Travel lessons learned: Lanzarote with a toddler

The relaxed feeling from the holiday is fading as fast as I unpack, but while I’m huddled in my thermals drinking hot chocolate, I’ve been thinking about a few of the travel lessons learned from our latest trip to the sun.

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Because even a few months seems to make a big difference to travelling with a toddler. Even before she leaves official toddlerdom behind, I’m seeing the beginnings of how travel will be with a child, in my travel lessons learned if you’re visiting Lanzarote with toddlers.

For more ideas on what to do in Lanzarote with kids, check out this top 10

She’s more involved

And on balance, it’s fantastic. For the first time she could anticipate and get excited about the thought of going on a plane, of travelling somewhere new.

However she’s now also got her own very firm opinions about what we should be doing. And they’re rarely the same as mine. Hmmm.

We have to slow down

If I thought having a baby in tow would slow me down, that was only because of the sleep deprivation. Although travel with a baby brings its own limitations, she was portable enough to tote all around the island on our previous trips.

This time, much more of the focus was on what Minnie would enjoy – visiting Lanzarote with toddlers mostly seemed to focus around swimming in the pool, paddling on the beach, stopping for an ice cream.

It’s partly the fact we’ve visited a lot before so I was happy to relax too rather than tick off all the sights, but it also felt like we barely did anything.

But I get a holiday too

Between Minnie suddenly starting to amuse herself more with apps, puzzles and colouring and a more consistent set of naps, I managed to sit back in the sunshine and read my book.

I’m even daring to dream of future holidays where she might do that even more.

I can mess with her routine (a bit)

Practicalities dictated that Minnie’s routine had to be a bit more flexible. Breakfast was later, lunch ran on into nap time, and tea time was usually faintly derailed by ice cream breaks.

Having said that, I managed to get her to nap most days, she had real food as well as treats and overtired meltdowns were minimal (by two-year-old standards).

And another reminder it’s mostly out of my control – having congratulated myself for managing this so adroitly, she then refused to nap two days running, before sleeping happily on the plane through turbulence.

Pull-ups are not the work of the devil

Oh I understand the experts’ insistence that you shouldn’t switch between nappies and pants during potty training. But Minnie happily accepted the idea that she had a special ‘plane nappy’ in the same way that she still has one for swimming (if she wants) and for sleep.

And useful though it is, I had plenty to carry without putting the travel potty in hand luggage (even if I did have a foldable seat).

Airport meet and greet parking is even better than I knew

Travelling on my own with Minnie has made meet and greet parking an essential at airports not a luxury. When I can avoid extra stress and lugging luggage, for not much more than ordinary parking, why not?

Although I usually check on sites like APH and Holiday Extras, I’ve used Maple Manor at Gatwick on the last couple of occasions.

So when our plane landed at the other terminal than expected (‘for operational reasons’), when I phoned them, they announced it didn’t matter, they’d meet me wherever I landed. Beats an unexpected trek to the other side of the airport to get to a long-stay carpark.

Check out some of our experiences in Lanzarote – visiting Timanfaya with a baby, the vineyards of La Geria with kids, Lanzarote’s pirate museum and discovering Arrecife, as well as the best places to eat in Playa Blanca with kids

 

Images copyright MummyTravels

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