We had plans. We had great plans. We were going to go to Washington D.C. and show our kids the nation’s capital in June of 2018. With all of the beautiful buildings and museums that DC has to offer. My wife and I had fallen in love with DC some years back before the kids were even thought of. We’ve been twice and loved it even more the second time than the first. We had our favorite restaurant (Filomena’s), our favorite museum (the National Air and Space museum, of course) and our favorite neighborhood (Georgetown). Admittedly it’s been about 11 years or so since our last visit so I’m sure a bit has changed but we couldn’t wait to make the trip and let our children see for themselves.
We were about 6 weeks away from leaving for our trip. We had our hotel booked (refundable which is a good thing as you’ll later see), and an itinerary planned, including restaurants we wanted to eat at. We presented the itinerary to our children along with a Google maps tour to help get them excited for the trip. And it worked! The best part about the entire trip, according to our daughter, was that the hotel had a pool on the roof!! Admittedly it’s pretty hard to beat a pool on the roof, especially if you’re 8 years old and didn’t even know that such a thing even existed.
Change of Plans
But our plans changed as they so often do in life. I’ve always been curious about travel, about what was out there, what was possible. I was only a kid from Cleveland but I always had big dreams when it came to travel. I loved to read and oddly enough had a passion for maps. That combination along with an imagination took me all over the world at a very young age. As I got older I enjoyed putting together road trips, creating itineraries and the general logistics of travel. I was the planner of my group of friends, the map reader, the one with the directions (before the era of GPS and cell phones).
I had maintained that passion and so my curiosity continued through the years. I enjoyed messing around on travel search sites just to see how much it would cost to fly to Paris, Rome, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Cairo, just to see if it was possible. I read about different places to find out what was there to see, what would be interesting about visiting these far away locations. I read about where to stay, what to do, what to eat.
Our Paris Flight Deal
It didn’t seem like much but one day I knew that I would figure something out and I would make it to one of those cities, I would find a way.
Well I was surfing the net doing one of my curious searches when I saw it.
I’d read of many instances where people find these spectacular deals, these once in a lifetime flight deals and they just happened to be in the right place at the right time. But that was essentially like hitting the lottery, it wasn’t really possible. But for once it was.
I don’t know what led me to search for Paris, but I did and I found it…$300 per person on WOW Air.
I was stunned; I stared at it for a moment, then a bit longer. Did I really find THE DEAL? Is this what I’ve been looking for? We were 6 weeks from going to DC but I was ready to book the flight to Paris right that instant. Based on what I’ve read, I knew that deals like this don’t last and could be gone forever in a matter of hours. I knew I’d have to take the leap immediately.
Fortunately because of my love of travel I’d read around and was a bit familiar with WOW Air, including some of their restrictions. Everything was extra. No checked bags, no carryons, no food. If I was going to get the $300 price we’d have to go backpacks only. My wife, son, daughter and I would have only a backpack to use for a one week trip in Paris. My thinking was to grab the tickets and figure out the details later. My thinking was that if someone offered me a $300 ticket to Paris and all I could bring was the clothes I had on, I would jump all over that deal with two feet. I mean, it’s Paris! Grab the deal and figure out the rest later.
It wasn’t quite that simple because whereas I’m the adventurous one, my wife is the pragmatist.
I’d have to convince her to fly to Paris with our 2 kids (who’d never flown before) with only backpacks on an international trip that we only had 6 weeks to prepare for in a foreign city that neither of us has even been in. And decision probably had to be made that night, in a matter of hours.
So I mentioned it her. She was rightfully hesitant and we talked about it for a few moments. Needless to say she thought I was crazy. I let it sit for a while and went to work out. Came back and still no, besides our son didn’t even have a passport. No problem, I hopped on the Google machine and started searching “expedited children’s passports”. I found that we could get it expedited and that we could have it in less than a month. That problem was solved.
She still wasn’t convinced. We slept on it. At work during my break I sent her a text, with only an Eiffel Tower emoji. She started to ask questions, she was interested. I called around to make sure that I could get the expedited passport and found a local library where we could get it. Did more research on WOW Air and kept an eye on the price. It had moved up a bit, but it remained an absolute steal.
By the next morning it was a go! I made the move and purchased the tickets. We were going to Paris…in six weeks.
What We Learned Planning our Paris Trip
DC was no more. When I actually bought the tickets my wife and daughter thought I was joking. I don’t think my daughter believed me for real for about a week.
One of the special things about our Paris trip is that this was the first international trip for our kids and was an important part of where we are today as travelers. Not only was this their first international trip besides Canada, but this was their first flight and it would be over 8 hours of flight time split across two flights across the Atlantic. The flight would be overnight with a layover in Iceland. We were surprised that they adapted well to their first flight.
We noticed that a lot people were surprised that we made the trip and with kids no less. After we got the chance to go to Europe and had a taste of that kind of travel we were hooked.
We learned a lot from the lead up to purchasing the tickets and deciding to go to Paris. We were most concerned about our kids being comfortable and enjoying the trip. We were concerned about this being their first flight and how they would react. We were concerned about it being such short notice to plan a trip of this magnitude.
What we found was that travel with kids isn’t as intimidating as we thought it would be. There are different challenges to bringing kids on a trip, especially on a transatlantic flight and trip to Europe, but it can be done. Kids might not fully appreciate the art, architecture and history behind what they’re experiencing but they will notice that they’re in a place that’s not like home and enjoy that for what it is.
We learned that traveling with children is a different kind of traveling and that’s okay if you accept that going in, if you plan for it.
We learned that you’re not going to see everything or eat at all of the restaurants that you planned for because sometimes you take longer at a particular site than you expected and the kids are hungry now and can’t wait until you find the restaurant you’re looking for.
Our Trip to Paris
We got the passport way ahead of time with about two weeks to spare.
With only six weeks, I didn’t have as much time to research as I usually like, especially with our first family international trip, but our plans turned out fine. I learned that a less detailed and more flexible plan is actually better when traveling with kids. I also learned to plan better. The idea of one major activity in the morning and one in the afternoon is usually the best way to go and worked best for us. It helped us create an itinerary that worked well for us.
With the process I learned that you have to be ready for a deal when it presents itself and it might not come in the form that you expect. It helps if you love to read and research about travel so that when an opportunity comes you’ll be a bit more prepared to make a decision quickly if you need to.
We were able to fly with the restrictions from WOW Air which charged extra for carryons and for checked bags. They allowed on one personal item per person. So we each had a backpack for ALL of our stuff. But we made it work, where there’s a will there’s a way. If you start from the point of “this is going to work, now let me figure out how”, you can make it work more often as opposed to starting with “how is this going to work?” You get creative. Once we started researching better ways to pack we were astonished at how creative people can get when it comes to traveling light. Sometimes creativity is needed when searching for a flight. The deal for us wasn’t to fly out of our home airport in Cleveland, but from Toronto. It helps us a great deal that my wife’s family lives in Toronto so that works for us. But for other people you can get creative in other ways. It may be leaving from another airport or arriving at an airport near your destination and not necessarily at your destination. You could be flexible with the dates and change those and see what you come up with.
For as great of an experience as it was just to go to Paris, the added benefit was that we were now international travelers and were looking for more. We also now had a unique story to tell. A story that could also help other families with children to travel, explore and not hold back but to take a chance with travel that maybe you didn’t think about for your family. An experience that taught us quickly that travel especially with children isn’t always going to neat and clean and organized. It’ll often be messy, unexpected and a bit chaotic, but that’s okay. Don’t let that hold you back because you just may miss out on the adventure of a lifetime.
