It’s been a while since we’ve done any international travel, but this year, we decided it’s been long enough. We were itching to get out of the country and this time we wanted to take our kids. But planning a trip is stressful, especially when leaving your own country. Which is precisely why I want to share my number one travel planning tip with you. 

And it may not be what you’re thinking.

We had the easy parts already decided:

+We wanted to travel with our kids.

+ We knew we wanted to visit Europe. Originally we chose England and Paris, but as we discovered how expensive Paris was going to be, we opted to visit England and Scotland. Mark and I had already visited London and the kids knew all the “famous” sights from the books we brought back with us, so we knew they would love seeing them in person.

+ We planned to travel for two weeks.

But all of the logistics and details with 2 adults and 3 kids started to overwhelm me.

That’s how I discovered…

MY NUMBER ONE TRAVEL PLANNING TIP

Are you ready for it?

HIRE A TRAVEL AGENT!

That’s it. It really is that simple.

I think a lot of times people think they can’t afford a travel agent because they’re already paying so much for their trip, but a lot of times travel agents come at little to no cost to the consumer. And they are literal God sends.

Our travel agent was our dear friend’s mom that has been doing this for a really, really long time and her services were invaluable to us. 

She asked me questions about what we wanted to do and then gave suggestions based on things she had done with kids similar in age to our own. And then she went to work.

She took care of booking our flights, accommodations, activities, and all transportation in each city. She honestly planned our entire trip for zero additional cost. Like, why aren’t more people taking advantage of this?!

 It truly felt like having a genie in a bottle that made my every wish come true. I simply did some research on the things I wanted to do while in Europe and she made it happen. All we had to do was show up. 

Leaving the country with kids feel stressful enough, I didn’t also want to worry about where we would go and how we would get there. It was really a wonderful, stress-free experience. If you love to travel but don’t like planning out the details,  I highly recommend you follow my number one travel planning tip:

HIRE A TRAVEL AGENT.

I promise you’ll be thanking me for it later.

As far as what we did while in Europe, where we ate, and what we packed, you’ll have to stay tuned for those fun details. I’ll be sharing them soon, but in the meantime, if you’re planning any kind of travel at all, find yourself a travel agent and only worry about having a good time!