Traveling With a Toddler: How We Did It

We’ve done a few trips now – including one longhaul international flight – and have trawled TikTok and Instagram for all the hacks on traveling with a toddler. Despite a few rough patches, it went smoothly enough that the travel part was worth the rest, so we’ll consider that a win!

Now, here’s a thing to know about us: We spend a lot of our time answering hypothetical questions and ‘would you rather’ scenarios. A frequent one that comes up is which superpower we’d pick and I’ve never strayed from choosing teleportation.

Alex says flying but he’s obviously a fool because teleporting would save time, money, and now that we’ve got an 18-month-old with us, a lot of snack-related meltdowns.

We recently traveled to Greece for a week and through flight delays, lost baggage and 11-hour flights, we got a real crash course in what works when flying/traveling with a toddler.

In fairness, we do have a pretty chill kid who just wants to be out of the house whether it’s to the park down the street or across the world, so that helped, but she is also a toddler who has a hard time sitting still for that long, so here’s what worked for us.

Booking the flight

We traveled with Eleanor as a lap infant, which means she didn’t have her own seat. It saved a lot of money because her fare was only about $100, but it also came with some, ughh, challenges.

We paid the extra money to choose our seats, which turned out to be useless because they bumped us all over the place anyway.

On our 10-hour flight to Athens, we got a bulkhead row, which is my first hot tip on toddler travel. These seats have a ton of extra legroom – enough that Eleanor could walk around in front – and they’re right by the bathrooms for quick diaper changes. That row also has bassinets that can be attached for the baby to sleep in, but they’re on a first-come, first-served basis and were already taken up by the time we got on board.

We deliberately booked our flight to leave in the afternoon and arrive in Greece in the morning, so we treated the flight as a regular night and we’d definitely recommend trying to book those long flights when baby would be sleeping anyway, it makes a world of difference when traveling with a toddler.

On the flight

Our flight there and the flight home are a tale of two toddlers, honestly. On the way there (with the help of half a kids melatonin gummy) Eleanor slept eight of the 10 hours, but I mostly attribute that to the flight time being overnight.

Once we’d had the first meal of the flight, we asked the flight attendants for some milk and gave her a bottle, changed her into some PJs I’d packed in her diaper bag and strapped her onto my chest in the carrier so that if I fell asleep too she wouldn’t slip down. She sleeps with white noise on at home so I think the rocking of the plane and the noise helped, too, so we were lulled into a false sense of security about how much of an angel child we had.

The flight home was a different story because the airline changed us to a flight that left at 10 a.m., AKA peak awake time, and it was a lot of energy keeping her entertained for that long.

In-flight activities

I can’t remember where I learned this little trick, but a few days before we left I went to the Dollar Store and Target and bought all the little plastic toys I could find. I got mini playdoughs, dinosaur figurines, a little purse thing that had some plastic jewelry in it, a coloring book activity kit, a pack of stickers, basically anything cheap and brand new that she’d never seen before.

One of the biggest wins was a coloring book that has ‘magic ink’ called a Water Wow. The pen uses water so kids can color on the pages, but they can’t draw all over the seats and window and get death stares from the flight crew. Any time she’d get fussy, I’d bust out a new toy and it would be like magic for about 20 minutes. It’s kind of like being on the treadmill where one minute feels like an eternity, so 20 minutes of quiet might as well be a cold margarita on a hot beach day.

We also aren’t above downloading all episodes of The Wiggles in advance and busting out the iPad – we recommend downloading any of the Bimi Boo toddler apps, too, because dressing the little elephant and lizard kept her entertained for a while.

Also stating the obvious, but bring all the snacks you could ever imagine. Don’t be like me, though, and bring all the crumby flaky snacks like Cheez-Its and peanut butter crackers.

Booking hotels

We didn’t want to lug around a pack and play and definitely didn’t want to try cosleeping for the first time for a whole week on vacation, so this tip is essential.

We booked most of our hotels through Expedia and Booking.com and both have search functions where you can view hotels with a crib. Genius. The ‘crib’ is just a pack and play, but it was all set up and ready to go at every hotel we went to, and baby girl slept just as well as she does at home. We also primarily found hotels that had balconies so that when she went to sleep, we could sit outside and have some wine and snacks without feeling the need to sneak around and be really quiet, and without needing to go to bed at 7:30 p.m.

We pre-booked hotel transfers from our flights and ferries which cost a little more, but was so much easier to know it was sorted ahead of time.

As far as location, we tried to pick hotels as centrally located as possible so that – especially traveling in August – if we needed a midday break for a nap or to cool down, we could duck back into the hotel for a quick rest.

Planning activities

The thing about traveling with a toddler is going into it knowing it won’t be the same as traveling before. We didn’t expect to party or take full-day cruises across the Aegean Sea or anything.

We deliberately picked activities that were open-ended, like exploring a certain village, or that only went for a couple of hours maximum so we could fit them into a day with a nap break in between.

Eleanor is good at napping in the stroller so we would generally explore around town in the morning, she’d nap in the stroller while we had lunch or traveled between cities, and then we’d do some afternoon activities.

We definitely recommend a carrier (we have this one) and a lightweight travel stroller (we got this one for the trip) to alternate between depending on your plans for the day.

We tried to let Eleanor walk on her own as much as possible so she’d get out all her energy, and tried to be really patient as she picked flowers or pet nearby cats instead of walking in one goddamn straight line.

We stopped at every playground we came across, and stopped for a lot of snacks along the way.

Overall, the trip went pretty smoothly considering all the disruptions we had with flight changes and delays, and people in Greece were so friendly and helpful to families with little kids. If you’ve got any hacks or tips for traveling with a toddler let us know, because we’re willing to soak up any knowledge we can for our next adventure!

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