10 guiding principles for family travel
Over the years, I have, through trial and error, refined The Fairlie Entourage’s approach to travel, in order to maximize our enjoyment of the experience and minimize the irritations. Below I present The Fairlie Manifesto: my 10 guiding principles for travel as a family. (I call them principles rather than rules, because rules sounds all bossy and strict…and quite frankly, as a family we’re not great with rules.)
1. Know where we’re going.
I do quite a bit of background research on each destination – its climate, history, culture, politics, attractions and local customs/etiquette. I will generally read some novels set in that place, peruse some guide books and surf the internet. It’s really important to establish a context for the stuff you’re seeing, and to know if it’s going to be the rainy season, or whether chewing gum is a punishable offence, or why the locals may not be overly-fond of certain other nationalities. I try to encourage the rest of The Fairlie Entourage to do a bit too. The Poolboy’s area of specialty is restaurants.
2. Prepare a plan
There’s nothing worse than coming home from somewhere and running into people who say, “So, did you see the artwork in the laneways?”, or “How about those whirling dervishes?”, or “Where did you go to eat a cheesesteak?”, and then realising that we’ve missed some of the highlights of wherever we were, because we didn’t know about them (see no.1 above) or because we ran out of time, or because when we finally got there, it was booked out. All because we hadn’t organized a plan of what to see, when. So, we generally rough out a day-by-day plan.
3. Don’t over-prepare
But the flip side of no.2 is that we don’t want to be looking at our watches saying, “It’s three thirty five, we HAVE to get the museum”, when we’ve just stumbled across a fascinating little enclave of local artists’ studios. There has to be lots of wriggle-time to wander off on a whim, follow interesting leads and sometimes just to kick back and watch the world go by. A plan is just a hypothetical outline, not a boot camp schedule.
Plus, I don’t like to over-research places we’re going to go. I want there still to be a sense of wonder and newness. If I’ve already seen it photographed from every angle, and read hundreds of people’s accounts of it, there can be a feeling of anti-climax when faced with reality. A little bit of research is good, too much can be bad.
4. Life is full of compromises
I’m not the biggest fan of theme parks. The girls feel ‘ruined’ after a few hours tramping the antiquities. But we all agree to compromise and tolerate each other’s wish lists. We try to ensure there’s something of interest for everybody on the itinerary. If that means we have to swing by the American Girl Doll shop en route to MOMA, so be it.
5. Pack lightly
Hauling large and heavy suitcases into and out of trains, planes and automobiles is enough to make anyone cranky. There’s no need for too much stuff. A couple of years ago, one of my colleagues and her husband traveled for six months, spending a month at a time in six of the world’s big cities, and they took only carry-on baggage. I’m not quite that disciplined, but I do know that weight out of the suitcase is quite literally weight off my shoulders when travelling. The girls are old enough to be responsible for the carting of their own luggage, which is a big incentive for them to keep it lean.
6. We’re not in Kansas anymore
Don’t be the people who whine and whinge about how things are not like at home: “There’s no wi-fi, the soft drink isn’t chilled, the food tastes funny, the Government has blocked Facebook…”. If we wanted things to be like at home, we’d stay at home. Embrace the different, the unusual, the challenging. Eat local foods. Accept and respect local customs.
7. Get there by opening time
We’re early risers, and like to pack as much into a day as possible. You won’t find us sleeping in until noon (even if we are doing a lie-by-the-pool holiday). Our strategy is usually to get to the biggest ticket item on that day’s schedule (i.e. the one likely to have the longest queues) well before opening time. On one infamous occasion, we got there quite a long time before opening time. This strategy has been known to back-fire. In Istanbul, the opening time queues for the Topkapi Palace were huge…but when we left the palace around lunchtime, the queue was non-existent. Like I said, they’re principles, not rules.
8. Read the local rag
I like to get my hands on a local (English language) newspaper soon after arriving in a destination. They’re a great source of information about local life. The big news stories will be picked up by world news services, but the small articles and advertisements are where I really get a sense of the texture of life in that place. Likewise, I try to buy some local magazines to read (or just look at the pictures) on train or plane journeys.
9. Put down the camera
In the digital photography age, I find a take a lot of photos, sometimes on more than one camera or device at a time. I seriously love photos. I like to use them once I’m home, here on the blog…or printed up into photobook albums. A photo captures a scene and triggers memories for years after a holiday has finished. But the danger is that while I’m busy taking the ‘perfect’ photo, I’m missing out on reality of being there. I have to tell myself often to put.down.the.camera and to really experience what’s right there in front of me, together with the people I’m with.
10. Avoid being hangry
For our family, THE most important principle is to avoid situations likely to cause hanger (hunger-induced anger). We recognise that we’re not people who function well on empty stomachs, so we don’t fight it. We schedule in meals and snack breaks to ensure we’re always running on a full tank. Spending long days hiking foreign lands is not the time to restrict calorie intake. And besides, frequent snack breaks offer lots of opportunities to try the local delicacies. A sub-clause of this principle, is that The Poolboy MUST get his strong espresso coffee first thing every morning. I’m not sure what the word for lack-of-coffee-induced-anger is, but whatever that word is, it isn’t pretty.
