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Traveling with kids can be all manner of things—educational yet exhausting, transformative yet taxing, magical yet maddening. In this week’s episode, three listeners share dispatches about the joys and challenges of seeing the world alongside children of all ages, from chasing a total eclipse in Dallas to seeking out new adventures in Japan. Plus, look out for more stories on the topic on the Condé Nast Traveler site next month.
Lale Arikoglu: Hi there, I'm Lale Arikoglu, and in today's episode of Women Who Travel, we are talking about something that I admittedly don't know that much about. It's traveling with kids. From chasing a total eclipse in Dallas to encouraging your kids' sense of independence in Japan, three listeners share dispatches about the joys and the challenges of embarking on an adventure with children of all ages. First up, Sharyn Jackson from Golden Valley, Minnesota.
Sharyn Jackson: My wife and I went to Nebraska to see the total solar eclipse in 2017, and it was the first time we'd done such a thing and it just blew us away.
LA: Sharon saw her first total solar eclipse while pregnant with her first child in 2017.
SJ: I think two days before we went to see that eclipse, we had gone to the doctor's office and seen the very first ultrasound of the baby and something about looking up at the sun and seeing, well, the moon really, and then the sun around it glowing in black and white, it looked just like that ultrasound image looked to me from the bed at the doctor's office looking up at the screen and seeing this black and white pulsing thing. When we saw the eclipse, it was like we both had this recognition that there was some cosmic connection to this being we were creating and this major event happening in the universe.
LA: So when the next total solar eclipse came around earlier this year, it felt like a full circle moment, and Sharon wanted to share it with her now six-year-old, just two days after his birthday.
SJ: So I chose Dallas because there was a direct flight from Minneapolis without any stopovers, but a few days before we left, the weather forecast was just abysmal for Dallas, and it seemed like we might not see it at all. So there was a lot of scrambling about, "Should I change and should we go to Montreal instead," and I got kind of stressy about it because I got sucked in a little bit to the eclipse chasing idea. But ultimately we made the decision about two days before to stay with Dallas.
LA: So the whole family flew to Dallas.
SJ: So we had a birthday party that morning and then basically went right to the airport and it was just, that part alone was amazing. He was wearing a little badge that said, "It's my birthday," and the flight attendants saw it, and they invited him into the cockpit along with our younger son as well, which it was incredible. The pilots were so sweet to them and let them hold the steering wheel and press buttons and all the things. And so it was already kind of beginning on a magical note for everybody.
LA: When they arrived in Dallas, they checked into their hotel, two blocks from a park that would be the site of an eclipse watching party the next day.
SJ: So I went over early in the morning and got a spot and got our older son to come sit with me, and we played games and had ice cream, and the park just started to fill up with people and there was a band playing music, and all the music was related to songs about the sun and space and the food trucks again, and it was a great day. The wrinkle was that when we woke up, the sky was gray. The cloud cover was so thick and it really seemed like we didn't have a chance of seeing this eclipse. And I had already gone through all the feelings of knowing that that was a possibility, and I was worried that maybe the kids would be disappointed or be like, "Oh, eclipse is no big deal at all. Why'd you [inaudible 00:03:45] us down here?" And I didn't want them to walk away feeling like it wasn't a big deal because it is a big deal.
We do this with any kind of experience with the kids. We talk in advance about what they might experience, what some possibilities are, so they know what to expect. But just shortly before the partial eclipse began, the clouds just broke and everything kind of started to glow, and it became clear that there was going to be no clouds, and we were going to see this eclipse. It was so exciting the first moment that the clouds broke, people on this lawn just started clapping, like there was applause.
So we had been watching. And then as soon as the moment that totality begins, you see something called a diamond ring right when the moon is covering the sun and this flash of light kind of comes out of it. And my older son, I had told him what was going to happen, and when he saw it, he just yelled out, "It's the diamond ring," and then we all took our glasses off and we had I think about four minutes of totality, and it was incredible. And it was just as I remembered, but also even better than I had remembered, and I was just thrilled that I got to have my kids there to see it with me this time.
LA: After the break, a listener takes her kids to Japan for the first time. Welcome back to Women Who Travel. Noreen Khan lives in Coronado, California with her husband and two kids, a fifteen-year-old and a ten-year-old.
Noreen Khan: This December, we were able to enjoy a trip to Japan, and this trip was really initiated by the kids for the first time. For a while, they've really been saying that they want to go to Japan. Both kids are huge fans of Pokemon, which are playing cards, also a cartoon that they both have been watching and playing since they were about five years old.
LA: So even though Noreen wasn't so sure about going to Japan in the cold season, she's much more of a beach vacationer, she was ultimately outnumbered and her kids were excited.
NK: And we booked our tickets about two weeks before we were actually supposed to go despite talking about it for quite a while. So we got on the plane with a list of to-do's, and as we got closer to take off, we realized that so many places required reservations, and there was so many things to do and so many places to go that we were like, "Let's just play it by ear. We're going to a new place. We'll just have fun." Honestly, had a very, very low bar as to how the experience was going to be due to the lack of planning, knowing that it was being cold weather.
LA: On the flight, to Noreen's surprise, her kids started to show their homework. Her daughter had actually gone to the local library and pulled out travel guides, while her son had gone down YouTube rabbit holes, finding places he wanted to explore and things that he wanted to eat during the trip.
NK: So as we had this long flight, all we really had to do was kind of organize what we could do each day. So I was really thrilled that my kids for the first time could really take the lead on planning a family vacation. My fifteen-year-old is very quiet, very reserved, and so the culture of Japan really resonated well with his personality. And so we would be going to eat out. Restaurant is very quiet, and I would hear him kind of somehow motion to the waiter and had an exchange of the waiter, and the waiter comes back with a fork, and I was, "What did you do? How did you get the fork?"
He's like, "Well, before I came, I did some research to learn some key phases that we would need to know," and he doesn't know how to use chopsticks. So he learned how to say, "Can I please have a fork?" And then with my daughter who is about to turn 10 at the time of the trip, her navigation skills kicked in. For some reason, the names of the different stops and getting from point A to point B was something I was having a hard time wrapping my head around. We did use their metro system and she could just glance at the map and just figure out where we needed to go. And I was like, "Wow."
LA: One of the reasons Noreen was so relieved was because it was the first anxiety-free trip they could take in a very long time.
NK: In 2017, my daughter was three and a half years old at the time, we had a big family vacation planned to do our first Disney cruise, the Alaskan cruise, and we were really looking forward to that. But unfortunately, she was diagnosed in April of that year, 2017 with leukemia. So the concept of even leaving the hospital, leaving town, going anywhere went out the window. We weren't able to do a big family vacation until years later when she went into remission. And when we did travel, it involved a few moving parts including getting clearance from the medical team, ensuring that we had the right medication, that we identified the nearest local hospital to where we were going and had enough medication with us so that she had all the proper care while we were on the road. So in December of 2023, she was in a good spot again.
So getting away doing an international trip was a big priority for us again.
LA: But it still wasn't so easy for Noreen to completely relax.
NK: Is it okay to go? Are we going to a safe place? How am I ever going to figure out what the local hospitals are in a foreign place where I don't know the language? As we entered maybe the fourth or fifth Pokemon Center, I was probably getting a bit frustrated, and I was realizing that I was bringing down the energy of the trip just a bit because the kids were excited for each and every Pokemon Center, though to me they looked identical. And so then I took it upon myself to see what else was into the area.
And so I looked at my husband, I'm like, "You've got this right? You seem to be thoroughly enjoying all the Pokemon things with them. Can I step out for a bit and shop around on my own?" And he's like, "Yeah, of course. Just go." So it was harder for me to ask, but the value of doing that and realizing that they were not annoyed or deterred in any way that I stepped out made me realize that as long as they're content and occupied with something that they want to do, they understand that I wanted to do something for myself too.
LA: We'll be right back. Here's Dorothy who lives in Park City, Utah and felt pulled to Vietnam.
Dorothy: I had kind of a personal need to be in Vietnam. My husband fought in the Vietnam War, and we lost a lot of folks during that war. I spent a lot of time in chapels going to memorials, and every time I went, I thought about the fact that someone on the other side of the world was likely doing the same thing. And I just felt the need to pay my tribute to the women and children who lost loved ones in that war. And it's always been something on my bucket list I wanted to do. My husband who fought in that war did not want to come with me, so I invited my grandson, who was 21.
LA: Turns out this wasn't the first trip Dorothy and her grandson had taken together. There'd been traveling since he was four years old. He even went to school overseas traveling on his own for many years.
Dorothy: We flew into Hanoi a couple of days before the cruise we were taking was going to launch, and I left it up to my grandson to lay out the itinerary. He's quite an intrepid traveler, so I felt very safe in his hands. He did a wonderful job taking us to places that were highlights that weren't going to be on the cruise that we were taking. So we traveled about finding good museums, good food, and good locations for gathering up some history. It was really quite fun.
LA: After five days together in Hanoi, they boarded their cruise ship.
Dorothy: On the ship, he was the youngest traveler on that ship of course, and ended up being the star don't you know because everybody wanted to know a little bit about what he was doing with this woman and where we were going to end up and why he decided to come along. So really, there was a little scuffle almost every night about which table he would join to tell his story about where he goes to school and travels he's had. My grandson's visa from Vietnam ended up getting messed up, so he was able to get in the country, but we were going from Vietnam into Cambodia and then back into Vietnam. So we needed two visas.
So the second visa didn't come, and the tour guide then alerted us the day before his visa was to expire that he would have to leave the ship on his own and be driven to the Vietnam crossing point by himself where he would spend the night. So he said, "What do you think, Gram?" And I said, "It isn't how I would like it to be, but you have traveled the world and you're an extraordinary human being who knows how to take care of himself and so good voyage, and please call me every single step of the way," which he did.
So he left the ship, they came and got him. They drove him to the Vietnamese border where he was issued another visa so that he could get back into Vietnam. He spent the night by himself in a hotel there, and then came back to the ship the next day on a little sandpan. It was quite an adventure for him. So I think the aha moment for me was to finally, although I've known about this child for my whole life, that he was capable. But to really see him in that place that hadn't been expected, and for him to be able to traverse that so smoothly on his own was quite something for me to see, and I think quite something for him to show me.
LA: We will be sharing more of the joys and challenges of traveling with kids later in the summer on womenwhotravel.com and cntraveler.com. Thank you for listening to Women Who Travel. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and you can find me on Instagram at Lale Hannah. Our engineers are Jake Lummus and James Yost. The show is mixed by Amar Lal at Macrosound. Jude Kampfner for Corporation for Independent Media is our producer with production support from Michele O'Brien. Stephanie Kariuki is our executive producer. Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's Head of Global Audio. See you next week.