Hi - this is another bring the kids vote. My daughter had a passport at 3 months and has been to England, Ecquador, Switzerland, Germany, and 3 Canadian provinces. Whenever I take a trip with my partner sans kids, I always think about how much they would be benefitting - imagine learning about ancient Greece by going to Athens. My daughter's school essays about the trips showed how much more she got out of the trip than I even realized at the time! She's an A+ student in Spanish because she picked up quite a bit from 2 weeks in Ecuador when she was 6. She's a pretty high-maintenance, high-strung kid, and we never had a nanny, though it helps to have been staying with foreign friends and relatives for some of the time.
My sister has taken her kids on extended trips to France and Italy - her advice is to dress them in Gap hoodies, so that when they get lost in the Cathedral, they will be easier to describe and find.
The trip with kids won't be the same - you will need to adapt your itinerary for their needs and interests, so you will see and learn different things.
One of my favorite memories is of our 8 year olds making fast friends with another child at the Swiss alpine hut, though neither spoke each other's language. They spent hours together carving with their new Swiss army knives, and hopping on rocks in the alpine twilight, communicating in the universal way of children.
Your kids will be grown in a blink of an eye, so treasure the opportunity to travel with them now.
Joan  |