Planning your first family holiday is exciting! However, concerns and uncertainty over travelling and being in an unknown foreign place with young children can make the whole process stressful! To help you plan the perfect stress-free trip, here are five useful tips to prepare for your first family holiday abroad.

1. Choose a family-friendly destination

It is important to think about your holiday destination carefully. You don’t want to pick somewhere that is going to be unbearably hot or have nothing to keep the kids entertained. Do your research and find a destination that is family-friendly and will suit everyone. You also need to consider how far you are willing to travel. If it’s your first family holiday, then it might be a good idea to choose a destination closer to home, rather than picking somewhere that will require a 14-hour flight to get to. Family travel blog, Away with the kids, has some fantastic ideas for family-friendly destinations in the UK and abroad.

2. Pick accommodation wisely

Once you have a destination in mind, you need to find the perfect accommodation for your family. All-inclusive resorts tend to be a great option for families as everything you need is right there, so you don’t need to worry about finding suitable restaurants, or leaving the complex if you don’t want to. Alternatively, if you want the freedom to cook your own meals, then look for self-catering apartments or a villa with kitchen facilities. Remember that it is always a good idea to book your accommodation well in advance, and check price comparison websites to find the best deals.

3. Relax and de-stress

There is a lot of planning that goes into arranging your first family trip, and you don’t want to go away feeling stressed. For that reason, it’s a good idea to take some time to relax and unwind before you head off. Check out some of the luxurious treatments on offer at Envoguecentres.co.uk. Here, you can enjoy a relaxing massage, or indulge in some incredible anti-ageing beauty treatments, so that you feel refreshed and rejuvenated before your holiday.

4. Keep children entertained

Remember that children are likely to get bored on long trips, and this can quickly lead to tantrums! Keep boredom at bay by packing lots of fun activities like colouring books, toys, audiobooks, or download games and films onto an iPad. It is also a good idea to pack lots of snacks to keep children’s energy levels up. Some healthy snack choices include crackers, dried fruit, and nuts, or individually wrapped cheeses.

5. Think about what to pack

Don’t forget that packing for a holiday with children, is a lot different from packing for a holiday without them. With children, you will probably need to pack a lot more items, especially if you are bringing a baby. Think carefully about what you need to bring and make a packing checklist so you don’t forget anything. It is also a good idea to keep all important travel documents including passports, boarding passes, and booking forms stored safely in a separate wallet, so you can access them easily.

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.

 

 

Leaving Tabarka and heading up through the Atlas Mountains was a great start to our discovery of Bulla Regia, situated in the Jendouba region of North West Tunisia. As we descended down from the Atlas mountains we came across a group who were working the land – this has to be one of my favourite photographs I’ve ever taken; this lady who chose not to give her name (but gave consent to me taking the photo) was picking potatoes and had fashioned her waterproof out of plastic bags. Spending time talking to her I learnt about her village and the land the women own and how it provides them with both produce and an income. She was pretty shy at first but five minutes in we were comparing children and moaning how we both hate the rain!

Arriving at Bulla Regia it’s hard to believe that we were part of just a handful of visitors that day.  The site was established in the late antiquity period until it was abandoned during the middle ages; although it flourished the most during the Roman Empire, becoming a Municipium under Vespasian and later a Colonia under Hadrian which attests to just how significant it was within the North African reach of the Roman Empire.

The site itself is a much lower level sprawling example of Roman living than Dougga. The main road running through Bulla Regia is as Romanly-straight and surprisingly intact as the period when it was built; the stones are worn showing the once vibrant life-line of the site – it’s almost as if each smooth worn stone tells a story.

The abandoned town has a remarkably well-preserved amphitheatre and examples of Roman architecture that offer meaningful insight into Roman life.

The real showstopper when visiting Bulla Regia is that it’s the only example in the world of underground living by the Romans, I even got the opportunity to go down and explore what would have been a wealthy household over two thousand years ago.

The level of detail still intact is amazing – the intricacy of this mosaic is mindblowing.

We were fortunate while there to be shown round by Corisande Fewnwick from UCL as they were excavating a new church and Christian cemetery – which lies just outside the protected site of Bulla Regia.

The church was first excavated in 2010 – after a routine test dig was requested by the national archaeological department for planning permission. French archaeologists originally thought it was a farm from the 70s; however, further testing and dating indicated a Church dating from 400-700 BC with adjoining cemetery thought to be slightly older. Only systematic excavation of cemetery including anthropological review west of Egypt in North Africa – and is offering such a valuable insight into life in the region; Islamic and Christian artefacts showed Christianity existed post-Arabic conquest in the 7th Century.

Bulla Regia is most definitely off the beaten track in Tunisia – it ticks the boxes for remote and rugged and isn’t a destination you’re likely to include as part of a family holiday; however if you’re travelling with teens and older then it’s well worth building in a few days to discover what Tunisia has to offer that’s not just beaches. Jendouba is a region that I could have quite easily gone my whole life without visiting and whilst it may not have a beach, an obvious tourist attraction, it remains a firm favourite of mine – and where I made a passing friend with a woman in a field.

Disclosure: I was a guest of the Tunisian National Tourism Office for the duration of my stay in Tunisia.

Everyone has been in a situation where they have been at an airport for more hours than they would have preferred. Whether you got there too early or your flight has been delayed, you need to determine how to spend the next couple of hours that you have at your disposal. Luckily, there are a number of activities that will make the time pass by quickly.

 

For starters, you can take the time to look over your trip plans, in order to ensure that you have accounted for everything. Secondly, you can go prepared with a pack of cards that you can play with your family members in order to pass the time. If you forgot to pack these, don’t worry, because there are plenty of online games that you can choose from as well.

There are some airports that offer free activities, especially if you have younger children with you. Have you checked if yours does? Lastly, you can opt to get a meal at the airport and spend the next few hours chatting with your loved ones.

 

Look over your trip plans

Do you feel as if you have done everything you could to plan the perfect family vacation, for instance? While you have a few hours at your disposal, you could always do some further research on your destination, and determine if there are any additional activities or tours that you want to participate in.

 

Bring a pack of cards with you

Whether you choose to bring a pack of traditional cards or some of the other family card games on the market, you are guaranteed to make the time pass by quickly at the airport. Plus, you can use this opportunity to try out a new card game that you have never played before.

 

Play online games

Everyone carries a mobile phone with them at all times, and the good news about this is that you can easily pull up an online game within the span of a few seconds that will help you pass the time.

 

One popular option, for instance, is playing online fantasy sporting games. Take the example of Diamond Mind Baseball Online, a game where you can draft your own team of baseball players and play from anywhere, with the airport being the key example here.

 

Take advantage of free airport activities

There are certain airports that offer free activities, especially if you have a younger child with you. You never know if you are in one of these unless you ask someone that works there for their opinion, and you may even end up stumbling on a mini playground for your younger child.

 

Get a meal

There are certain airports that offer renowned restaurants, and whether or not you find yourself in one of these terminals, there are always at least a few food joints that you can choose from. Why not spend your time eating something and chatting with your family for an hour or two?

 

Regardless of how you feel about airports, there are certain times when you will be stuck in one for longer than you’d like, especially depending on how many layovers you have and where you are going. Rather than spending this time twiddling your thumbs and constantly checking the time, you can opt for any of the activities mentioned, and it will be time to board the plane in no time.

 

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.

If you’re currently looking into booking a winter getaway, then you have to do more than search for the perfect destination. What should also factor into your holiday-booking plans is how you are going to retain a clean bill of health while you are away from your home. If you don’t, and you do fall ill without any realistic hope of getting better, the consequences for you and your family could be enormous.

 

If you want to truly enjoy your time abroad, then you have to know what to do should you get ill while there. Advice on that matter can be found below.

 

Find medical assistance

Even if your illness seems to be a minor one, you should seek medical assistance. Armed with your travel insurance documents (make to take out such a policy before you set off on your travels, or you could find yourself paying over the odds for the healthcare that you receive), you should head to the nearest medical facility and seek a consultation with the treating physician. By doing so, you will receive the best medical assistance possible for your specific plight, as nobody knows the local illnesses better than the doctors that treat them regularly.

 

Remember, though, that any medicine you are prescribed could come in a different dose to that that you are used to in the UK. For this reason, noting and then taking the advice given to you by the healthcare professional that prescribed you the dosage is vital.

 

Get in touch with your insurer

As stated, you should never venture abroad without having taken out travel insurance just before departure. This policy is going to prove to be of the utmost importance to you as you seek to circumvent the difficulties of falling ill aboard.

 

After you’ve received treatment for your ailment, the first thing that you should do is to get in touch with your insurance provider. You should proceed to tell them about everything that has transpired, just to ensure they are kept in the loop with regards to what money you may or may not owe for treatment.

 

Seek continued support back home

Your problems won’t magically fix themselves once you touch back down at home. There’s still work to be done to ensure that you get back to full health sooner rather than later.

 

In regards to your health, this means that you should book in with your GP as soon as you are home. They will be able to provide you with another perspective on the illness that you suffered, and they will be able to judge to see if the treatment that you received while abroad was up to scratch. In regards to your financial status, as you could be owed compensation for falling ill (for example, if you fell ill due to food poisoning at your hotel), you have to get in touch with a solicitor at www.the-compensation-experts.co.uk. A professional in this field will be able to fight your case for financial compensation for you, meaning you’d be able to put all of your efforts into recovering from your illness.

 

 

You can’t think that everything is going to go swimmingly for you during your time abroad. Things can and do wrong, and you could get ill. For that reason, remembering the above advice could prove to be crucial for you.

 

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.