Vacation For Which Age
Life is full of difficult decisions. Deciding which age you want to vacation for is not one of them. Luckily, I’ve done the hard work for you and found the best vacation age. It makes sense when you think about it too. Enjoy this list of awesome vacations and make sure to tweet me a photo while you’re at it!
Are you thinking of taking a vacation, but don’t know which one is best? If so, this article should help. I’ll take a look at the best vacations for each age group. I’ll begin with the recommended vacation for babies and end with adults. The reason for this is because there are a lot of different options and it would be easier to narrow down the choices if you start out younger.
Vacation is the best way to relax and just unwind after having worked hard all year. They are also known to be beneficial for people since it helps them get away from their busy schedules and they often receive a lot of health benefits. However, there’s a big divide between the type of vacation a person needs when they’re young versus the one which is made for people when they’ve passed their prime years. Vacations come in different types depending on an individual’s wants and needs but it can be summed into three main groups: group trips, independent travel, and solo adventures.
Vacation For Which Age
The issue of vacation age seems to be a highly controversial one, with the result that you can easily divide the population into two camps on the issue and with little room for reconciliation. You have to start somewhere, however, so we’ll begin by looking at which age is better, younger or older?
For those of us who live to travel, making sure we raise Good Global Citizens is maybe even more important than sending them to a Good College. Did we just say that out loud? But during the darkest hours of new parenthood when you can hardly remember to brush your teeth, that fantasy of trekking through the Himalayas with bouncing baby on your back feels about as plausible as learning how to play the cello at 40. And suddenly the old adage you thought would never apply to you starts to make sense: The days, especially those early sleepless ones, are long and the years, between Little League and prom night, are short.
So when we cut to browsing the aisles of Bed Bath & Beyond to pick out XL twin sheet sets for the kid’s college dorm and we find ourselves asking: How did we get here? Or more importantly, where did those 18 summers go? We’ll want to have a good answer. Did we pack their heads, hearts, and palates with enough color, texture, spice, humanity, compassion, self-reliance, and grit before sending them off into the world? Did we outfox urban ennui by dragging them to see that temple, that waterfall, or even that roadside dinosaur? Or did we default to the path of least resistance, surrendering to our fears of disrupted sleep schedules or arched-back refusal to be strapped into the stroller mutiny in the middle of the Papal Apartments and settle for the all-inclusive beach resort with human-sized cartoon characters?
The secret to successful family travel is, truthfully, all of the above. It’s an endurance game which, like parenthood itself, requires symphonic pacing—the highs, the lows, the fasts, the slows—and an against-all-odds sense of ambition, improvisation, and patience in order to push through the tough stuff.
What follows is a little nudge from some of our contributors, all of whom are currently immersed in various stages of family travel. We tapped them for their tips, tricks, and trip recommendations for different age groups (trust us, that destination that miraculously worked when they were 6 months old might not be such a success once they reach 6 years old). Plus, the gear you absolutely have to pack before hitting the road. You likely will, at some point, be that family with the screaming baby in bulkhead, but remember, we were all babies once. —CNT Editors
Ages 0-2
You’re taking trips, not going on vacations.
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Talk with parents and one thing becomes abundantly clear about travel with kids between 0 and 2: It’s hard. “Expect the worst and enjoy the small wins,” says Traveler contributor Melissa Liebling-Goldberg. No matter how thoughtfully you schedule a trip, you may need to drop everything to make sure the youngest traveler in your group is able to simply eat or sleep. There is a silver lining to this, though: Kids under two usually have a pretty simple set of needs. And as Regan Stephens, a Traveler contributor and mother of three based in Philadelphia, notes, they are also quite portable. “We took our first daughter to Nantucket, Dallas, Bermuda, even to Italy.”
Lots of prospective parents might write off further flung travel (“Now you’re taking trips, not going on vacations,” says Stephens), but they need not. Hannah Cote of Legacy Travel, a travel specialist with a focus on Hawaii, has a good tip that may seem counterintuitive if you want to take a longer trip: “I try to recommend a stop over if parents aren’t sure how their child will react to being on a plane for that long. On our last trip to Maui we stopped in Los Angeles for a night to break up the trip so it wasn’t too hard on the kids.”
Several parents I talked to, though, found slightly less ambitious trips were the most successful with kids this age. Road trips were a popular choice, and they do have a lot going for them: You can run entirely on your own schedule (or, more likely, your toddler’s schedule), you’re sure to have room for everything you want to pack, and they allow for easy tangents. That sort of adaptability is the most important asset for parents making their first trips with infants and toddlers. As one parent put it to me: “Kids can get interested in just running up and down a ramp. So don’t stress that they aren’t getting to that cool thing you want to show them.”
The gear
As I learned on my son’s first flight when he was 6 months old, even when they aren’t doing much, kids need a lot of stuff. But nothing is more important than making sure a child that young can sleep. The Slumber Pod can keep a new hotel room or Airbnb dark, comfortable, and hopefully a little quieter.
Buy now: The Slumber Pod, $170, slumberpod.com
—Noah Kaufman
Ages 3-5
It’s all about creating moments to learn new things—and still having fun.
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When asked about the best trip she’s taken with her 3-year-old twin sons, Marquita Wright instantly says Sarasota, Florida. “When we went to Sarasota, visiting the Mote [Marine Laboratory] was an absolute must. Being able to actually touch the stingrays, starfish, and sharks, absolutely blew my mind. Also, the Wild Kratts Ocean Adventure there offered interactive activities to help the boys learn about marine life; they loved the conveyor belt exhibit that teaches how sharks lose their teeth when they eat. They could not get enough of it.”
The trip, which took place over the twins birthday, wasn’t limited to educational activities, though. Wright was able to take the boys to Siesta Beach, known for its powder white sand and crystal blue water, and take advantage of the kid-friendly restaurants populating the area.
But blending education and fun in an easy to navigate way doesn’t have to be limited to domestic trips for the 3 – 5 age group, either. I have traveled a lot as a duo with my son, who was born in Poland and has spent the first four years of his life traveling at mine and my husband’s side. As a family, we prioritize cultural connectivity—our son had been to Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Egypt before he could walk or talk. However, one of the most memorable trips we have taken together was to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, just before he turned 3. We stayed right in the middle of it all: walking distance to the Central Market, the beautifully colorful Sri Mahamariamman Temple, and the huge outdoor shopping market Petaling Street. He was so excited to look at all of the colors, and people at Central Market liked to offer him free treats. I’m also a stickler for consistency and directly across the street from our hotel was a restaurant called Banana Leaf Curry House, where we shared big plates of curry with potatoes and sautéed cabbage, always washed down with mango lassis.
Another highlight? When we rode the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus stop, a double-decker bus that allowed my son to see almost every inch of the city without actually having to do anything. We passed through places like Little India, KL Bird Park, and the breathtaking Jamek Mosque. I just loved watching my son’s eyes light up as he gleefully pointed out everything new he discovered.
