Family Travel Traditions: 25 Meaningful Traditions to Start on Your Trips
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Traveling, exploring new places and cultures, is a large part of our family’s identity. Whether it be small day trips or larger multi-week international trips, we place a large value on this time together as a family. Traveling with young kids is not always easy from figuring out how to afford it to dealing with all of the whining that doesn’t magically stop even though you are in a literal European palace. Kids often thrive off routine and travel is the exact opposite of that. We have quite a few travel traditions that help bring a bit of routine into travel, extend the special and fun memories of a trip into the months before and after each trip, and possibly help minimize the whining while on the trip. The article details more than 20 different traditions, several of which are our own and others are traditions that we haven’t yet adopted but heard about from friends. Feel free to steal or modify any of the traditions to fit your family!
Iceland’s Westman Islands
View of Grindelwald in Switzerland
BEfore a Trip
Birthday Trips
Each year our kids get to pick whether they want a birthday party or a birthday trip. We are not a big party hosting family, but I will happily throw together a birthday party so they can celebrate with their friends if they want to. After our first experiences with hosting friend birthday party, we’ve realized that at least one of our kids isn’t a big fan of having all of the attention on them. Birthday parties, even when you don’t go all out, can be quite expensive. Venue, decorations, food, etc – it all adds up. The average kids birthday party costs around $200-500. We realized that we could go on a nearby weekend trip for the same amount of money. Last year, we celebrated my oldest’s birthday in Portland, doing all things spooky because that is what she enjoys. We ended up spending a similar amount of money as a birthday party and made a full weekend’s worth of memories.
Portland’s Dambo Troll
American Girl Store in Los Angeles
Bubble Planet in Los Angeles
Milestone birthday trips with grandma. My mother-in-law also has her own tradition that she started with her nieces and has continued on to her granddaughters. At the milestone birthday years of 5, 10 and 15, she took her nieces and their mom (her sister in law) to Chicago, New York and Paris respectfully. We altered it a bit, and she and I have taken a solo trip with each of my daughters to Los Angeles when they turned 5 years old to get an American Girl Doll and enjoy the city focused on what each girl wanted to do.
One on one trips with each parent. While we haven’t started this tradition yet and don’t know how it is going to look for our family, but we often have it in the back of our mind. I know several families that do 1:1 trips with each of their kids at different points in their lives, whether that be milestone birthdays or after specific graduations. These are trips, which can be big or small, that focus on the child’s interests and improving the bond between you and your kid. My children are close in age and while they love playing together, they also crave time alone with each parent.
Picking our destination
My list of places where I want to travel to is, both fortunately and unfortunately, only increasing with each year. Our family typically each year does one international trip, one domestic weeklong trip, and one local road trip each year. This does change depending on other things going on in our lives – moving across the country, being laid off, home renovations, etc. We typically pick our large trip destinations about one year in advance. With the ages our kids are at and me being the planner of the family, I typically choose the domestic and road trip destinations as I factor in visiting with family or friends, our budget and what places might be best for the current age they are.
However, our international trip is up to a family vote. I make a presentation on my top three places that I want to go and I think our family would enjoy. I make a possible itinerary of the top things to do in each destination and present it. As a family we discuss it and vote on which place we want to see the most. So far, in the last two years we’ve done this – the vote has been unanimous. I hoping that trend stays.
View of Edmond, WA’s Ferry
Legoland California
Peru’s Ollantaytambo
I have seen lots of other fun traditions on how families pick their travel destinations:
Each family member writes down two places they want to go to on a piece of paper. All of the papers go in a hat and get picked out one by one. The last paper in the hat is the destination the family goes to.
Each member of the family picks one destination they want to go to and give a presentation to the family. At the end, each family member ranks each destination. The destination with the highest points is where the family goes (i.e. ranking #1 is 5 points, #2 is 4 pts, etc).
Another tradition we have is we try not to visit the same continent two trips in a row. If we went to Portugal one year, we’d have to pick a destination outside of Europe for the following year.
Reading books about the destination
If you've seen any of the destination itineraries on my website, you’ll likely have seen my book lists for each destination. I love matching the books I’m reading with the upcoming destinations I’m visiting. I read a mixture of fiction and nonfiction and both get me excited and teach me a lot about local places and a bit of the culture. Not only do I personally read books from the destination, I also buy books for my kids that help get them excited. We sometimes just get regular adult guide books and let them look through it. Sometimes we get a few kid-centered picture books or non-fiction books. It is always fun for them to point out once we’re on the trip, the places they remember reading about. It is also a great way to introduce some cultural differences there might be or cultural events that we are going to participate in. Before traveling to Hawaii, we read books about luaus and Hawaiians’ view on family. We’ve gifted Geronimo Stilton books to a family ahead of their trip to Italy. More and more of the Magic Treehouse books are being published and there are some great books where Jack and Annie have visited Egypt, Greece, Rome, Washington DC, San Francisco, Yosemite, Amazon Rainforest, Alaska, England, Japan, India, Hawaii and so many more places.
Alternatively, if possible, you can watch a movie that was set in that destination. Watch ratatouille before visiting Paris or Moana before your Hawaiian vacation.
Kids reading books about airplanes, Seattle and National Parks
Snow Tubing on Jungfraujoch, highest point in Europe accessible via train
Everyone plans one day or one activity
This is going to look different as our children grow. They are currently young elementary-aged kids still learning to read who have no unsupervised access to the internet. Right now, planning an activity either looks like finding out places from the books they’ve read or by watching videos from social media with me of people’s trips. I’ve found this tradition to be extremely beneficial. Planning a trip or just a single day or a single activity is hard – you have to take into account everyone’s interests and ability levels, you have to make sure it works with the budget, figure out how to get there, and decide just the few things you’re going to do out of the countless options. Planning activities is a skill and it is a skill you can practice and get better at. Not only that, but making everyone in the family plan an activity or a day of the trip means that everyone’s voice and preferences are heard. There are different personalities in a family, some members of the family might prefer a fully relax at the beach kind of day while another person might want to do a 10 mile hike up a mountain. Ensuring everyone gets a say creates a nice balance.
In practice, the person who picked that day or activity gets really excited when its their time. My daughters’ often say on repeat “I picked this!” and “did you like it? I picked it!” Since we are all participating in what they want, they also get excited and invested in how the other family members are feeling. As they get older and are able to take on a bit more of the planning process, it will help them learn about how to plan with the public transport to get us there or how to get the cheapest tickets to the thing or all of the other details that come with fully planning their own trip when they are adults.
Making a music playlist
This is a tradition that is new to us. Prior to your trip, you can make a playlist of popular songs both past or present that originated from the country or place you are visiting. We started it from our most recent trip to Europe and we had listened to the Eurovision songs from those countries – which got us excited to listen to past Eurovision songs and other mainstream songs from those countries. If you are traveling domestically, you can look up different musical artists that were born in the state or city that you are traveling to. Once you have made your playlist, you can listen to it in the weeks leading up to your trip to get excited or once you are at your destination. It is very exciting if you suddenly hear one of the songs you’ve been listening to while out exploring in a grocery store or from someone playing it on the beach.
Pregnancy Announcement in Kyoto, Japan
Playing alphorns in the Swiss Alps
learning a few words in the language
If you are visiting a different country, I feel like it is essential to learn as much of the language as you can before your trip – especially if it is a country that doesn’t frequently use English as a lingua franca (or common/bridge language). There are many places around the world where the majority of people who work in tourism have a good grasp of the English language, to the point where you can go through your whole trip just relying on being understood in English. It is beneficial and polite to try your best to learn some key phrases and words in their language. If you are traveling with kids, don’t just learn it yourself – teach it to your kids as well. My youngest is an extrovert amongst a family of introverts. As a family we learned several Spanish words and phrases before our trip to Costa Rica. Our 5 year old was the one who spoke them the most. Every time a waiter came over to our table, she loudly said “Gracias”. She still talks about how she was often given her food first because she did that. She greeted everyone she saw with a “Hola!”, even if they were just fellow American tourists.
Westman Island in Iceland
Puerto Rico’s Castillo San Cristóbal
Yaquina Head Lighthouse on the Oregon Coast
During a Trip
Souvenirs
There are a lot of traditions around souvenirs. People start collecting different mementos from trips from childhood and carry on till adulthood. The standard souvenir shops have so many of the same items that you can easily start at least a dozen different collections – tea towels, magnets, postcards, t shirts, ornaments, stickers, shot glasses and the list goes on. I try to get a Christmas tree ornament from each place we visit. My daughters have started collecting magnets. They also typically get a new stuffed animal to represent an animal for the destination we’ve visited. We have put a sticker on the side of our car for each of the destinations that we have road tripped to. Having a set item that they are collecting really helps them focus when they are in a souvenir shop. It is especially helpful if the object they are collecting is usually under $5 like a magnet or postcard. You also don’t need to start one single collection if it is not suiting you. Have you gotten a mug the last 10 trips you’ve been on and now you do not need any more mugs in your house? You don’t need to keep buying mugs just because you started that collection, switch to something else for your next trip if you still want to get something.
Junior Ranger Badge Souvenir from the San Juan Islands
Christmas Ornament Shop in Leavenworth, Washington
We’ve also given them a budget before of about $20, but that is hard sometimes for them as they get overwhelmed with the choices or get frustrated when the thing they want is more expensive than that. Lately we’ve been telling them beforehand that we will buy a magnet and a stuffed animal or something that is special to the location we are going to – like a small lego set at Legoland. They are also free to bring their own money they’ve gotten from birthdays or allowance and use how they please. Don’t discount free souvenirs. If you are visiting a U.S. National Park, have your kids do the Junior Ranger Program and bam, free souvenir badge.
Souvenirs don’t have to be things that only provide a memory of the place – photos can do that already – you can pick a souvenir that provides a practical purpose. Consumables is always a good thing to pick up since after you eat or use it up, it isn’t taking up space in your house anymore. Local coffee beans, teas, chocolates, spices, etc are great ways to remember your trip for a while after you are home but won’t create clutter. You can also pick up something that you genuinely need on your next trip. Need a new journal? New canvas tote? Earrings? Sweater? Socks? Wooden spoon? Art print or map for your walls? Chopsticks? – pick it up on your next trip.
Another souvenir can simply be the currency of the country you are visiting. We try to use cash-less methods when we travel as much as possible, but sometimes we get a bit of local currency to use for things like parking or local vendors and save the remaining coins as a souvenir.
Bookstore on Bainbridge Island, Washington
Bookstore along the Big Sir Coast in California
SOUVENIR - books
There are a lot traditions around souvenirs, but I am going to highlight just one type of souvenir. Books. I know of a family with older kids and each kid picks up a new book every trip, typically during the beginning of the trip, and then reads it throughout the rest of the trip. It is a great way to encourage a love of reading and make use of all of the waiting time involved in travel. Depending on your location, this can occasionally be a challenge to find a book store selling books in English (if that is your primary language). Many large cities have English-language book store, so it might be an outing you do when you are in a larger or capital city in the country you are visiting. For this tradition, the family doesn’t put a restriction on whether the book has to be about their trip – they let their kids pick whichever book interests them. Even without it being related to their trip, they will likely still always remember where they picked it up and it will still hold that connection.
Another tradition around books I wanted to highlight was from another friend’s family. They traveled extensively with their baby during their parental leaves and picked up a board book of the location at each new destination/city. In the board book, they wrote the date and a small note about the trip. This is such a lovely way to share the travels with their daughter as she grows up.
Postcard to grandparents or ourselves
Another affordable keepsake or souvenir is a postcard. You can buy a postcard, fill it out and get a stamp at a local post office. You can mail it to a grandparent back home or even to yourself. If your days get busy and you don’t end up sending it on your trip, you can always just bring it back home and keep it or send it from there. While you can just rely on texting and social media for sharing your trips with loved ones, there is something special about sending and receiving postcards. It is also fun for us to pick out the best postcard that we think our recipient would love the best.
Famous cows in the Swiss alps
Orcas in front of Mount Baker in British Columbia, Canada
Harbor Seal off the coast of Point Lobos
Scavenger hunt - Animals
We love a nature focused trip, especially one with an animal that is often found in that nature that we don’t often see. While on the trip, we try to find all of the popular animals native to that location that we can. In Costa Rica we had a long list – multiple types of monkeys, sloths, toucans, scarlet macaws, tree frogs and more. In Big Sur, our goal was to spot sea otters. In the San Juan Islands, all we wanted to do was to see an orca. Along with the real thing, we also see how much of that animal we can spot on souvenirs, billboards, brands, restaurant menus, etc. While in Manuel Antonio, we counted how many sloths (both real and pictures of) we could see each day.
One local food
While I’d love to say that we eat exclusively local foods when in a new country, that just isn’t the case. Sometimes, we need the foods we are used to after a long tiring day exploring. As vegetarians, eating only local foods can be especially challenging. However, we try to do at minimum one new local food from each new location we visit. Some locations that are known for their food, this is easy and we end up eating a lot of local specialities. Other places, we need to do a bit of research beforehand. We’ve eaten fondue in Switzerland, Kappa Maki sushi in Japan, Pastel de Nata in Portugal, and baklava in Greece.
Looking at howler monkeys in the trees in Costa Rica
Bowl of ramen in Tokyo, Japan
Market in Cusco, Peru
Local Grocery store
We very rarely visit a new country without going into a grocery store. It is easy as a tourist to rely solely on eating at your hotel or restaurants for all of your meals. However, there is so much food culture found in the grocery store. It is also one of the most affordable ways to eat while traveling. It is exciting entering into a local grocery store and finding almost entirely new to you products. Even products that are similar to ones we are used to, are packaged different, have different branding. As tourists – we often do mostly touristy things – visit the museums, the main attractions. We often don’t get a good window into everyday life, but the easiest way to do so is to shop at the grocery store. We also find so many souvenirs at the grocery store – local chocolates spices, teas. Note, one thing we always pack in our suitcase is reusable grocery bags. Many international stores either don’t have paper or plastic bags or charge for them. Another thing to note is make sure you check the custom rules if you are planning to buy cheeses, meats, or seeds and bringing them home or traveling across borders during your trip.
There can be a bit of a learning curve when it comes to shopping at local grocery stores. This last summer in Switzerland, we had to remember to always weigh our own produce while we were in the produce section and get the printed price tag before heading to the check out.
Hawaiian Shaved Ice
Ice cream in Melonpan in Tokyo, Japan
Gelato in Venice, Italy
Ice cream
Getting ice cream every day on vacation = totally normal. This tradition is less of a hard and fast rule we try to follow and more just a pattern I’ve observed. We end up getting ice cream almost every single day of a trip. While it is typically ice cream or gelato or an ice cream bar, depending on the location it might also be a different form of a sweet treat. We’ve swapped ice cream for a Nutella Crepe in Paris or shaved ice in Hawaii or a handful of chocolate truffles in Switzerland. Something about already spoiling yourself on vacation just makes you want to give yourself some ice cream too. Or since having kids, we’ve realized daily ice cream trips is also a great bribe or motivator to get kids excited to finish the big hike for the day or to walk around the town some more. It is also a nice routine and point of consistency. We might be in a new country where we don’t speak the language, but we know at some point in the day we will get ice cream and we know that we can just point to the flavor we want if we have forgotten the Japanese word for strawberry. Even if we get the flavor wrong, at least it is all ice cream and likely to be enjoyable.
One new thing
While this might be obvious, travel is meant for exploring new places and experiencing new things. There are often trips that people do that are yearly tradition trips, where you end up doing the same thing. You stay at the same hotel, go to the same beaches, etc. Your family might be very big into national park trips and after a while they look the same – hiking, seeing cool waterfalls, cool mountains. While there is nothing wrong with routine and repetition and visiting places you know you enjoy, we always try to add something new in every trip we do. This might be small. For example, we’ve done the same day trip – Whidbey Island – at least 5+ times. We are still finding new places to explore each time we go. A new farm stand, a new restaurant, a new beach, a new small town to explore. This could also be a far larger thing, like checking something major off your bucket list type new thing. We rode a helicopter for the first time above the Great Barrier Reef. I paraglided for the first time in Switzerland. We had afternoon tea for the first time in London. We rode a hot air balloon for the first time over the castles of the Loire Valley in France. Do something that excites you or just do something that you can brag to your coworkers about. “Oh ya I have been snorkeling – in Hawaii!”
Paragliding in Switzerland
Venice’s Gondolas
One Sunset/sunrise
Whenever it is possible, we try to see at least one sunset or sunrise while on vacation. This is for two reasons. One: a lot of times the best memories I have on a trip are at sunrise or sunset. There is something about it that lowers my stress and helps me feel more in the moment. I think it has to do with it being to some extent out of my control. I don’t get to pick what time it happens or what colors appear. We might have to wait for a bit and just enjoy the beach or lookout where we are at. It helps slow us down. And two, it makes for some amazing photos. The golden hour photos I get before the sunset and the photos of the actual sunset itself. A sunset is just a perfect end to a busy day of traveling. We know that afterwards, we can go get showers and get into bed. Alternatively, a sunrise is the perfect start to the day. If possible, we watch it from our hotel room in our pajamas before heading out to get some yummy breakfast. Ideally, everyday we’d enjoy both but sleep gets prioritized the rest of the days.
Sunset in Cairns, Australia
Sunset in San Diego, California
Sunset in Nassau, Bahamas
One nice family photo
I try not to ask for more photos than my family is willing to tolerate. I just want one decent photo of everyone smiling at the camera for each trip we go on. I’d settle for a selfie or a tripod photo, but ideally one taken by someone else. As someone who does not like to inconvenience others, typically I do this by waiting till someone asks me to take a picture of their family and I ask if they could take one of my family. Is this photo the best? Often not. Sometimes it takes doing this 3+ times until you actually get a decent one where your whole family is in the frame and there is something interest in the background. Not just a photo zoomed in on your faces where the background is just green and it could be taken anywhere in the world. Ideally you’d travel with someone outside of your family who can be your photographer and you theirs, but that doesn’t always work out.
Throughout the trip I take a lot more candid photos of individual people in our family or our daughters together or one parent and both kids. However, my goal is always one photo of the whole family.
If getting a decent photo of your whole family is easy – step up the challenge and try to get a photo of your family in each destination in the same pose. Maybe a good photo of everyone jumping on every beach you visit. Or a video of your kids high five-ing at each cool monument they see.
Seattle Space Needle from the Chiluly Glass Museum
Seljalandsfoss Waterfall on Iceland’s South Coast
journaling
As my kids are learning to read and write, I have them write and/or draw in a journal every night of our trips and over the entire summer. As a kindergarten and 1st grader, it is just a couple words or a sentence and a drawing but it will increase as they get older. This helps reinforce what they are learning in school and helps me feel better about any school they miss for trips. I also think it will be a great thing for them to look back on when they get older. Some days on trips, they had so many things they enjoyed doing that they end up writing and drawing a lot and other days they just find one thing memorable. There is research that journaling can help you remember things, and I am hoping that by them journaling about these days, they’ll have a better memory of them.
Journaling during the trip is also a great way to use waiting time. My kids have journaled on trains, on the plane, and in the car of the previous day’s events. We’ve even pulled out some pages in the back of the journal if they just wanted some paper to draw whatever they wanted.
Finding a local playground
It is easy to plan a trip and just focus on the main tourist attraction sights – the castles, the beaches, markets, museums, hikes. However, some of my kids favorite moments have been the 15-30 minutes we spent at a local playground. It can be a lot on a kid to try to meet the expectations of being in a setting like a museum, where you have to be quiet and walk slowly and possibly present to be interested in something that is arguably boring. A playground break before or after a stuffy museum or more parent-focused activity can be the perfect mental reset everyone needs. I am a big advocated in family-centric trips rather than solely kid-centric or adult-centric trips. I think trips should be a good mix of everyone’s interests. When I plan out my itinerary for the day, I typically search in maps along our route to see all of the local playgrounds. After looking at pictures and reviews, I typically pick one or two that we’ll stop at. Some of the playgrounds we’ve visited in foreign countries have been SO much cooler than the playgrounds we are used to at home.
In Switzerland, they’ve visited playgrounds where they got to go inside of a large wooden cow and play musical instruments and go through a maze of water-squirting flowers. In Iceland, many playgrounds there have massive jumping pillows. We’ve gone to playgrounds on beaches, playgrounds with extensive climbing structures, and playgrounds right next to a restaurant while we ate a meal. Even simple playgrounds with just some swings and a slide have provided the exact break we needed to carry on the rest of the day in a great mood. We’ve visited children’s museums in some of the places we’ve gone too but that takes up most of the day and gets quite boring for the adults after an hour or two. It is also expensive. Visiting a playground a day, is free and often takes the perfect length of time for both the kids and adults. It is nice as parent to sit on the bench and watch your kids while you check on the information for the next place you are going to see or just to get a break from the whining for a bit. Until our children have fully grown out of playgrounds, we will continue to visit them on all of our trips.
Playground on Grindelwald First
Swings on the beach in San Diego
Playground at the waterfront in Seattle
Travel snacks
Near the end of our trip, we typically go back to a grocery or convenience store and pick out a bag each of candy or chips/snacks to eat on our flights or drives home. Sometimes this happens at the airport if we’re short on time. We try to focus on getting snacks that are new to us or local from the place we are visiting. We don’t usually buy these sorts of foods often while at home, so this is always a fun treat and helps keep spirits up on long travel days.
After a Trip
Family travel map
If you have travelled to more than a couple countries or states, then you’ve probably had a desire to keep track or just showcase all of the places you’ve been to in your home. We have a wooden map that we put push pins into, but there is so many other different options. There are water bottles where you can track all of the national parks or world wonders you’ve visited. We’ve seen scratch off maps, flag keychains, travel journals, and apps.
Scrapbooking
A new tradition we’ve started this year is making scrapbooks together. At 5 & 6, we do it simple and enjoy the process of making it more than the final product – but the final product is still meaningful. While we did have to invest in some of the supplies, we tried to keep it minimal. I don’t get the expensive backgrounds or fancy scissors or little cut outs. It is a way to express their creativity and solidify memories they had while on trips.
For their scrapbooks, we got the following items: the scrapbook themselves, a small photo sticker printer, washi tape, and small background papers – click on the photos for the links:
While on our trip, we try to grab some free items to add to their scrapbooks – maps, brochures, plane and attraction tickets, tags, etc. The only thing we occasionally buy for each trip to add to the scrapbook are stickers related to the destinations we’ve visited. However, we have somehow ended up with quite a sizable sticker collection so many times we just use the ones we have.
In their scrapbooks, they often do one page for each day of the trip. They add the sticker pictures I print out of them on the trip, they draw pictures of what we did, cut out and add images from the brochures we saved from the trip, occasionally write a bit about what we did, and add stickers and washi tape for decoration. What they create is completely up to them.
family dinner
Sometime after our trip, we plan a dinner where we recreate one or multiple of our favorite local dishes from the trip that we ate. This could mean a fondue night after coming back from Switzerland. Authentic tacos after visiting Mexico. A favorite dessert or street food you ate. If you are not much of a cook – feel free to get take out from a restaurant near you serving that cuisine. We typically do this about a month or more after the trip. It is fun to talk about some of our favorite moments and laugh about some of the fails or stressful moments on the trip, as they are often funnier in retrospect. Feel free to invite family over and spend the time showing off the cool pictures you took.
Family yearbooks
Pin board of all of the places we’ve traveled
Quarterly family year books
This is a tradition we do, regardless of if we travel. Since we do travel a lot, our family year books feature our trips heavily. Prior to kids, we made one photo book a year. It was a way to get photos that live on our phones into a physical book that was easy to look back through and share. With kids and how practical smart phone cameras are, we end up taking a lot more pictures. We’ve had to make quarterly scrapbooks split in 3 month chunks roughly by seasons (January – March, April - June, July - September, October - December). I am constantly behind on making these, which is okay – because I save actually printing them out until there are considerable sales. On the spine of each year book I put the dates along with the places we visited to make it easier to find photos from specific trips. We use chatbooks, because I love the quality and how quick it is to make a book.
We have quite a few travel traditions that help bring a bit of routine into travel, extend the special and fun memories of a trip into the months before and after each trip, and possibly help minimize the whining while on the trip. The article details more than 20 different traditions, several of which are our own and others are traditions that we haven’t yet adopted but heard about from friends. Feel free to steal or modify any of the traditions to fit your family!