Well, there’s the airfare, of course, but once you get past that staggering figure, it’s not so bad.

In general my #1 recommendation for travel with kids to faraway places is this: STAY. Stay as long as possible. Get the heck out of that hotel, people. Find a house. It’s bigger. It’s cozier. And it’s probably a heck of a lot cheaper. Once you’ve got the lodging with a kitchen, you’ve just reduced your food bill by a gazillion. And cost is only one benefit. The ease–ease, I’m telling you–of having your own kitchen, living room, and yard!–is priceless. Your kids can roll out of bed and eat cereal without having to get dressed and hauled off to some restaurant. They can relax in a little space of their own during downtime, as can you. They can run around in the yard for hours, and let’s face it, that’s a dangerous proposition in any hotel parking lot.

Here are a few more thoughts for the intrepid family traveler:

1. Great Britain’s a good starter trip. It’s an easy one with kids, because they speak the same language. I know, I know, they call french fries “chips,” and instead of potato chips, they say “crisps.” But still. Getting around with little kids is fairly easy when you don’t have a language barrier. They may call it the “loo,” but they know what you’re looking for!
2. Plan ahead. Before you haul your kids across the world, it’s wise to have a general plan of what you’re going to do when you get there. We didn’t have every day mapped out before we left, but we had a good idea of when we’d be where. There were a few things we knew for sure, like when we’d visit Warwick Castle (we needed tickets) and when we’d go to London (needed to catch a train). So have a plan, but be flexible. There were towns we’d never heard of that we ended up exploring for the better part of a day–keep your options open enough to allow for unexpected fun.
3. Plan for downtime. When we took our kids to Great Britain, we went for 2 weeks over Christmas break. In those two weeks we saw lots of cute towns in the Cotswolds Region, drank with the locals in Frampton on Severn, rode the double-decker red bus in London, went to the London Museum of Art and saw a million other London sites, visited Bath, saw the stone circles in Avebury, toured Gloucester Castle (where some of Harry Potter was filmed!), walked around Shakespeare’s hometown, spent a day at Warwick Castle, spent a few days in Edinburgh, Scotland, and tromped through some amazingly cool abbey and castle ruins in Wales. Still, there were several days where we did nothing, other than walk around our little village and go for groceries! This downtime was essential to all of our stamina–the kids enjoyed not having to get up and go, and we enjoyed not having to get them up to go.
4. Prepare for jet lag. Do everything you can to start moving your internal clocks to the time zone you’re headed to, but expect the first day or two to be a little tough. We had exciting plans for our first full day in the countryside, but none of us could wake up sufficiently to get going. We started out after lunch instead, and it worked out just fine.
5. Pack some fun for your kids. If your trip is anything like ours, it will involve a very long plane ride and lots of time in a rental car (on the left side of the road, mind you). While we never once tired of looking out the windows at the amazing sites, our kids were happy to have books, books on tape (for the littlest), papers, and crayons to keep themselves amused. We were glad they had them, too.