Kiddie Koncierge Travel Koncierge Tips and Ideas Page 2

Travel Koncierge:
Tips and Ideas
Page 2
A Kiddie Koncierge Service

Welcome to Travel Koncierge Tips
and Ideas!

What is Travel Koncierge?
Travel Koncierge is an offshoot of Kiddie Koncierge.
We love to travel and drag our son along. Truth be
told, travel with a minor can be less than thrilling
unless you come prepared. The editors at Kiddie
Koncierge have compiled a growing list of family and
kid-oriented destination guides to some of our
favorite cities to make your family travel that much
more enjoyable.

Here are some things that we have learned about
travelling with kids:

Getting There

Limos, yes, limos, as in Lincoln Town Cars
can be hired for about the same price as a
cab and not much more than a shuttle in most
cities in the Bay Area. Considering the
multiple stops in a shuttle and the nasty
condition of most cabs, cruising in a plush
Town Car sounds better and better. Cab is
about $50-60 and limo is about $75 or so.
The same rule typically applies to the
destination cities as well.
You can rent car seats with your rental car so
you don't have to bring them along. Of course,
if you take a cab or some such to the airport,
you will likely have it with you anyway.

On the Ground

Kids do not have unlimited energy. OK,
some do. Ours does not. So we titrate their
energy by front loading the day with activities
and then having the afternoon free for
unscheduled time, playing with friends, going
to a park, something other than a forced
march through a museum
Think about booking a suite or condo
instead of a hotel. Shoot for a kitchen. There
will be times when having a fridge that is
larger than the hotel safe is handy for
beverages, snacks, etc. A stove is also handy
when you just do not want to go out to eat any
more. We have also found that packing
some Mac and Cheese is not a bad idea
especially if you are going someplace where
the food is a little more exotic than your child
is used to.
We found that putting together a treasure
hunt is a great way to get your child to go to
places that they would not think to want to go
to of their own free will. We, for example, got
about 3 hours at the Louvre with no tears by
including it in our Paris treasure hunt. We
had our son look for the mummies and the
Winged Victory and made sure that, in our
"helping" that we made a pretty decent circuit
of the Denon Wing. Added bonus: Ok, the kid
is going to get a souvenir anyway. Why not
have him earn it? One Euro for each
milestone. We even snuck in a budget
lesson as well by suggesting that bigger and
more interesting goodies could be had by not
spending each Euro as he got it.
Why bring all the gear when you can rent a lot
of it? www.babysaway.com is a franchise
operation worldwide that rents toys, playards,
strollers, cribs, etc. in excellent condition.
They come in, set up and then come back to
break it all down. We have used it in Hawaii
and other friends have used it in New York.
Just a note: not all franchisees are equal.
We had a bad experience with one vendor.
Hopefully they have resolved their issues by
now.
DVDs versus iPod Touch? Personally, we
used the DVD player until recently, but now we
might choose differently. Take some time, too
to explore what the airline offers in the way of
in-flight entertainment. On Virgin and Air Tahiti
Nui among others, they offer a wide range of
kid-friendly entertainment in coach through
sophisticated seat back consoles thus
obviating the need for a portable device. That
being said, I would nowadays lean towards
the iPod Touch for the following reasons:

you can rent or buy movies on iTunes
that download to the device. Thus you
don't have to carry around a bunch of
DVDs (even if you remove them from
the jewel box and put them in a small
DVD pouch.
you can buy music for their
entertainment (you can also buy a
matchbook sized speaker that plugs
into the earphone jack for a little
bedtime music. We also take kids
books on CD and upload them to our
iPod.
the iPod is more scalable - As the
child gets older, you can upload game
apps or other activities for road trips
the battery life is much better - since
the ipod is solid state, you don't have
to power a DVD drive and the bigger
screen.
The major downside is that the screen
is pretty tiny and you have to rely on
earbuds which have to be cranked
pretty high to offset engine noise. That
could have undesirable hearing
ramifications later on. The device is
also pretty small so unless you duct
tape it to your child's hands, it could
get lost easily.

As for the DVD player, the screen is much
bigger, which is nice. You can play CDs as
well. But it is larger, heavier, and has poor
battery life. You can carry an extra battery, but
that is yet another thing to cart around. My
advice, coming from someone who owns
both, is to buy the iPod Touch for yourself and
then "lend" it to your child. That way you can
feel better about any issues of getting your
child hooked too early on electronic devices,
etc. You might also wait a bit and look into the
Apple Tablet. It is rumored to do all that the
Touch will but with a larger form factor. That
way you get the best of all worlds plus the
ability to read books.

B ack Next

t ravelkoncierge @kiddiekoncierge.com