Where and how to take babies abroad...two of them!

[Legend83]

Hi all,

We are looking to take our 7 month old twins abroad in March time for a bit of Winter/Spring sunshine.

Firstly, can anyone recommend any areas that are nice and suitable to take children of that age? I was thinking about Portugal but know nothing of the place and I don’t want to end up booking some st hole!

Other places were Minorca or the Canary Islands, assuming these are reasonably warm in March. I guess it helps to not be too isolated when you have young babies and to be close to all amenities.

Secondly, any tips on taking babies abroad? Assuming I need to take the pushchair but what about car seats – are these allowed as part of luggage on a flight?

I have no idea whether you can get formula in supermarkets in the places I have mentioned so presumably pack enough and then some. God knows where we are going to put our clothes!

Any help or ideas much appreciated!

[LuS1fer]

Legend83 said:

Hi all,

We are looking to take our 7 month old twins abroad in March time for a bit of Winter/Spring sunshine.

Firstly, can anyone recommend any areas that are nice and suitable to take children of that age? I was thinking about Portugal but know nothing of the place and I don’t want to end up booking some st hole!

Other places were Minorca or the Canary Islands, assuming these are reasonably warm in March. I guess it helps to not be too isolated when you have young babies and to be close to all amenities.

Secondly, any tips on taking babies abroad? Assuming I need to take the pushchair but what about car seats – are these allowed as part of luggage on a flight?

I have no idea whether you can get formula in supermarkets in the places I have mentioned so presumably pack enough and then some. God knows where we are going to put our clothes!

Any help or ideas much appreciated!

March can be hit and miss for weather. The guaranteed sun is in the Canaries but that is a 4 hour flight so you have to try and get flights when they are sleeping or "put up with it" and take plenty to entertain them en route. I have found some babies like to sleep on planes though sopme scream a lot due to the ear pressure thing.

We have done Mallorca at the end of April and I unreservedly recommend Mallorca having been totally converted by it a few years back as a perfect family destination. The week we had at the end of April was sunny but it had p*ssed down the week before.

Almeria (Southern Spain) might be an idea as it is officially classed as desert in terms of rainfall total but again, it's not going to be hot, more mild. We have done Roquetas de Mar and Mojacar, both nice enough resorts but dead out of season. Luck plays it's part, I've done Puerto Banus on the Costa del Sol in January and had reasonably good weather (dead as a doornail though).

Places like Cala d'Or in Mallorca are very family friendly if you want to gamble with the weather.

Check with the airline you're flying with regarding taking car seats as most give you a 10kg allowance for baby stuff. The pushcahir is separate and you can hang onto that until you board (they'll stick a luggage ticket on when you check in) and then leave it by the plane and they chuck it on with all the other pushchairs.

You can hire baby seats from car hire companies - usually around 3-4Euros a day up to a certain maximum and while most are utter crap, a recent trip to Alicante with Centauro yielded some top notch new child seats.

You can get formula milk over in Spain - they do have babies of their own surprisingly - but check the bottled water labels for low sodium content (not that it will kill them) and certainly one make has a picture of a baby's face on it to assist. Similarly, take a small supply of nappies but you can buy packs over there.

Don't forget EVERYTHING is expensive in Spain, of late, so budget accordingly.

Are you hotelling or booking a villa/apartment as we always do the latter.