Travelling with children: building an itinerary that does not end at six

An adult itinerary that works breaks with children in the most predictable way of all: the morning museum stretches, lunch runs late, and by six in the afternoon nobody has any energy left. The mistake is not wanting the child to adapt to an adult plan. The mistake is that the plan was built for adults.

The difference between a trip with children that works and one that does not comes down to three decisions.

1. One plan per day, not two

The adult version of the plan fills the morning and the afternoon. With children, one thing done properly in the morning and a short outing after lunch is already a full day.

Think of energy as money: it is spent, and it does not come back with a coffee. A day with two full plans is a day that ends with an exhausted child and a frustrated adult.

2. Food is an activity, not a break

In an adult plan, eating is the gap between two things. With children, food is one of the things: a meal at a market, a place where you can eat at your own pace, somewhere the child can move around.

Making food part of the plan rather than a break avoids the worst hour of the day: the one when everyone is tired and nobody is hungry yet.

3. A plan B for every afternoon

Children have an energy ceiling and they do not announce it. A three day trip with no alternative ends with a day lost in the hotel.

So every afternoon of the trip should have two versions: the planned one and the fallback. The fallback is not "staying in the hotel": it is something short, close, outdoors and without queues. A park, a walk with ice cream, a market.

The hour to protect

If there is one hour to protect at all costs, it is the quiet one. It is the only stretch in which the adult recovers energy and so does the child. Sacrificing it is the number one cause of exhausting days.

When you book, count that hour in the hotel, do not use it to "make the most of the time".

Two things you do not need to negotiate

• The child does not need to see everything. Getting bored is part of the trip too.
• You do not need a different itinerary for each child. A plan with one short activity a day, one outing and food at their own pace works for almost every age.

And finally, the part people forget: the child does not remember the museum. They remember the park, the beach, the first day and the last one. If the plan has those four, the trip is right.