🌪️ TAKING LITTLE KIDS TO EUROPE WASN’T AS CHAOTIC AS EVERYONE SAID IT WOULD BE

Before we booked our trip to Spain, we got a lot of comments.

“You’re brave.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“Why wouldn’t you just go without the kids?”

“They’re too young to remember it anyway.”

And honestly? I totally understood why people said those things. Taking an almost-5-year-old and a 3-year-old to Europe does sound a little chaotic on paper 😅 But we really wanted to experience it with them.

Their birthdays along with my husband's are all in May, and birthday season at home can sometimes be a lot. This year we wanted to do something different. Something that felt more meaningful and memorable as a family.

So… we booked the trip.

And honestly?

It ended up being way more successful than we expected.

✈️ THE FLIGHTS WEREN’T THE HARDEST PART

Getting to Spain definitely wasn’t simple.

Since we live in Kamloops, our route looked like:

Kamloops → Vancouver → Toronto → Barcelona

Which is… a lot 😅

Going into the trip, I was most nervous about:

the flights, the jet lag and how the kids would handle such long travel days.

Surprisingly, the long-haul flights were actually the easiest part.

Both kids slept for most of the overnight flights, which honestly felt like a miracle.

The shorter flights?

Way harder.

Everyone was more restless, less tired, and patience was definitely running lower by then.

🌙 WE DIDN’T DO ANY CRAZY JET LAG PREP

I feel like social media makes it seem like you need a full strategic sleep plan before traveling internationally with kids.

We honestly didn’t. We didn’t slowly adjust bedtimes or do anything elaborate beforehand.

The only thing we did was keep the kids home from daycare the day before our flights so they could rest and get to bed early Friday night.

When we landed in Barcelona around 9:30 in the morning, we got to our apartment around 11 a.m., dropped our bags into storage, and headed to a local park while we waited to check in.

Thankfully, our apartment let us in early later that day.

We had dinner ridiculously early by Spanish standards — around 4 or 5 p.m. — and then everyone completely crashed.

We all slept for almost 13 hours straight that first night.

And honestly?

That seemed to reset everything.

🗓️ THE HARDEST MOMENTS WERE

WHEN WE OVER-SCHEDULED

One thing we learned very quickly was that our kids handled the trip best when we weren’t trying to rush around.

The biggest meltdowns or moments of resistance usually happened on days where we had:

tickets booked, a train to catch, a reservation or somewhere we absolutely needed to be

On the slower days?

Everyone was happier.

We could wander, stop for snacks, find parks, and move at the kids’ pace a little more.

And honestly, the kids were total troopers for most of the trip.

🚇 THE TRAIN STATION DEBACLE

One of the most stressful moments happened on Mother’s Day when we were trying to catch a train outside of Barcelona to visit Sitges.

The ticket machines were an absolute nightmare. They kept freezing and not working.

Then, even though I kept selecting English, everything seemed to switch back to Spanish, and I couldn’t figure out which tickets we actually needed.

Meanwhile we were trying to keep two little kids patient while trying to buy tickets.

Right when I finally got the machine working…

my almost-5-year-old suddenly announced he had to go to the bathroom immediately 😅

And of course… we missed the train.

At the time it felt incredibly annoying because we were trying to get to Sitges before it got too busy for the day.

But honestly?

That moment perfectly sums up traveling with little kids.

No matter how organized you try to be, someone eventually needs:

a snack, a break or a bathroom... at the exact worst possible moment 😅

But honestly, looking back now, missing that train really wasn’t a big deal at all.

I think travel with kids constantly reminds you that the tiny inconveniences don’t make or break the trip the way you think they will in the moment. Things go wrong, plans shift, you miss trains… and somehow the day still turns out okay.

That actually ended up being one of the most fun days we had on the entire trip!

🛒 THE STROLLER COMPLETELY SAVED US

One thing we absolutely did not regret bringing was a stroller.

At home, our almost-3-year-old never uses one.

In fact, we had sold our regular stroller about seven months prior because we thought we were done with that phase.

But bringing a lightweight umbrella stroller to Spain completely saved us.

The amount of walking we did every single day was far beyond what he could realistically handle.

Without the stroller?

Honestly, the trip would have been a nightmare.

It ended up being the single most useful thing we brought.

We specifically brought a lightweight umbrella stroller with a carrying strap, which ended up being incredibly helpful in places like Park Güell where there were steep hills, staircases, and areas where you couldn’t push a stroller at all.

Being able to quickly throw it over our shoulder made such a huge difference.

🧺 THE REAL MVP: LAUNDRY

We actually packed pretty reasonably and didn’t overpack too much.

But between:

the humidity

all the walking

and the fact that little kids somehow get messy literally every time they eat 😅

…we were doing laundry every other day.

Having laundry access in our apartment honestly ended up being one of the biggest lifesavers of the entire trip.

📸 BOOK THE FAMILY PHOTOS

Okay, maybe this is the photographer in me talking..but book the family photos!

We ended up doing our session in the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona, and honestly, it was one of the best decisions we made on the trip.

Maria was absolutely incredible. Her entire workflow felt so streamlined and easy from start to finish, and somehow she managed to make the session feel relaxed enough that even my husband genuinely enjoyed himself!

As a photographer myself, I really look up to her work and the way she photographs families so naturally.

What I love most about the photos is that they don’t just capture us, they capture the feeling of being there. The beautiful architecture, the tiny streets of the Gothic Quarter, the kids running around and playing, all of us just genuinely enjoying being together in that moment.

And honestly, having someone else document your family while you’re fully present in the experience is so worth it 🤍

If you are thinking of travelling to Barcelona, I highly recommend booking with her!

Photos by Maria Yemets

💛 “THEY WON’T REMEMBER IT ANYWAY”

I think this is probably the comment we heard the most before leaving.

And honestly?

Maybe they won’t remember every detail years from now.

Maybe they won’t remember every train ride, every street we walked down, or every little café we stopped at.

But I still think traveling with young kids is completely worth it.

They’ll grow up looking back at photos.

They’ll hear the stories.

They’ll know that from a young age, they experienced a world bigger than their own backyard.

And honestly, I think travel shapes kids in ways we don’t always immediately see.

It teaches:

curiosity, flexibility and openness.

It exposes them to:

different cultures, different foods, different languages and different ways of living.

Even small things — hearing another language every day, eating dinner later than usual, or spending evenings in busy plazas full of families — become part of how they understand the world.

Our kids may not remember every detail from Spain someday.

But I do believe those experiences become part of them in some way.

And as parents, getting to experience those moments with them made every stressful moment completely worth it.