Most parents with babies and small children find that eating out in restaurants can be exhausting enough in their own hometown, let alone in an unfamiliar destination where the menu and presence of high chairs or boosters is a question mark. (And don’t get me started on countries where dinner service only begins at 8 p.m.)
However, opting for a vacation rental or hotel room with a kitchenette and planning to cook and clean up after every meal may not feel like much of a vacation either.
How to find a happy balance? At least one night of your trip, have your dinner delivered to your door. Room service can be a real sanity — and time — saver while traveling with infants and toddlers, but it’s not always an option. Pizzas can be delivered in most cities around the world–yes, even to hotels (check the phone book in the drawer for numbers).
But for the lucky visiting Vancouver, B.C., you can now even have child-friendly foods (“Mac the Cheese”) along with gourmet grown up fare (wild sockeye salmon risotto) freshly prepared and delivered to your door by Meals for Mums(the ingredients are organic and all natural to boot).
If you’re headed to San Francisco, you might take advantage of Waiters on Wheels, which can deliver everything from pancakes and omelets to sushi and falafel from dozens of S.F. restaurants (see the menus online–you can even print the ones of interest to tuck into your suitcase).
Dining out with toddlers anywhere can present some serious challenges, and then there’s New York City… so when you’ve finished juggling the stroller and have exhausted the few child-friendly options, try GothamMenu.com for a first-rate collection of Manhattan’s to-go menus, including restaurants with delivery.
And now delivering restaurant-prepared dinners to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Boston, NY Metro, Jersey City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and London: SeamlessWeb.com. Of course, you’ll need Internet access to take full advantage of most of these services, so if your hotel doesn’t offer free access, make a pit stop at a cybercafé during your sightseeing.
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Safe journey,
Shelly Rivoli, author of Travels with Baby
The Ultimate Guide for Planning Trips with Babies, Toddlers, and Preschool-Age Children
In a recent conversation with a good friend, she excitedly told me (incorrectly) that New York City is the only place in the world where you can take a taxi with your baby without being legally required to have a car seat. Fortunately I didn’t have to get into the specifics of Mexico, or Southeast Asia, or elsewhere “in the world” where families who could actually afford a car seat are few and far between before she corrected herself (still incorrectly) and said, “in the United States.” She’d apparently read this bit of trivia in a travel article, and I can only assume the writer is from New York City, not San Francisco, Las Vegas, Paris, London, Tokyo, or one of the many other places in the world where this is common practice for city dwellers, and legally so.
It’s a topic I’m asked about frequently, and was sure to include in Travels with Baby. While I’m hesitant to tell anyone “it’s okay” to jump into unfamiliar cars with their babies on their laps, it is in fact considered “legal” in most cities, as well as states and countries around the world–though whether or not it is safe is another matter.
The basic scoop is this: Drivers of for-hire vehicles (taxis, shuttles, limos) are subject to different laws than are passengers of privately-owned passenger vehicles. In most cases, these drivers are not required to provide car seats or “special equipment” for passengers. In turn, the passengers hiring the car are not required to have their child in a car seat because one does not exist in the hired vehicle. Having taken some hair-raising taxi rides right here at home and around the world, however, I don’t encourage anyone to jump into taxis driven by complete strangers without any type of restraint for their babies and small children.
If you’re looking for a car seat that’s ideal for travel, you can see some suggestions here. Even when car seats are impractical or impossible to take along (a day of sightseeing, only one round-trip from the airport or train station) there are other alternatives that are far safer than traveling with no car seat at all. I have a list of some helpful suggestions for car seat alternatives for travelers online.
Safe journey,
Shelly Rivoli, author of Travels with Baby
The Ultimate Guide for Planning Trips with Babies, Toddlers, and Preschool-Age Children
Bronze Award Winner in Travel Blogs from the North American Travel Journalists Association
