International Air Travel

We went on a two week international trip with our two year olds. Starting from our home in America, we visited Venice (by way of Germany), Rome, Poland (multiple cities), Germany, and finally back home. This was a great age to travel with kids. They are potty trained, which saves tons of packing room and hassle. They are old enough to walk and carry things, yet not old enough to have opinions about where we are going and what we are doing.

Here we are with everything we took for the two week trip. The kids each have a small backpack with their stuff for the planes - water, magazines, lovie, snacks, wet wipes, jacket, headphones, and a change of clothes. The adults each have a car seat on our backs (I love these seats for travel. They are incredibly heavy, but fit in airplane seats and you can wear them on your back.) We have two rolling suitcases that meet carry on guidelines for all of our airlines - the European ones require very small suitcases if you will carry on. We did have to add one backpack for us at the last minute. Still everything was a carry on and this got us through a 2 week trip. We did laundry twice during the trip.

Here we are eating snacks on our first long plane ride (10 hours). We let the kids use their headphones and watch tv for the first time in their life. They didn't really like it and ask us to turn off the pictures. That messed up our plan of entertainment for the flight. Our backup plan was to let them look at books on my Kindle. I downloaded a bunch before we left. Unfortunately, I lost my Kindle at the airport before we even took off and didn't realize it until we were on our way to Germany (it was found and returned when we got back to the USA). The good news is both kids slept on the flight and were highly amused about people bringing them food every few hours.

You should know that if you are traveling with car seats, they must either go by the window or if the plane has two aisles, it can go in the middle of the middle section. Luckily on this flight we were all 4 together in the middle section. If you decide to travel with a lap child, you cannot have more than one in a row because there wouldn't be enough oxygen masks.

 This was the flight from Germany to Venice. We were sitting 2 and 2 with both kids getting the window seat and we were stuck in the middle seat. It wasn't full and no one wanted to sit in the row with the two year olds so we did get an empty seat next to us.

The flight from Rome to Poland would not let us use the car seats. It was a discount flight and their regulations didn't allow it. The kids loved playing with the windows and once again found a way to sleep on the flight.

By the time we got to the flight from Poland to Germany, the kids were pros. The kids held their new stuffed dragons that they picked up in Poland. We had the choice of a short layover and heading home or a long (day and overnight) layover before leaving Germany. We chose the long one thinking we should break up the flight and give the kids more time to adjust.

The trip home from Germany was the only flight that seemed long. It was a daytime flight. So while we did get a short nap, it was a really long time to be seated, especially with kids who didn't want to watch tv. They didn't cry or scream so we still counted it as a win.