Transatlantic Travel with Toddlers

Traveling abroad with toddlers is not for the faint of heart. Pack a lot of snacks. Load up the movies. And just know that there WILL be melt downs and multiple people looking at you like you’re crazy. At the end of the day, you are locked inside a flying metal bullet with hundreds of other people and you are just doing your best. Give yourself some grace. I promise at some point in the trip you TRULY stop caring what other people think and just embrace the chaos. 🙂

I did a lot of research and prep work for our trip across the pond and these are some of my favorite items that we used for our 2 kids (ages 4 and 2).

To keep things simple we packed the girls in one big bag. To make things easier I bought two sets of these packing cubes – one for each kid. It was so easy to have the girls in their own color coordinated bags for the trip while we were living out of suitcases and getting dressed in a rush. I would also throw diapers in one of them periodically to carry with us as a small changing station. 

This $34 Baggu Canvas duck bag was AMAZING on our trip. It is the perfect size. It can be worn as a shoulder bag or crossbody bag and you can throw it into the wash when it gets dirty.  

I packed it in my suitcase bc it folds flat and pulled it out when we got there to house my camera, snacks, change of clothes, etc. I cannot recommend it enough – I seriously loved toting this around.

Does traveling with a fanny pack seem too 80s? or too necessary? I have found that a small bag like this is great to have all your essentials in and be hands free. It’s also great if you need to toss it into a larger bag during your trip. I have an old loeffler randall fanny pack but this Athleta one has been on my list as it looks stain-free and wipeable. 

A pillow and blanket rolled into one cute Watermelon. The back of the pillow unzips and the blanket fits inside!

The kids love this and they are perfect travel size blanket and pillow combo. 

The bluetooth headphones we bought constantly slip off of the girls heads. These soft headbands are cute and functional. ALSO they work with the plane plug ins so the girls could watch movies on the plane which they thought was cooler than their iPad movies we had downloaded (of course). 

For an overnight flight these inflatable foot rests were key. They blow up to perfectly fit in that in between the seat space to make a lay-flat bed for your kids. There are more expensive and more chic options out there but these work great and pack up small into a book bag.