I’ve learned a lot about travel with kids since becoming a mum. Our trip to Croatia was particularly full of useful (though not always pleasant) lessons.
The evening before we were due to leave for Croatia, my daughter went down with a bad cold, which is when everything began to go wrong. And that was just the beginning…
Because we’re now living and travelling with covid, I’d had to fill out a passenger locator form for the Croatian authorities, with everything booked in advance. It was an ambitious itinerary because I was planning to research some articles during the first week, before relaxing by the Adriatic at Split in the second week.
Here are the lessons I learned about travel with kids when things go wrong: what I did … and what I should have done… together with some more lessons from earlier travels.
We arrived in Zadar late on a rainy Sunday evening out of season. The nearby Mercator supermarket was closed, as was the bakery, and all the other shops in the area. We were hungry. We needed dinner and an early night. I trudged the streets with her in a piggyback, trying to find anywhere to eat. We sat miserably in a local restaurant while she swayed in her seat with tiredness.
Lesson learned 1: bring some food, especially if you’re arriving in a small European city on a Sunday evening.
Usually my daughter is a great traveller, but she when she’s got a cold the catarrh makes her travel sick. After one rest day in Zadar we had to follow our itinerary to Zagreb, which involved an hour and 30 minutes by bus to the town of Gospic, followed by over two hours on the train.
As the bus wound though the mountains the inevitable happened. Unfortunately I only had one paper bag (containing a half-eaten chocolate croissant). I wedged the croissant under my arm while the bag did its job — and immediately started to disintegrate. I stuck the bag in a fabric tote I had in my handbag, and mopped up the excess with my silk scarf, nothing else being available. While this was going on the croissant started to melt and ooze onto my jacket. I shoved it into my handbag. I arrived in Gospic with my jumper, jacket and trousers covered in brown smears, a stinky leaking tote bag and chocolate spread literally over the contents of my handbag. Our first stop in Zagreb was the launderette.
Lesson learned 2: Always have plastic bags and wipes handy when you travel with kids (also don’t bring an expensive vintage suede jacket on holiday).
As my daughter struggled with the cold, she was tired and grouchy, not to mention the travel sickness. I’d planned day trips to Sisak for an article on Croatia’s recovery from the December 2020 earthquake, to the islands for another article, and ended up scrapping both these plans.
Lesson learned 3: When you have to choose between being a good traveller and a good mum, being a mum must win.
After four days in Zagreb we had another journey back to the coast. When we got to the station our train was nowhere to be seen. Instead a coach was waiting outside the station to replace the six-hour train journey.
I knew we wouldn’t manage it, and by that time I’d decided that no one was checking up on whether we were actually following our itinerary. There was no hope of a refund on either the train ticket or that night’s accommodation in Split, but I decided anyway we would stay an extra night in Zagreb and take the train the following day.
We ended up spending the night at the Hotel Jadran, which provided the best breakfast buffet I’d ever had.
Lesson learned 4: be flexible if you need to — and throw money at the problem if you can afford it.
Talking of throwing money about, I gave in to my daughter’s requests for holiday presents far more times than I should have done as I felt the need to (over)-compensate for dragging her around Croatia when she was ill.
At the time she was collecting the Goodness Gang Body Squad — a set of cuddly toys in the shapes of fruit and vegetables. I agreed to buy Pineapple from a market stall in Split, then we spotted Watermelon in a second hand shop. Together with Rad the Radish which she’d brought from home these took up quite a lot of space in our luggage, as I found when trying to squeeze all the extra stuff into suitcase to meet Ryanair’s baggage rules.
Lesson learned 5: Don’t buy lots of stuff to overcompensate when you travel with kids (and you can’t vacuum pack stuffed toys using sellotape and a supermarket carrier bag).
So those were the lessons I learned about travel with kids from our trip to Croatia, and here are some more from earlier trips…
When we spent a weekend at the resort of Mamaia, Romania and every restaurant seemed to be fancy and super expensive. We walked for a couple of miles along the traffic-clogged road that follows the beach, hot, tired and hungry before eventually buying bread and cheese from a supermarket.
Lesson learned 6: check for child-friendly cafes near your hotel, and if there are none consider going self catering.
A few years ago, I’d planned a tour of Georgia and the northeastern corner of Turkey, including two nights in the separatist republic of Abkhazia. As the time approached, I got increasingly worried about this. It just didn’t seem a suitable travel with kids itinerary. The guidebook had mentioned that sometimes bandits rob people as they walk from their bus across the de facto border. I started imagining following the others from the bus, but the pushchair getting bogged down in uneven ground near the border… and then getting pounced on by bandits.
I’d asked about it at an embassy party some friends invited us to, and everyone who had been seemed confident, but still my fears about travel with kids to Abkhazia were not allayed. In the end, with a couple of hours to go before our overnight train to Zugdidi near the border, I cancelled the hotel in Sukhumi and booked an extra two nights in Zugdidi again. We ended up spending three days in a random small city in western Georgia, but at least no one got mugged.
Lesson learned 7: don’t take your toddler to lawless places.
When I was locking the door to our Airbnb in Odesa, my daughter ran ahead into the lift … and the doors closed. Luckily no one had summoned the lift and when I pressed the button — after an alarming pause – they opened again. My hands still prickle with fear when I remember this.
Lesson learned 8: hold onto your toddler at all times.
We took the bus to Ruse, Bulgaria with a pushchair and wheelie suitcase. And the pavements were so uneven, not to mention covered with snow I couldn’t manoeuvre the two down the road to the train station.
Lesson learned 9: If you’re solo with a pushchair bring a rucksack rather than a wheelie suitcase.
I ambitiously planned to go down from our home in the west of Scotland to a christening in Kent (I was one of the godmothers) over a weekend. We we had a 3.5 hour drive to Glasgow, a 5 hour train to London and another train to Kent on the Saturday — then the whole thing in reverse on the Sunday.
Definitely too much for a small child with a delicate tummy…
After an emergency stop to swap my daughter’s gold sequinned party dress for pyjamas and mop down the back of the car was required on the way after Glasgow. Only for me to get us completely lost, and end up crawling along a street full of happy drunk people swarming into the road and lurching in front of the cars.
It was at this point that I gave up, turned back, somehow found my way around the one way system and back into the car park, and booked us into a hotel for the night.
Deep down I sort of knew the journey was too much, and would have saved a lot of time and trouble if I’d just gone straight from the station to a hotel.
Lesson learned 10: when you see a situation developing change the plan sooner rather than later.
15 minutes later my daughter was bouncing around, delighted to be out in Glasgow at midnight — wearing pyjamas under her coat no less! — and as we passed a chip shop we’d once visited she immediately demanded chips.
Steppe in Style 
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