Seeing Europe with Toddlers

It was well after midnight. I was curled up in bed with a sick, crying child. My husband was downstairs, trying to sleep on the couch with a second child. It could have been any other night with two sick and tired children.

Of course, this wasn't just any other night. We had rented a beautiful cottage just outside of Bath. Rolling landscapes, a beautiful city in the distance, and Stonehenge, Tintern Abbey, Avebury, and historic Bath all within easy driving distance.

But we weren't seeing everything that was on our list. Instead, we were eating frozen food purchased from a nearby supermarket, doing quick stops at some of England's most popular tourist attractions, and huddled up inside a cottage watching The Land Before Time over and over again.

It was easy to be frustrated. We hadn't gotten to do the things on our itinerary. We hadn't gotten to spend time alone with each other after our kids had gone to bed. We hadn't gotten to sleep much.

But looking back, this trip to a working farm, in a beautiful cottage, just outside of Bath, is one of the ones I remember the most vividly of all our travels in England. It's the one where I learned to throw the plan out the window. It's the trip where I learned to appreciate what we saw and could do, instead of being sad for what we couldn't.

Most importantly, it was the trip that I really realized how hard it can be to travel with young children when I put them on my schedule, and don't leave room for the unexpected.

It's the trip where I realized I wasn't just a traveler, but a traveler with kids, and that the two were infinitely different.

Because of this realization, every trip after this one has been better than the one before.