10 hilarious stories about travelling with kids
1. Drive-by egging
Driving home with the shopping in the backseat and looking on the floor thinking, “Why is there water down there?”
It took a few moments to realise it wasn’t water. It was egg.
Then I looked at my daughter and saw what was in her hand… just as she threw it at the back of my husband’s head. She had opened the eggs and thrown them all over the place!
That will teach us to turn around more often I guess. – Julie Riley
2. Rubbing salt in the wounds
We went to Adelaide with a three-year-old and a six-month-old and decided a day trip to Lake Bumbunga was a good idea. It’s one of the pink lakes, sometimes blue, where you can take cool photographs. Except it was dry and muddy and not pink. So Miss Three tried to do a runner away from the boring lake. But she lost a shoe. And when my husband went to rescue her, he found the only sinkhole in the entire land. He was up to his knees in mud – black, not pink – and to add insult to injury, the salt from the lake got in his wounds.
Now he likes to tell people that he’s travelled with kids and has the scars to prove it. I, meanwhile, just got a good laugh. – Amelia Masters
3. Stayin’ alive
Our trip to New Zealand in a campervan with our four children was full of laughter. As soon as the tape got stuck in the cassette player at the beginning of our two-week journey, they knew every word of the Bee Gees. Amazing what you remember about a trip! – KL Day
4. Not so plain sailing
We recently took our kids sailing on our yacht. We spent 18 months on the water, exploring the Coast of Australia. We planned to sail to New Caledonia, but 50 miles out of Surfers Paradise our autopilot broke and we were forced to return.
We arranged a new autopilot and waited for the next suitable weather window, to make the six-day journey to New Caledonia. This time, 200 nautical miles off the coast of Australia, on what was our second attempt, the new autopilot failed. Again we sailed back into harbour shaking our heads.
We were soon to discover that the mechanic who installed the autopilot had taken a shortcut and failed to drill in one grub screw, which would have prevented the autopilot from failing.
Exhausted and feeling defeated, we sailed the Whitsundays up to Cairns … what a fabulous second prize. The experience was amazing for the kids. Their confidence grew. They learnt new skills that you don’t learn at school and they met some amazing other kids. They also managed to do schooling online and via Skype with their fabulous distance education teacher.
Maybe next year will be our year to sail to New Caledonia. Let’s wait and see. – Yvette Fishburn
5. Sweetly poetic
Travelling with kids is beloved and funny, especially amidst differences in currency and money.
A whole world out there to explore, something as simple as finding a coin on the seashore.
Inspires a little heart that now has a vision to collect many treasures as his every day is filled with wonder & pleasure. – Kylie Turner
6. Pardon?
While on holidays in Fiji my daughter, after reading the dessert menu, requested a Bar Fart from the waiter.
After lots of laughing and a couple of questions we realised she actually wanted a Parfait. – Sarah Harvey
7. One way to jump the queues
We had dragged our four-year-old out all day around Paris and as art lovers we really wanted to see the Louvre and the Mona Lisa. We waited in line, finally got in and walked the thousands of steps to find her.
We were at the back of the line waiting to get to the front to see the painting when our four-year-old absolutely chucked a tantrum, started screaming the place down and cried so much she made herself vomit all over me and the floor of the Louvre.
Needless to say the crowds disappeared pretty quickly, and although we were mortified, at least we then got to have a front-row seat to see the painting, albeit apologising the whole time to the cleaning staff. – J’aime Newland
8. Chaos on the high seas
The time we went to New Zealand on a cruise for 14 nights with two adults and four kids under five. The first night we all got food poisoning and spent the next three days in bed. Then when we got off the boat one kid got bitten by a bee and we discovered he was allergic, so we spent two days in the hospital. Then on the second-to-last day we lost one kid for four hours. He had found a ‘friend’ and was on the top deck getting a tan! – Skye Danaher
9. Where the wild things are
Sleeping in tents on Kenya’s Maasai Mara was exciting, thrilling to go to sleep listening to the sounds of lions in the distance. But I was shocked to hear, three years later, the kids (then aged seven, 10 and 12) confess that one night they woke up and went roaming on foot, seeing elephants and wildebeest in the distance! – Sarah Gover
10. Forget something?
Memorable in a scary ‘bad Mum’ way: I rounded them up, I made sure the boot was packed and closed, I shrieked at the spilled Coke, eyed the traffic and took off… minus a child.
Not far down the road a timid voice from the back asked if we were going to go back for T.
I broke traffic laws and the sound barrier getting back just in time to see T wandering out of the loo. Sigh. – Sue Bouquet
This one isn’t quite as bad: she only drove off and forgot her cake… on the roof of the car.
This article first appeared on Reader’s Digest. For more of what you love from the world’s best-loved magazine, here’s our best subscription offer.