Continuing from the series of traveling with a 16mo toddler to South-West Australia, I am going to share with you about accommodation, food and nap times that might be a concern for a family holiday with little humans. Accommodation is an important part of all travels to us because we want to be comfortable and as much as possible, feel like home away from home. What more when traveling with our little friend. Space, kitchen and laundry facilities are some of our top priorities when looking for accommodation. The husband and I also love to eat. Our only dietary need is good food! We are glad that our little friend shares the same passion. When traveling, we like to sample the local fresh produce, mingle with some locals to pick up some cooking skills or simply to play around with the produce on our own.
Accommodation
We are great fans of booking apartments/houses for our accommodation during holidays as we enjoy the availability of facilities that allow us to cook and wash our laundry. This allow to travel light(er), save some budget and have fun with fresh local produce. All accommodation are booked via airbnb. We are lucky that all our airbnb experiences are extremely pleasant and more than what we could ask for. As we planned to cook (more on this later) and wash our laundry, all our accommodation comes with a full equipped kitchen and washing machine/dryer. Fully equipped kitchen = pots and pans, utensils, oil, salt, pepper, basic herbs etc! All of them also come with a backyard/garden or nearby green space of some sort for our little friend to play at.
Our host at Yallingup was especially helpful to recommend lots of children-friendly places and we totally ditched our initial itinerary for Margaret River. Not only are these attractions children-friendly, they are also among the local favourites which I believe are better than what the tourism websites would recommend. Unfortunately she is no longer listing her place for booking on airbnb 😦
Disclaimer: We are not sponsored by airbnb and I am solely sharing based on our experiences.
Food
Australia has strict rules on the products you can bring into the country hence we decided not to bring any food over. Some of the area we are staying in does not have eateries that opens for dinner and we would like to have try Australia’s fresh local produce so we decided to cook, mostly breakfast, dinners and food on the go on days we need to travel long distance between towns/cities.
On occasions when we eat out, mostly lunches, our little friend eats what we eat. Most eateries have a children’s menu or something suitable for little children, so we would order 2 mains and 1 children meal to share among 3 adults and 1 toddler. The portions are huge!
I need to make a special mention that we enjoyed the children’s menu at Jamie’s Italian (though we were quite disappointed by the adult’s). The portion is huge and ingredients are fresh. Our little friend sure enjoyed her meal.
Naps
You might also be concerend about scheduling nap time for your little one. We are rather flexible in this. Not sure if it’s because the sun rises really early, our little friend wakes up at around 6am-7am, sometimes as early as 530am. She would usually take a nap at 8am-9am before we set off to our first destination for the day, or nap in the car (traveling takes an hour or so sometimes) . She also nap on our way back, we returned to our accommodation on some days to repack and for the adults to rest as well. She sleeps really early at 7pm-8pm and through the night. We also have our baby carrier with us for just in case nap times.
Next up, I will be sharing on the activity kit that we prepared for the trip. The rest of the series can be found here:
Traveling with a 16-Month-Old Toddler: On Itinerary
Traveling with a 16-Month-Old Toddler: On road tripping
To Mamas; For Kids 