved in the trip planning. Learning a few words in the local language, looking at a map, examining the money, helping to choose a few specific sites to visit are all easy ways to get them interested. A few children's library books and travel brochures with descriptions of your destination will help. If you plan to visit museums or historical sites, teach them the very basics of the local history so they are familiar with 2 or 3 key names and events. Talk ahead of time about air travel and any other public transportation you may be using so they know what to expect. Similarly, talk about local food customs. I also like kids to keep their own scrapbooks/journals on trips. Give them a few minutes of quiet time in the evening before bed to cut and glue bits of brochures along with their own comments into inexpensive journals. Just in case, prepare for the unlikely event that someone gets lost. One idea is to put a business card from your hotel into each child's pocket. Most important, be really flexible about activities so that if someone is truly tired, bored, scared, etc., you have alternative activities in mind.

My family must be very different because I think they'd kill me if we traveled to Europe only to stay in a cottage and grocery shop. In ten days you could spend some time in Paris and then zip up to Belgium and then Amsterdam. We like to move around - more than three nights in the same place we go stir crazy.

Patrick - Anita made a really good point about educating your kids ahead of time. Our first family trip to Italy my son was 10. His school had done a special "unit" on Renaissance art when he was 9 and so when we got to Florence and toured the Ufizzi he pulled me over to several paintings to show me and remind me what he had hear about them - and he was NOT a real "artsy type kid! But just like kids like to read the same book over and over or see the same movie a dozen times, they will be MUCH more interested in even the "boring history" stuff if they have seen images or heard something about them first. There is a reason that even young kids are excited to see the Eiffel Tower - it is something they have seen pictures of over and over and so its really cool when they see it for the first time. So, do whatever you can to provide your kids with some visuals ahead of time. In our family we joke that our Europe trips tended to last about 10 months - beginning about 8 or 9 months beforehand with planning, etc. then the 2 week trip, then 1 or 2 months for my husband to put together our Travel Scrapbook!

I'll agree with those who say that getting the children involved in the planning is helpful in gaining their interest.... ...but only to a point, and with some pretty major caveats; I would caution you against going overboard trying to make the trip kid-friendly in a Disney-esque sort of way. That's what Orlando is for. The good zoos at home look pretty much like the good zoos in Europe. Playgrounds are playgrounds. When I read the chapters in guide books entitled something like "Paris for children" I get kind of sad for the state of parenting today. Children are capable of appreciating things beyond playgrounds, zoos and amusement parks. You simply have to do the "teaching" work ahead of time and spark their interest. Connect the historical dots for them (after doing some homework yourself). As the parent paying for all of this, you are giving the child an incredible opportunity to experience something most children can only dream of. This should be an enriching experience for them, not a parade of culturally irrelevant amusements.

I'm going to disagree with Randy a bit. I do believe that kids need to see some of the cultural things, but I know that we're going to go through any museums quicker than we would if it were just my husband and I. But I think that playgrounds can be as much as a cultural experience as anything else. Case in point -- the playground on Inisheer had a zipline, which we've never seen on a playground here, and it was in the shadow of a ruined castle, just half a block off of the shore. Not quite the same as we have here. And most countries we've been to have different ice creams (the kids LOVED the ice cream in Ireland), so that's a cultural experience, too. My brother-in-law went fishing there -- he can fish here anytime, but it's completely different fishing off of the cliffs in Ireland. Do I want to base my trip around playgrounds? No. But seeing hundreds of elk coming out of the woods at a (free!) petting zoo in Austria was a real treat that I'm glad I didn't miss.

That's a very fair point. Another similar example; if you stay in a self-catering rental you will have a chance to shop for groceries somewhere locally. That experience in itself - though still somewhat mundane - is a great glimpse into the culture and the many small differences between here and there. The children will find this interesting, too. There are many charming and educational differences between one culture and another to be found doing otherwise ordinary things. But there are other examples which work in just the opposite way, too; We know our children love hands-on science museums. So twice (once in Oslo and once in Amsterdam) we have been lured into truly great science museums. The children enjoyed themselves immensely. But great as they were, neither of them, as it turned out, had anything whatsoever to do with the country or culture we were in (science is universal after all). As it happens, we have a fine science museum near our home. So, enjoyable as it may have been to pass a few hours in an afternoon, it was a bit of a waste of our time on a $500-a-day trip to Europe.

Just a thought regarding language: I've traveled fairly widely and I found Spain to be the most challenging, given my lack of language skills. I found it easier to get along without knowing the language in rural parts of the Middle East, than in Spain. For example, it was hard to communicate with reception staff at the up-scale hotel in Madrid that was hosting a conference I attended, and it got more challenging when I left the capital. Their English is certainly far better than my Spanish... and I realize there's no reason the world should know English... but it's something you might want to consider when traveling with young children.

I agree with the posts above that suggest Ireland. We took our children to Ireland for their 1st European trip. They were 8, 11, and 14. It was fabulous! Who needs playgrounds when there are castle ruins everywhere that they can explore (and journey back in time to have an adventure with!) We would grab a some food for a picnic and then go for drives around our home-base. The kids never tired of finding new ruins or a new beach to hang out for awhile. I would read my book or watch them while they played and when they were done, we would continue on to something new. The driving to and from destinations was just as great as the destination itself. Rural roads with cows crossing or my favorite was when the sheep got out of the pasture and where all over the intersection. The young boy trying to herd them back into the pasture was neat to watch. You get to see the real Ireland by driving Of course, this is not to say that we did not do any museums. I HIGHLY recommend going to Trinity college in Dublin and seeing the illuminated manuscripts there. They blow the illuminations up to 6 ft. or so, so that you can see the intricacies of the pictures. It blows the mind! My kids still want to go back to Ireland. Enjoy!

About kids and museums - I agree with Randy that you should NOT underestimate your kids about what will be interesting to them. I never read the "what to do with kids" sections of the guidebooks because they do seem to be filled with more generic kid/science museums, theme parks, playgrounds. Of course there aren't many museums that I would spend more than a few hours at myself- I'd rather see a very small part for a short time and plan on returning. But on our kids first day in Europe it was the 9 year old that begged to stay longer in the Copenhagen natural history museum! But the one thing that we have found to be of interest to all of us is ANYthing that is out of doors. We always find a place to swim (yes, including in Ireland - VERY cold but it was fun!), cycle or hike. And our favorite "museums" are castle ruins instead of restored fancy palaces. We like to do as many different forms of transportation as we can - that can be part of the fun. So overnight trains, a ferry ride, gondola or something like that are always interesting. And the two most important things 1) EAT often. Just because you will all eat a huge Irish breakfast at that cute little B&B do not think that you can ask your kids to power through lunch and have an early dinner, just so that you will have time to do all your sightseeing. BIG mistake - the traveling and touring will make them hungry and they will be much more cooperative for afternoon plans if you had a real lunch. 2) plan for downtime - not every day mind you, but at the very least every other day - return to the hotel/apt and rest for 2 hours. Let the kids play video games (otherwise don't bring them while you're museuming), listen to music, read books, even nap. That way you can all stay up MUCH later at night and will enjoy each other much more.