Family Trip to NYC: How We Made It Stress free And Easy

New York City is just a quick 1.5 hr flight from our home town of Toronto, but any travels with little ones no matter how close or far always poses to be stressful and involving a lot of preparation. Does anyone else feel the same way?

In preparation for our voyage, we put together an activity package themed New York City for Luca, to keep him busy on the airplane, and during down times during our visit. We wanted the activity package to provide education of the city; this included mazes, colouring pages, search and find, and a scavenger hunt where Luca got to circle everything NYC is famous for throughout our trip. All of these, which we found easily as free printable PDFs on Google. We were also fortunate enough to win an amazing activity book/travel guide/travel backpack from @flyingkidsforyou, make sure to check them out, they have activities for every age group to keep all the kids engaged and entertained. Luca absolutely loved these, not only did they keep him quiet on the flight which is always our biggest worry about any travels (victory!), but he can now tell you what the city’s famous monuments and sites are which is very impressive for a 4 year old.

We split our visit staying at a hotel for the first half of our stay, and then moving over to an amazing 2-story loft through @homeexchangecom, a very affordable way to travel so you can spend your budget on visiting sites vs accommodations. This was our first experience with @homeexchangecom and we absolutely loved it, and plan to travel this way in the future. It allowed us to get a true sense of how it would be living as a local, while giving us more space, and just overall a very convenient way to stay in the city, especially when you need some down time after a long day, and or wanting to stay in and make a home cooked meal.

We love how accessible the city is and how quick and easy it is to get around. We visited mostly by foot since our accommodations were right in midtown Manhattan, but when we got tired by foot, it was easy to hop onto the subway which Luca loved, or got quickly got in an Uber or Lyft. Check both apps before calling your ride, some times the rates differ. Our best purchase to date is our travel @mifold car seat, that folds so compact that it fits in our backpack making it very easy to carry around.

New York City is a great place to visit with the little ones, with so much to see and do that everyone in the family will enjoy. It can get overwhelming because there are endless sites and activities, we made sure to map out all our attractions by day and mapped them out on our Google map on our phones which relieved a lot of stress, and made planning very easy. Make sure to download your local map in Wi-Fi so you aren’t using data during your trip. Stay tuned to learn more about our trip and places to visit with your family for our upcoming NYC posts.