A month before we left for Spain this summer, my husband and I had dinner at our favorite restaurant in Portland, which has that somewhat rare quality of making you feel completely transported. In this case, to the northern coast of Spain, where the deep emerald slopes of the Basque Mountains meet the variegated turquoise water of the Bahía de la Concha. To San Sebastián, a gem nestled between the foothills and the sea, with its cobblestoned labyrinth of gastronomic delights.
Our waiter’s eyes flickered when we told him we were heading there soon. He crouched down next to our table, tore a sheet off his order pad, and scribbled a treasure map of spots for pintxos (Basque tapas) and txakoli (the delicious local sparkling wine). (I love how the Basque language, Euskarra, favors our own neglected “x.”)
“And you have to get out of town and explore,” he said emphatically. “Tell me you are.”
“Well…” Rob paused. “We’re going with our 5 and almost 2-year-old.”
The waiter’s face—his entire body—just fell. An audible and visible sigh of resignation. And I get it. San Sebastián is a foodie destination, and Spanish dinner typically happens long after most children are in bed.
“But,” I jumped in, trying to unharsh his vibe, “my father-in-law is coming with us.”
The clouds parted. Sunbeams broke through. “Alright, alright,” he nodded, instantly buoyed, smiling again and rubbing his palms together. I could just see the pro-con forecast of our trip materializing in his head:
Pro: You get to go to Spain.
Con: With two kids.
But wait, a redeeming pro: And a grandparent.
What our waiter may not have known is that the question for most parents is not whether to travel with or without kids, but to go with kids or not at all. And while he would’ve been right about the grandparent pro, the rest is a bit more nuanced. Should you need some convincing or encouragement, I offer this real pros-cons list. Some of it is specific to San Sebastián and Spain, but most probably translates to travel with kids—and a grandparent, if you’re lucky—anywhere.
THE PROS:
THE DELIGHT OF RETURN. I spent a good part of my twenties trotting the globe, addicted to the elixir of the next new place. While I still thrill in discovering a new place, traveling with kids is teaching me the different delight of return. Of cultivating a favorite place, one that you fill up with memories, so when you return you aren’t just visiting a place, but the pages of your own life. In San Sebastián my husband and I can flip back 12 years to our honeymoon, wandering the narrow streets of old town a week after our wedding. We can find ourselves seven years later, back again with our 8-month-old daughter, hopping between pinxto bars with her snuggled against one of us in her carrier. Another five years later, on the other side of a pandemic, we got to write a new page with both of our children—and now this city holds their memories too.
As we contemplated our first international trip with two kids, San Sebastián kept calling to us. A place we love, with beaches to keep the kids happy and a chance to dust off our Spanish—and yet we kept wondering if we should be more adventurous and go somewhere we’ve never been. But returning someplace with kids makes it new and different, and the second time through their eyes adds layers. This charming city of culture and cuisine, for example, became a charming city of daily carousel rides. Which brings me to …
PLAYGROUNDS WITH CAROUSELS. We hardly noticed the city’s playgrounds on our previous visits, but you don’t have to walk more than a few blocks to find one, and it’s no coincidence that our two favorites also had carousels. The first, just around the corner from our apartment, was adjacent to our morning coffee shop, so Juniper and Dez would play while Rob and I sipped americanos. If the carousel wasn’t open yet, chances are we’d be back for dinner at the restaurant on the edge of the playground, drinking wine alongside Spanish parents, all of us watching our kids ride the carousel endlessly. After coffee, we’d hit the second playground with its gorgeous old double-decker carousel overlooking the sea. Standing next to Dez in his favorite airplane seat one morning, my head a bit swimmy from a night out with Rob, a carousel ride the last thing I needed, I heard a cork pop and found two dads mixing mimosas on a bench near the swing set. San Sebastián in a nutshell: Everyone having their own age-appropriate fun. Kids living it up while their parents face the consequences of living it up the night before. The dads returned my amused glance with a nod of solidarity.
SPANIARDS ARE HERE FOR YOUR KIDS. Children aren’t just welcomed in Spain—they’re adored. Old women bend over strollers to pinch cheeks and shopkeepers blow kisses. The teenage boy on his skateboard lights up, the delivery man with his dolly of baguettes pauses to make a silly face. And nobody cringes when you bring your kid into a restaurant—in fact, it’s likely the restaurant will be on a plaza (with a playground and possibly a carousel) or a car-free street where your child can play while you just sit there, calling them over when the food comes and letting them keep playing when they’re done. Genius. As if parenthood were a normal and common enough state to orient society around.
On our honeymoon, my husband and I watched this cultural phenomenon with awe. Kids riding scooters, kicking soccer balls and throwing paper airplanes while parents drank and dined, often after 10 p.m. And then, as if no time has passed at all, we’re standing at an outdoor table crowded with plates of delicately sliced jamón ibérico and piping hot croquettes. My daughter is trying a pepper stuffed with tuna. My father-in-law swirls a glass of txakoli. And my toddler son is running around the cobblestoned plaza drawing smiles, climbing on a statue, and splashing in the public water spigot. It is bizarre and satisfying to arrive in a version of your life you once imagined. And instead of simply observing this enviable part of Spanish culture, we actually got to participate in it.
CONVERSATIONS WITH STRANGERS. At the beach one afternoon, a grandmother in a red bathing suit leaned under our umbrella to tickle my son’s tummy. “Que guapo! Que precioso!” she cooed. And then, tousling his hair: “Que rubito!” Little blonde boy—I made a mental note to adopt this nickname, then responded haltingly about his hair being a surprise since his parents are both brunette. I know just enough Spanish to encourage people to keep talking, which quickly takes the conversation deeper than I can really swim. The grandmother was off—telling me where her daughters lived, the names of all her granddaughters, and when she noticed Juniper’s missing teeth, launching into the lore of el ratón de los dientes. If not for a recent library book about the tooth fairy and the Spanish tooth rat, I would’ve been completely lost. I nodded and smiled, flailing for the Spanish word for fairy, talking my way around it until she graciously offered it up. La hada. One of many conversations with strangers I never would’ve had without children by my side.
INTERGENERATIONAL TRAVEL. My father-in-law was the uncontested MVP of our trip. He made the impossible possible: a vacation with kids that actually felt like vacation. Often the difference between chaos and sanity is one more adult to read a story or spoon yogurt into a toddler’s mouth. Obviously, it was a major pro for my father-in-law to appear at our door every night after bedtime like a magical fairy grandfather and wave us out the door for more dates than we’ve had in the last year. But as glorious as it was to jostle into sweaty pintxo bars and eat tangerine sorbet alone with my husband under the stars, my favorite moments were all five of us crammed into a little heart-shaped boat on the carousel, a bus shelter bench, our apartment’s elevator. My daughter eating scallops on the half shell with her grandpa. My son propped on his grandpa’s knee watching boats float by in a fishing village. My husband with Dez on his shoulders, walking alongside his dad who is pushing Juniper in a stroller she’s much too big for.
Maybe it was just that thing where you notice what validates your own life, but I saw intergenerational families everywhere. Grandparents holding babies, digging snacks out of bags, pushing big kids on swings while mothers nursed. The best: a grandmother, fully clothed, strolling the beach with her daughter and granddaughter, both topless. Once again, rather than admiring Spain’s family-oriented culture from the outside, I actually felt in step with it, less like a visitor and more like a person just doing life with my family in that city. And like this is the way life is meant to be done.
LANGUAGE. I have the most perfect photo of my kids overhearing their first Spanish conversation in the Philadelphia airport while we waited for our flight to Madrid—sharing a black vinyl seat, both casting suspicious side-eye-squints in the general direction of the mysterious sounds. Two weeks later, Dez was saying “hola” to everyone and shouting “vamos!” when he was ready to go anywhere. Juniper was saying “gracias” and “porkavor” (which I will never correct) and asking how to say everything in Spanish—these weird words we’d randomly sprinkle into her life at home, which mostly seemed to annoy her, suddenly had actual meaning. Also: If you know the language, your kids get to watch their parents whip out this secret super power. Who doesn’t want to have their kids look at them with that kind of awe?
SPONTANEITY. By removing us from our routines—which proliferate in parenthood—travel makes space for spontaneity to break in. I revel in to-do lists, logistics, and packing as much as possible into a day, usually in an effort to create memorable moments for my family. But despite my incessant planning, my best memory from Spain happened on the last day. A spontaneous family swim in the clear green sea on a 90-degree afternoon. No swimsuits or towels packed. Our kids in the nude, Rob and I in the clothes on our back. Dez giggling as the fish nibbled his toes, Juniper squealing as the water chilled her sweaty skin. A luminous, completely unplannable, grand finale.
TODDLER BOY BONUS. Not to gender-stereotype, but my son (and not my daughter) LIVES for all things vehicular. Europe is apparently in constant need of repair, resulting in trucks everywhere. Cranes, cement mixers, excavators, you name it. And, in San Sebastián, a truck that power washes the sand back onto the beach every morning. Don’t even get me started on scaffolding, hands down Dez’s favorite thing about Spain. His eyes grew wide and he hollered a prolonged “Whooooaaaaaaa!” every time we walked under it.
THE CONS:
MOBILITY. You can’t easily hop around to multiple locations, as I’m inclined to do, but this decreased mobility is secretly a pro, especially for folks like me. I’m always looking around the next bend, but life with kids is slowly teaching me to enjoy the bend I’m in. To actually be satisfied. Travel with kids forces you to slow down, do less in a day, and go fewer places in a week. In our case, just one place. American hyper-activity can lead us to treat travel as a competition in task completion. The internet is full of searches like “How many days do I need in X?” Sure, you could “do” San Sebastián in two days, but would you find a favorite coffee shop with a peppy barista named Nacho who gives you a thumbs up every morning and knows your “tres americanos” order—and who you know wears a polo on Fridays with TODAY IS FRIDAY embroidered on the back? Would the jolly carousel conductor recognize your daughter, smiling as he hands her the umpteenth balloon that comes with each ride?
FOOD ALLERGIES. I’ve mastered traveling alone, and then with one kid, so I tried to view travel with two kids, one who has life-threatening food allergies, as the next level. Travel 3.0. But this is actually another pro disguised as a con. Despite the constant worry, the strategic packing of sunflower-seed butter, vegan mac-and-cheese, and several pounds of allergen-free granola bars, and the jet-lagged tour of multiple grocery stores for food staples, traveling with my son is liberating. It helped break down the walls of limitations I’d erected to protect him. Plus, you get to experience the particular treasure-hunt delight of discovering Violife vegan mozzarella shreds in Spain. You’ll also learn a bunch of new vocab words as you Google-translate ingredient lists! But seriously, I did learn that “frutos secos” means “nuts,” not, oddly enough, “dried fruits”—a Spanish lesson I will never forget.
THE UNEXPECTED. Unforeseen hiccups are inevitable, and they’re always larger hiccups with children—like your gate-checked stroller getting checked through so you have to lug your toddler and all the overpacked carry-ons full of snacks and activities through the insanity of Heathrow—but chances are your trip will turn out better than expected. The flights you dreaded will be easier. The kids will do fine sharing a room. A new routine and landscape will give your kids the opportunity to surprise and impress you. Maybe a plate of raw tuna will arrive on your table and your 5-year-old will exclaim “Wow, this looks marvelous!” She might even like it.
MEMORIES. Is it really worth taking young kids places they won’t remember? I hear this question often, to which I say: A) Who can say what they’ll remember? B) The worthiness of doing something is not only measured by memory. What about the joy of the present? Shouldn’t that actually matter more than what we remember or capture in a photograph or journal? And C) Regardless of what they remember, my kids are clearly stimulated by travel. I always notice an explosion of learning when we come home—mastering new skills, saying new words. As if their brains had to stretch to accommodate the differences offered by travel, priming them to grow when they return to their familiar surroundings.
JET LAG. Here it is, my only true con, and it doesn’t even happen until you get home. Beware, your own scrambled internal clock will not be the problem. If your toddler is my toddler, they will wake for the day at 4 a.m. after your 11-hour return flight. By the third day of rising before the sun you will begin to seriously doubt if your trip was truly worth the sleep deprivation. You will fear your child’s sleep is permanently broken. By the fourth day, you might email the pediatrician, fully knowing you dug this grave. But by fifth day (or so), I promise they will recover.
//
As you’ve no doubt gathered, the pros-cons format was a bit of a ruse. My father-in-law eliminated many of the potential cons of our trip, but even if he hadn’t come, I’d still have trouble coming up with more of them. Sure, travel with kids is harder and different than travel without kids. So is life with kids. But if travel is something lodged deep in your bones that has perhaps shaped you in ways you hope to shape your kids, it’s worth it.
Deep in the pandemic, I feared this had all been lost forever. The world beyond our bubble. The chance to explore with our kids, show them other ways of being, ignite their curiosity. One afternoon in Spain, during an ice cream date with my daughter, I asked her what she liked about traveling. “Bakeries and carousels,” she said. (Solid answers.) “Would you want to go to another country sometime?” I asked. She didn’t even hesitate. “Paris! I want to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower!”
Who knows, maybe we will stand up there together one day or maybe she’ll go on her own. I’m just grateful we get to have travel dreams again—and that taking my daughter out in the world inspired her own. The first, I hope, of many.
Who I’m Reading
“The Case Against Travel.” This New Yorker essay challenged me to interrogate my motives as a traveler in some new and thought-provoking ways. And while I mostly disagreed with it, I enjoyed engaging in the debate. I’m still chewing on this line: “‘Tourism’ is what we call travelling when other people are doing it.”
Quarterlife, by
. I wish this book had existed in my early twenties, but I’m just as grateful to have read it now, at the tail end of my own Quarterlife. As a psychotherapist focused on young adulthood—roughly age 20-40—Byock offers an illuminating roadmap to the often mystifying search for self that we all grapple with in this life stage. I can’t remember the last book I read that taught me this much about myself.A Ghost in the Throat, by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. A stunning hybrid memoir about the erasure of women that weaves the author’s personal narrative of motherhood and domesticity with her investigation to recover the nearly erased life an 18th century Irish poet. I was hooked from the first page: “This is a female text, composed while folding someone else’s clothes. My mind holds it close, and it grows, tender and slow, while my hands perform innumerable chores.”
What I’m Writing
I love that quote from A Ghost in the Throat because it is precisely what a work-in-progress feels like for me. A living thing that sits with me, a constant companion, nudging me with a new idea or phrase, expanding as I walk my daughter to school or roll trash trucks across the floor with my son. Right now that companion is an essay about weaning my last baby and a confluence of other transitions. Who knows where it will end up, but I’ll let you know here!
Where I’m Going
Celebrating my 40th in Mexico City with Rob in February … WITHOUT KIDS. My pro-con forecast: Pros: Doing whatever we want whenever we want; sleeping in. Cons: Missing my kids constantly; worrying about my kids constantly. Send me any of your CDMX reccs in the comments!
Thank you for supporting my writing by simply being here and reading it. A favor: If you enjoy this newsletter, would you share it with a friend? They can subscribe right here.
XO,
Kaitlin
Love this Kaitlin!