10 Tips for Using Airbnb with Kids

If you click on any of the Airbnb links in this post you'll receive a $40 credit for your first trip with Airbnb, this is a referral link and I also receive a credit.

Last summer our family traveled to London, Paris & Scotland all while staying in the comfort of a home away from home through Airbnb. This was our first time using the rental service, but it won't be the last. Our experiences in all 3 rentals was excellent, but I found that traveling with kids does require a little extra planning. Here are my top tips for using Airbnb when traveling with kids.

Look for reviews by people who are in a similar situation as you.

Read the reviews - When searching for an Airbnb with kids I always read all the reviews. Yes, all of them. I specifically look for reviews from people with children, comments about the neighborhood and how responsive the host is. See how the host responds to any negative comments or criticism. This is a key indicator on how they’ll respond to you if you have a problem during your stay.  

Only book with a Superhost - There are people who are going to disagree with me on this one, but when traveling with kids I don’t like any surprises from our accommodations. When we’re traveling with the kids, we stick to hosts who have proven that they’re responsible and responsive. The last thing you want to deal with when you’re traveling with a tired, jet-lagged, hungry toddler is a host who keeps you waiting.

Look closely at the pictures - Review the photos on the site very carefully. Look for anything that your child might destroy or potential get hurt from. Bunk beds might be the perfect set up for older kids, but a nightmare for someone with a toddler.

Make sure you select all the amenities that are important to you.

Use the filters - When imputing your search criteria be sure to mark off anything that you want to be included in your rental. Will you need to do laundry during your stay? Do you prefer a rental that is not pet friendly due to allergies? Take a second to sort through exactly what you want so you aren’t disappointed with the amenities.

Be up front about bringing kids with you - We always search using the 2 adults, 2 children settings AND we use the “family friendly” filter. In addition, we contact the host to let them know we’ll be traveling with a 5 & 9 year old and make sure their rental is appropriate for kids. This may seem like overkill, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Child friendly is NOT the same as child proof - Just because your listing is family friendly and your host knows you’ll be arriving with children DOES NOT mean that your rental will be child proof. Even though my kids are past the “sticking a fork in the wall outlet” phase, I still do a quick sweep of our rental when we first arrive. I move anything that could get accidently broken.

Look for reviews that mention the location of the rental.

 Location, location, location - Did I mention location? When we traveled to London last summer, one of our top priorities from our rental was easy access to transportation. Since we were staying so long, we also wanted to be close to a park where the kids could get out and run around. If you can’t tell the exact location from the listing, don’t be afraid to message your host and ask questions the area.

Pay attention to the “bedrooms” and “beds” listed - This mostly applies to international travel, although I’ve been surprised by some domestic rentals in this area. In some cases, large cities for example, a 2 bedroom may just be a 1 bedroom with a fold out bed. Scroll through the pictures and make sure you actually see the number of bedrooms listed. Read the reviews and make sure 1 of the beds listed isn’t just an extra futon. When in doubt, message the host for clarification.

Mind your fees - When you’re searching for a rental you’ll see a per night fee displayed. This will not be your final charge. There will be a service fee and renters can tack on a cleaning charge. Sometimes the cleaning charge can be very cost prohibitive if you’re staying somewhere for just a few nights.

After your visit be sure to follow up with an honest review - Remember how helpful all those reviews were that you read before booking? Don’t forget to write and honest review after your stay is complete. Be sure to include if you were traveling with children, and what you did and didn’t like about the rental.

Ready to give Airbnb a try? Use this link to receive $40 off your first trip!

Summer Abroad with Kids :: Blacklane Car Service

In the summer of 2016 our family set off to spend 8 weeks in London. We would explore the city and live like locals, renting a flat in Westminster. This was a far cry from our beach home in Florida and took a little adjusting to. We thrived in our new home away from home and had a jolly good time with many adventures along the way. This post is one installment in my series: Summer Abroad {with Kids}.

Blacklane :: Making Travel with Kids a Breeze

Hands down my least favorite part of traveling with kids is dealing with transportation. When we planned to spend the summer in London I knew we wouldn’t need a car because of their excellent public transportation system (hello, tube & bus). But I also knew that there was no way on earth I was going to take 2 kids right off the red eye and all our luggage on the hour+ train ride from Gatwick airport into the city.

We looked into Uber. Since we’ve used Uber in the States, it would probably be easy. But not knowing London or if Uber even worked the same way we decided to pass. I decided to research car service options and that's when I discovered Blacklane, or as I like to call them, the company that saved my sanity.

Blacklane operates in 180 different companies and offers 4 different classes of service; Economy, Business, Business Van/SUV and First Class. We chose the Business Van/SUV because with 4 people, 4 large suitcases and all of our carry-on luggage I knew we’d need all the space we could use. I booked my reservation online using the Blacklane website. It was easy to use and in a few minutes I received my confirmation email. They also offer an app, which I later downloaded so all my information would be available on my phone.

Can you see our Blacklane driver rolling my suitcase?

Once I made my reservation I kind of forgot about Blacklane until we arrived in London. When we arrived our driver was waiting for us as soon as we exited the terminal. Not driving around in the pick-up area, he was waiting with a sign with our name on it as soon as we walked out of the international terminal. He immediately introduced himself and helped with our bags. We walked to our ride, a Mercedes Van that was immaculate on the inside. Our driver navigated us through the city with ease and delivered us to our flat in record time.

Our van pulling up to pick us up.

As a parent who has done a lot of traveling with my children I cannot even begin to tell you how much I loved Blacklane’s service. We will be using them in the future anytime we need car service in a city we’re visiting.

My 9 year old enjoying the ride, not having to worry about us getting lost. 

Thank you Blacklane for offering me a free service in exchange for review. All opinions are my own.

Tucson with Kids {Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum}

In July of 2015 we spent a week in Tucson, Arizona visiting friends. Tucson is very different from our home in Jacksonville, Florida and the kids had a great time exploring new museums and restaurants. I'll be taking a few posts to review all the fun and exciting things we did in Tucson. You can click here to read through all of them.

Destination: Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Date of Visit: July 2015

Kids: Cole (age 8) & Kiley (age 5)

Length of Visit: Full Day

During our visit to Tucson, we got up early and headed out to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Although it's called a museum, it's more like a zoo and it was fabulous. They had tons of exhibits and animals, there was even an entire aviary filled with hummingbirds! Since it was mostly outside, by the end of the day we were hot. 

We loved the animal show. Not only was it fun and informative, but it was inside and air-conditioned. 

Touch tanks in Tucson, who knew?

I absolutely loved the humming bird aviary. We went in here 3 or 4 times throughout the day. The birds came right up close to you and I was able to take tons of pictures. Cole (8) even found a little nest with teeny, tiny eggs inside.

Admission: Admission prices vary by age. Adults are $20.50 and kids (3-12) are $8.00. We actually used a b1g1 coupon my friend had, so that helped with the cost.

Food: There are a few food choices right on property, so you can spend the entire day there and not have to leave for lunch. We packed in snacks and drinks and ate at the food court for lunch. The food was above average and not extremely expensive, so I was excited about that.

Tips: Tucson is hot in the summer. If you go to visit over the summer I recommend doing the outside part of the museum first and then go inside to look around in the air conditioning. I highly recommend this museum to families with kids of all ages. There is lots to do and see and you could easily spend the entire day there. Bring lots of water!

If you're interested in other things our family did in Tucson, click here. You can also read about all the National Parks we visited while traveling out west by clicking here. 

Grand Canyon National Park {with kids} Part 2

It's time for another Traveling Tuesday post. I'm starting off with documenting some of the amazing places we visited last summer during our vacation out west. In July of 2015 we set out on a grand vacation through the southwest. We traveled for 21 days and over 6,000 miles, visiting 5 states and 9 National Parks. We explored new places and met up with old friends. Overall, it was an incredible journey and everyone learned so much. You can view all posts about our wild west adventure here. I divided my information about Grand Canyon into two separate posts, you can read part 1 here.

Destination: Grand Canyon National Park

Date of Visit: July 2015

Kids: Cole (age 8) & Kiley (age 5)

Length of Stay: 3 Days

As I mentioned in my first post about Grand Canyon, we entered the park on the East side of the South Rim and started by exploring the Desert View Watchtower. Our second day in the park, we started off by exploring Grand Canyon National Park. The kids were up early and it was amazing because it felt like we had the entire canyon to ourselves. We decided to hike a little into the canyon and while we were down there the kids completed some items from their Junior Ranger books. The rest of the day was spent visiting the main visitor center, and the Geology Museum. We finished with dinner at El Tovar in their spectacular dining room.

The early bird gets the best view.

Bright Angel Trail will lead you all the way to the bottom of the canyon. We didn't go very far, but we did venture down a little for a great view.

Getting sworn in as Junior Rangers at the Grand Canyon.

The kids agreed that Grand Canyon had the best gift shops of all the parks we visited. They had been waiting to spend some souvenir money and were excited to find some good treasures. Cole picked a deck of Night Sky Constellation Cards and Kiley picked a "Ranger Andy" doll. It's a park ranger doll that just happens to look like my good friend, who is a park ranger.

Highlights: Staying at El Tovar was by far one of the highlights of our visit to Grand Canyon. We loved getting up early and having the canyon all to ourselves. Rooms at hotels and lodges inside the canyon fill up fast so be sure to make your reservations early.

What We Would Change: As I mentioned in my Part 1 review, Grand Canyon was our least favorite park on our trip out west. It was the most crowded and had the largest number of tourists and trash on the ground. I'm glad we went and saw it but I really don't feel the need to ever go back. 

Recommended Reading: I highly recommend the Foder's guide to National Parks of the West, we used it when planning our trip and it was a great resource. I liked that there were plenty of suggestions to exploring the parks with kids.

Arches National Park {with kids}

It's time for another Traveling Tuesday post. I'm starting off with documenting some of the amazing places we visited last summer during our vacation out west. In July of 2015 we set out on a grand vacation through the southwest. We traveled for 21 days and over 6,000 miles, visiting 5 states and 9 National Parks. We explored new places and met up with old friends. Overall, it was an incredible journey and everyone learned so much. You can view all posts about our wild west adventure here.

Destination: Arches National Park

Date of Visit: July 2015

Kids: Cole (age 8) & Kiley (age 5)

Length of Stay: 3 Days & 3 Nights

After our day in Canyonlands National Park, we spent the night at our amazing hotel in Moab. I can't recommend the Gonzo Inn enough. The rooms were clean and very spacious, they had a laundry room where I could wash clothes and a nice pool. It was one of the best places we stayed on our trip out west. We woke up early and it was actually overcast and surprisingly cool. Someone told us it was the coolest day in July that Moab had seen in the last 20 years. This was awesome for us because I was worried about we were going to be hot. We began our day by heading up to Landscape Arch. The hike was great, nice and cool. This is an easy hike for the kids because it is fairly flat and sandy.

After Landscape Arch, we headed over to the Delicate Arch viewpoint. I had originally planned for us to get up early and hike to Delicate, but since we had booked a Fiery Furnace hike for our last day I didn't want to overdo it. It turns out that this was a great decision because the Fiery Furnace was extremely strenuous and I probably would have killed the kids attempting to do 2 difficult hikes in 2 days. After the Delicate Arch viewpoint we found a place to eat a little lunch.

Our after lunch adventure was my favorite for the day. We hiked up to Double Arch where you can climb around under the arch and explore a little in the rocks. The kids really enjoyed this one and the fact that there is quiet a bit of shade under the Arch helped. The clouds had cleared by this point and it was starting to get hot. This is an easy and short hike to do with kids. There were even people pushing strollers along the sandy trail.

On our way back down to the Visitor Center we stopped at Balancing Rock because Cole was dying to take this picture. Then it was time for another Junior Ranger badge and back to the hotel for some swimming.

On our second full day in Moab we decided to spend some time leisurely exploring the town. This was the first real souvenir and window shopping we had done since we started our trip. We had passed this real life Tow-Mater truck near hotel and the kids wanted to stop for a picture. The next order of business was the Rock Shop.

We wandered around a little more and bought a few t-shirts and loitered in a bookstore before grabbing some lunch. After lunch we headed over to Canyonlands by Night and Day for our boat tour. The boat tour took us up the Colorado River where we got to see arches, petroglyphs and lots of other fun landmarks. Our guide was great and very knowledgeable. This was the perfect relaxing day in Moab, and I'm glad we took the time to chill a little. The next day we would hike the Fiery Furnace trail inside Arches and it was strenuous to say the least. I'm going to dedicate a separate post to that experience, so stay tuned.

Highlights: Hiking to Double Arch was everyone's favorite part of our day in the park. Everyone also enjoyed exploring the town. This was the the biggest "town" we saw on our trip so it was fun to do a little souvenir shopping with the kids.

What We Would Change: Really, I wouldn't change much about our time at Arches. I think we saw pretty much everything that was kid friendly enough to hike to. I'm glad we had planned to pack our lunches in on the first day, because it does take a while to get all the way back out to the park to eat. 

Recommended Reading: I highly recommend the Foder's guide to National Parks of the West, we used it when planning our trip and it was a great resource. I liked that there were plenty of suggestions to exploring the parks with kids.

Bryce Canyon National Park {with kids}

This is my second installment in my Traveling Tuesday initiative for 2016, I'm starting off with documenting some of the amazing places we visited last summer during our vacation out west. In July of 2015 we set out on a grand vacation through the southwest. We traveled for 21 days and over 6,000 miles, visiting 5 states and 9 National Parks. We explored new places and met up with old friends. Overall, it was an incredible journey and everyone learned so much. You can view all posts about our wild west adventure here.

Destination: Bryce Canyon National Park

Date of Visit: July 2015

Kids: Cole (age 8) & Kiley (age 5)

Length of Stay: 2 Full Days & 3 Nights

We had arrived late in the evening to Bryce after leaving a full day of adventure at Zion National Park. We stayed at the Best Western Bryce Grand Hotel and I can say that it was surprisingly nice and the room was larger than I expected. It also has a free breakfast and pool, which are very nice when you're traveling with kids. There are surprisingly few amenities near Bryce Canyon so I was glad I had stocked up on some snacks and other food before leaving St. George, Utah. 

Since I knew we'd be here for a few days we took it easy on our first day in the park. We started at the visitor center where the kids picked up Junior Ranger books. Then we headed further into the park where we walked along the rim, from Sunset to Sunrise point. Unlike Zion, you can actually drive into Bryce and we had no problem finding parking spaces at the various spots throughout the park. We attended a ranger program about the geology of the area and learned that Bryce isn't actually a canyon, it's technically an amphitheater. My kids are STILL talking about the fact that it's named incorrectly. The kids sat for while and worked on their Junior Ranger books. I would like to note that the Junior Ranger books at Bryce were the hardest we've ever encountered. Even the word search my 5 year old had to complete was difficult. Plan accordingly and allow enough time if you're going to complete them with your kids.

Once the kids had their books filled out we headed back to the visitor center so they could get sworn in and receive their Junior Ranger badges.

Since we decided to take it easy with hiking on this day, we spent the afternoon swimming at the hotel and exploring some of the shops outside the park. Cole was in love with the rock shop we found and there was even a place for ice cream. Overall, it was a nice relaxing day.

Our second day in Bryce Canyon we started out strong with big plans for a day of hiking. I had packed a picnic lunch for us and tons of extra snacks. We decided to attempt the Navajo Loop Trail which goes down into the amphitheater (remember it's not really a canyon). This trail is listed as moderate to strenuous because of how steep it is, and also because much of the decent has loose sandy footing that makes it a little slippery if you have on regular sneakers (which we did).

This passthrough was at the beginning of the trail. Let's just say the kids were excited about what else they would discover along the way.

Let me just tell you that the trail was amazing. We went slow and let the kids explore and climb on rocks along the way. They loved the unbelievable views from the bottom.

When we got down to the very bottom we found a nice spot for a snack and a rest. There were a surprisingly large amount of birds and small critters for us to watch while we rested. This trail was crowded right at the top, but it seemed that many people weren't interested in venturing all the way down to the bottom. 

 We made it back up to the top right before lunch. This is a picture of us on the way up, you can see Thor's Hammer in the background. We enjoyed a picnic lunch while we recovered from the steep climb out of the amphitheater. After lunch we drove all the way to the highest point in Bryce Canyon. There is a short, 1 mile trail called the Pinecone Loop that we did with the kids. It was flat and very east. Then it was back to the hotel for our afternoon swim in the pool.

Highlights: The Navajo Loop Trail was everyone's favorite adventure at Bryce. Also, the star gazing at Bryce Canyon is some of the best in the world. We were there during a new moon and the sky was exceptionally dark. The only downfall was that during the summer it doesn't get really dark until about 9:30pm and the kids were very tired after long days.

What We Would Change: I hadn't realized that there were so few amenities around Bryce Canyon. There was no big grocery store and very few restaurants. I wish I had done more research ahead of time and planned to pack in more food options for us. We ate at the Canyon Diner one night, which was horrible. After that experience we booked a reservation at the lodge inside the park. 

Recommended Reading: I highly recommend the Foder's guide to National Parks of the West, we used it when planning our trip and it was a great resource. I liked that there were plenty of suggestions to exploring the parks with kids.