Love the walkie talkies for the kids. Have you written anything on the stuff you take with you for the kids?

We’d love to travel more with our nippers but I’m not sure how it would work out.

Great blog!

Joe

Hi Samantha! That’s a great question and truth be told we do have a few kicking around with us. No idea how they never got on the list, thanks for spotting that!

As for adapters, we try our hardest to only bring universal chargers and devices with us like the Apple line. Having to down step or up step electricity can get tricky and you’re really at the mercy of the device. If you’re unsure if you need a power converter rather than a power adapter then take a look at your plug (laptop, cell, camera, etc) and see what the Input says. If it says something like 100-240V and 50/60hz then all you need is a cheap (and light) adapter. If not you need to decide if you need to take it or something else will work instead. The problem with converters is that they’re heavy and for the price of one you can usually get 4 or 5 adapters. If you have multiple devices then you might need multiple converters unless you want to plug them all into the one device.

We usually just buy cheap travel adapters that only change the plug type. We’ve amassed a few over the years. Most cheap dollar style stores in whatever country carry them. Right now we’re in Mexico so we’re still on 120V however in a month we’ll be roaming around Europe and we’ll probably pick up another one or two. We bought more electronics since I wrote that article so our power needs are slowly getting out of hand! 😉

As to traveling with kids there are definitely times we miss the simplicity of being on our own however for the most part our problems on the road are very similar to what anyone faces with their kids, at home or abroad. They’re slowly becoming world citizens and for that alone, there is no price too high. 🙂

Good luck with your travels and don’t pre-fill every moment of it. Sometimes it’s the road unknown that leads to our greatest adventures.

I can remember owning a clunky pair of Walkie Talkies when I was a kid. It was great fun back in those days but they pale in comparison to today’s 2 way radios. Our kids are still a little too young to be off by themselves when we travel but I would imagine that we’ll be using the third one soon enough. Glad you enjoyed the article!

We’ve taken AA’s and a charger in the past and Brian I still have mixed feelings about it. Almost every piece of tech we own has built-in rechargeables and we can generally charge them with a USB cord. It’s not always the fastest way but it minimizes the weight.

My Petzl headlamp takes 3 AAA batteries though and I tend to run rechargeables in it so that makes it a little awkward. Luckily, it lasts for a ridiculously long time and I generally only use it here or there when we travel. Since the kids, we always travel with a few spare AA and AAA batteries (never know when we’ll pick up a cheap toy on the road for them that needs batteries). Darn Brian, now I need to rethink whether we need them or not… 😉

Emma, walkie talkies are great fun for the kids and make travelling in pairs so much easier. To be honest we don’t remember to use them enough but when we do it’s a great way for us to separate the kids for a while to give them some one-on-one attention yet still be connected to the rest of the group.

When we were in Hawaii earlier this year we lent one to our friends in the other rental car and used them while driving so that we could be in constant contact. It made decisions so much quicker and easier and the signal goes for miles so if we got separated we could usually find each other right away. It also gave us each our own space but kept us connected. I can’t remember how many “Ooh, look at that, over” messages we sent but there were a lot. 🙂