Ultimate Vacation Spots

posted by Travel Cat on Aug 7

Travel With Kids Series - Essential Documents - Part 1

It’s not only a passport that is important when travelling abroad, there are another half dozen or more documents that need checking and updating before travelling anyway - then one or more extra if you travel with your kids.

Here, we start with the 3 basics - which no family can travel without.

Your Passports:
As adults, we know that once we get our passport all we need to worry about is that it needs to be valid for at least 6 months AFTER we return from a holiday. In general, you can’t travel into another country on an adult passport with less than 6 months remaining on it.

However, kids passport restrictions are a bit more volatile due to the fact that babies and small children look different every year - a baby in a photo could grow up to be just about any 10 year old.  There is no way to prove one way or another - unless the photos are constantly updated throughout your kids life.

Regardless of the requirements of your home country for children’s passports, you need to check the entry requirements of the country you are visiting. Either way, it is advised that you carry current passport photos of your kids when travelling in case replacements are required at any time or for whatever reason.

In the UK, a child’s passport runs for 5 years and they can keep the same photo for that whole 5 years, and my nephew recently travelled with a baby photo on his passport when he was 4 years, 3 months old.

Kids are considered an adult from 16 in passport terms, and the renewal cost for each passport is the same, even if they do not run continually for you child’s life - therefore if you can leave time between renewals without affecting your travel - this could save you quite some money.

Top Tip -  Your passport details will always be required for visa forms given out at airports or on planes when arriving or leaving a destination. It is therefore a good idea to have a small piece of card to hand with all the passport details on for yourself and your children to avoid getting the actual passports out all the time, and fiddling with the pages and numbers while watching after your children.

The Visas:
Most visas are completed on the plane on the way there, or at the airport itself in a massive queue, but some need to be applied for in advance - up to 3 months in advance for some. There are visas that can be applied for either way, and applying in advance will save you queueing up with everyone else who was on your plane when you arrive there after the long flight - with you kids needing the bathroom and you needing to sleep!!

It’s also possible that to get the visa in advance you will need to send off your passports to the countries embassy to get stamped. This will obviously need to be done way in advance to make sure that they are returned to you before you depart. You could debate taking them to the embassy yourself to save the postal risk, if you find that that is an option for you.

Your Tickets:
Your tickets are obviously essential for your travel, so make sure that they are kept in a secure and waterproof wallet throughout your journey, and preferably get a copy of them if possible and keep the originals in a safe at your destination or at least in a body wallet while travelling. Put any important details on your passport ‘card’ if necessary to avoid getting them out while travelling.

Some tickets these days are e-tickets and are not even an actual ’ticket’, they are just your printed itinerary on a sheet of A4 paper.  For this reason - keep them really safe so they are not lost amongst others paperwork, in-case they get discarded.

Either way - on receiving the printed paperwork or email - always make sure that every single detail is correct for both the outward and return journey straight after booking - and contact the agent as soon as possible if there are any discrepancies. I once booked a return flight, only to find out that the outward and return airports were different!

I had assumed on booking the return flight from one country back to that same country that it was from and to the same airport.  Added to this, the agent made no attempt to advise me of the rather odd routing by way of warning.

It was a good job I checked the details asap - as this could have been a disaster if I was leaving my car parked at the departure airport, or had brought a return train ticket from that one place.

.

posted by Travel Cat on Aug 3

Top 10 Reasons to Learn a Foreign Language

For some, learning a second language seems very easy - and to some learning a third or fourth is also easily achieved - however, for the majority it seems as though being fluent in a second language is a goal that is never truly achieved.

I was never very good at French at school - and that is all they offered to you - unless of course you were good at French, when they offered you Spanish and German???

I always wanted to learn Spanish, but was absolutely rubbish at French, really bad - to the point where I would try to hide in the lessons in-case the teacher (a French lady) chose me for any reason to answer a question. It was awful.

Time Flies….. 
Now as an adult, I have found that a second language is not so hard to learn (and how irrelevant French was to my adult needs). I am able to understand French and Spanish from text books and local signs when travelling - but it was the speaking of it that held me up - I didn’t have the confidence.

However - since spending a month in Costa Rica - I have found myself able to converse in basic Spanish and actually get things done like I would at home. I even had a word with the lady at the laundrette because she said that our clothes would be ready tomorrow but I needed them today!!! How’s that for courage. I really felt proud of myself and hope to improve for my return.

I am also part way through qualifying in my TEFL, so hope to live abroad at some point in a South American country, so will ‘keep up the good work’.

Basically there are too many good reasons to learn a foreign language, I have list 10 great ones, to hopefully get you spurred on as well. Some are standard, others are more personal.

1) To book a night in a hotel or ‘pension’
2) To order food and drink when you are travelling
3) To understand directions when trying to find places
4) To understand warning signs while adventuring and for your own safety
5) To have a grasp of local laws if you find yourself in a spot of bother
6) To be able to communicate about your health in times of sickness or injury

7) To befriend local staff in hotels and cafes, as a way of being polite
To become more involved in social events while travelling, and to feel more welcome
9) To chat to local children and help them to understand your journey and where you are from

10) Sometimes speaking the language can help you to get better service, advice and prices in certain locations. And it is no doubt one of the best ways to get the most out of your vacation abroad.

My trip to Costa Rica was certainly the better for my getting a head start on the language and culture. And to be honest, there were many occasions where the staff did not speak a word of English (and why should they really), so even parts of sentences were valuable at times!

I don’t think I’m ready for a 3rd language just yet - so I’ll stick the Central and South America for my travels for the time being…….

.