Tips for Staying In Big Cities with Kids

Here are our 4 favorite tips for staying with kids in big cities. Although it can be a struggle to get kids to cooperate, these tips will help get your trip under control!

Your Location

Screeching brakes, jostling subways, and blazing lights are defining aspects of large cities. We choose places near the central points of our visit to prevent precious time being lost in transit. Although it might be more expensive, we learned during our first trip to London that it’s better to stay in the center than on the outskirts. That trip, we spent nearly half our time in the Tube! Also, if we’re flying out after a day or two, we’ll find a hotel near the airport. This makes it easy to transport all our belongings to or from the airport.

Eating Out

The inviting aisles of a grocery store hold items which can easily be made into a quick meal, especially if you have access to a kitchen. A lot of the time, this is much cheaper than eating out in a restaurant – especially with a big family. For example, from our Paris apartment, we could just cross the street to the Franprix, a nearby grocery store. There, we’d grab a couple of items and whip up a meal. To balance the cost of our trip, so we can enjoy some bigger, more expensive family experiences – like our guided tour of the Louvre – we don’t eat out very often when we travel.

Take it Easy

Although it’s tempting to try to see it all, we try not to cram too many things into one day. When we travel with small children, we like to plan three or four places each day. (More than that is stressful for us.) We also pack lots of snacks to keep little legs going. Although our plan helps us pack for the day, it also allows spur-of-the-moment stops – like when we decided to suddenly climb out of the Metro to visit the Notre Dame.

Don’t Forget the Parks!

Most cities have lovely parks, which are beautiful places to let the kids run around while you rest on a bench. In all the big cities we’ve visited, we’ve always found wonderful playgrounds tucked in the parks. Your kids will be sure to enjoy these as much as we have. We spend a lot of time in the parks every time we go to a big city.

We hope you liked these four tips! Let us know which one was most helpful in the comments!