Landon and I learned a lot while on our first two-week long trip as a family, and I’d love your feedback on a couple of themes, as I know many Magpies are a) better-traveled than we are and b) deeply strategic and researched in your thinking. The theme I’m curious about today: how do you approach dining while away from home? (Especially dialed in on thoughts on meals while traveling with children.)
Historically, when Landon and I have traveled on our own, food is an anchoring part of our itinerary, on equal footing with attractions and museums and relaxation. We will go out of our way for a renowned restaurant or a memory-making food excursion. As we get older, we’re less interested in the fancy many-course meals and Michelin stars (I mean, we do deeply enjoy a high-end meal every now and then but sparingly) and more intrigued by eating whatever is the authentic best in a particular city or region, which sometimes means venturing into a different part of town or a suburb in pursuit of a farm or purveyor or experience, and other times means staying up late or eating really early for a coveted reservation. Our ideal meal strategy when we’re traveling just the two of us:
+Breakfast: Seek out a really high quality coffee shop (sometimes this means traveling to get there or tacking it onto a mid-morning activity/destination) for coffee and a light bite of something like yogurt, fruit, pastry, green juice. We aren’t big breakfast people, but we love good coffee. The Amex perk of having breakfast included with the hotel cost really confuses us — ha! We find ourselves battling the “voucher” mentality where, because it’s gratis/included, we eat a bigger breakfast than we normally would, which in turn upends the rest of our meal plan for the day. Honestly, sometimes we find ourselves forfeiting the perk because we’d rather have excellent coffee and/or a local pastry or delicacy than a standard continental breakfast at a hotel while traveling. (Interestingly, my parents approach this differently. They will wait until mid-morning to have the hotel breakfast and then skip lunch, have a light snack in the afternoon, and go to dinner. There are so many tacks here!)
+Lunch: Pursue a specific, local specialty. The more of an authentic hole-in-the-wall, the better for us — think a food stall or a tiny tapas bar or a window where a nonna sells her calzones. This usually makes lunch inexpensive but fun and adventurous, and almost always becomes a big part of the fabric of our experience and helps us better understand the culture.
+Dinner: Typically the biggest meal and biggest food splurge of the day. We like to take our time at dinner, order multiple courses, try the local wines. If we’re really on our game, we’ll find a cocktail bar/wine bar to visit first and then make our way to dinner after.
Dining While Traveling with Children.
But when with children, there’s a different calculus. We are trying our hardest to have our kids eat what we eat and try new things (our goal this trip was to avoid any/all children’s menus, as they can have chicken fingers and burgers anywhere in the world), but there is a limit. We looked at certain menus in London and just knew our kids would leave hungry or have to be cajoled into eating anything at all. And we didn’t want them resorting to bread baskets for supper. So things shifted a bit. The other complicating factor: being loose enough to respond to the day’s energy but making reservations when needed (and they often are in London). Generally, my insight here was that it was really helpful to have a reservation for dinner — it anchored the evening and ensured we weren’t just resorting to a mediocre neighborhood spot, which we did once and regretted — and then to accommodate the reservation by getting the kids back to the hotel for some downtime in the afternoon. This flow worked well for us. We’d get up around 8 in the morning and be out of the hotel until four in the afternoon, and then relax until dinner. Often times, we’d make the dinner res just a day or two in advance. (We weren’t trying to go anywhere super sceney, and we were willing to take earlier reservations anyway.)
Anyway, full rundown of our typical meal approach here:
+Breakfast: Changing my tune here, because the Amex perk of a hotel breakfast was actually incredible with our kids this trip. It required no planning or transit, and the kids were always happy with the comfort of known quantities like pastries, eggs, oatmeal, pancakes, fruit. It also meant full bellies on our way out to a busy day of sight-seeing and ensured we weren’t wasting any good energy/mood on making a pitstop for coffee/a pastry before getting to our first activity of the day. We stayed at The Goring in London for the first leg of the trip and honestly the breakfast experience there was a big highlight of the stay! You eat in their spectacular De Gournay-wallpapered dining room, which is light and bright and elegant, and it felt like such a refined way to enjoy coffee while talking through the plans for the day. The kids loved the food and the attention from waitstaff. (We also always had the kids bring a book or crossword puzzle to keep themselves busy while we’d work through our itinerary!)
I will say that by the final day of our second leg of the trip in London (we stayed at Beaverbrook Town House the second leg), Landon and I were both really fatigued with the hotel breakfast. We’d learned to limit what the two of us ordered (usually just coffee and oatmeal by the end of the trip) or we’d be too full for lunch, but even still, it just felt like a lot on day 13 of the trip. So on the last day, we changed tack and Landon went to a lovely grocer on Pavilion St in Chelsea a few minutes from our hotel and picked up yogurt and fruit (and coffee at a neighboring spot for us) and we enjoyed this in our hotel room. I wish in retrospect we’d done a bit more of this on the second leg of the trip — cheap, easy, light, more akin to what we eat at home. But, live and learn. I think on future trips, we’ll do some grocery recon in advance and stock up on light breakfast fixings and fruit on day one of the trip.
+Lunch: Landon’s research paid off manifold here; he’d tagged his Google Map of London with loads of restaurant recs he’d picked up and so we’d look in the morning at our morning plans and find something on the map close by that seemed reasonably quick-eat and kid-accommodating. (N.B.: Our typical day involved one sight-seeing destination in the morning, usually with tickets pre-booked for the 10 am hour, and something else nearby to tack on if energy was sufficiently high — so, the Cutty Sark and the nearby Maritime Museum; the Globe Theater and the neighboring Tate Modern; the Tower of London and the adjacent Tower Bridge; etc). Our lunches were usually on the more casual side: fish and chips at a chippery, sausage rolls at Borough Market, a Caribbean lunch with outdoor seating, etc. The goal was quick food that the kids would eat and then move onto something else, with one exception: we enjoyed afternoon tea one day but had it in lieu of lunch as it was a very hearty portion!
+Dinner: The biggest meal of the day, and we’d often walk or take a cab to get where we needed to go. We were willing to go that extra mile for something Landon and I were interested in that could also accommodate the kids. Per my note above, we’d typically spend an hour or two of downtime in the hotel room in the afternoons after our morning-to-afternoon adventures, so the kids were rested and eager to get out for dinner anyway. We found that chophouses were a good solution for our family, as we’d tell the waiters to skip the kids menus and we’d order for the table — steak/pork plus potatoes and sides.
Of course it goes without saying that snacks were in constant, high-demand. I have zero regrets about the big zippered pouch of peanut butter crackers, granola bars, beef jerky (my daughter loves Chomps), pretzels I brought from home. It was so handy to decant a few of these into my purse when heading out the door for the day or to offer when we’d return to our hotel room in the afternoon. I again think the strategy of stopping at a grocery on day one would be helpful for finding even healthier snack options — fruit, mainly, or yogurt/cheese if there’s a fridge — but we made do. (One really nice perk in The Goring: they gave us a huge fruit plate on the first day we arrived, with grapes, bananas, apples, figs, etc. The kids finished the entire tray in their room!)
Where We Enjoyed Dining in London.
Final notes, specific to London. I’ll be sharing a full itinerary of everything we did, what we would do differently, etc, later this week, but wanted to highlight our favorite meals we had as a family there:
+Quality Chophouse (Clerkenwell) — absolutely phenomenal meal, one of the best of not jut the trip but the year. This is a 157-year-old institution that serves the best quality steak and pork you’ve ever had, which says a lot because we’ve also enjoyed top-quality steakhouses while living in Chicago and New York. The setting is quirky — it almost feels like you’re sitting in Church pews at a narrow table? — and it’s in a neighborhood (Clerkenwell) that felt a little out of the way for us, but well worth the fifteen minute cab. It was a zero-tourist spot. Extreme attention to detail and perfectly executed everything. I also (per note above) think a steakhouse is a great solution for family dining. Landon ordered everything for the table and the kids were happy and well-fed.
+The Grenadier (Belgravia) — a classic but elevated pub experience that made us feel like we shouldn’t be there — in a good way, in the sense that — it felt like a local’s spot. It’s tucked away in some private Mews and when we arrived, there were clusters of chic Londoners spilling out into the street and we weren’t sure which entrance to use. The vibe was very IYKYK. The food was fantastic, too. We shared a lamb pie, pub burger, chips, fish, etc. I learned that the pub was originally built in 1720 as an officer’s mess for the British army, and was located in a barracks courtyard. It opened to the public in 1818 and has been frequented by Madonna, Prince William, etc. The interior feels super old-fashioned and dark (as a pub should be!), but the front opens up into a street where (it seemed) Londoners would meet for a pint (and a smoke…there was a lot of smoking in London!) after work.
+Daphnes (Chelsea) — maybe a bit of a sin to eat Italian while in London but we did need to eventually break up the cuisine. A deeply chic restaurant known for its Murano glass chandeliers and retractible conservatory roof, Daphnes suited our kids perfectly thanks to big bowls of pasta pomodoro and zucchini fritti. I’ll be candid: I was put off a bit by the Casamigos branded section of their cocktail menu (nothing against Casamigos, but any time I see a section of a menu in some way sponsored by a brand, my radar goes off), but the food was delicious even if not anything particularly ground-breaking or unique to London. This was a leisurely and gorgeous 15-minute stroll from our second hotel, The Beaverbrook Town House, and we loved taking in that area of the city by foot on our final night.
+The Ginger Pig (Borough Market) — Honestly, Borough Market was a nightmare when we first arrived. It was crowded to the point of scary (think Ponte Vecchio in Florence), and very overstimulating when our kids were already flagging and hungry from the morning excursion. But we threaded our way through to get to The Ginger Pig, a famous sausage roll cart, and waited in a 10-minute line for our orders. This all felt like a big production and possibly not worth it until — somehow, we wandered into this magical alcove on the outskirts of the market where Miraval (the wine company) had set up a wine cart and a little faux grass area with seating in front of an enormous screen showing a French bicycle race. I’m not sure whether the truck is always there, or if it was hangover from the recent soccer games, or if it is only there in the summer, but let me tell you: it was 100% perfect as a quiet perch where the kids could watch the bike race and eat their sausage rolls and Landon and I could enjoy a midday glass of rose with ours. The rolls were delicious, too — Emory said it was one of her favorite things she ate!
+Tea at The Goring — iconic and deeply special, especially for my daughter. They offer hot chocolate/juice if your children aren’t into tea (although Emory is and loved the mango-strawberry tea they had) and an assortment of sandwiches, scones, pastries in a gorgeous setting. This would be a bit tricky, I think, if kids are under five. Even my seven year old son was a little bit of a bull in a china shop — there were some clanks and spills! They serve everything in formal china and it’s a hushed, elegant room mainly peopled with adults. For the price (it’s $$), you don’t want to exactly rush in and out, so it can be a bit of a long and formal sitting for younger kids. There are other kid-oriented teas in London that might be better suited to young kids, or maybe just skip until they’re a certain age.
Final note on all of this — on travel days, we are very much “catch as catch can” meaning that we are less strategic and studied about when to eat and what to eat. When we find something appealing, we go for it; we encourage our kids to eat in the airport lounges even if it feels like they’re eating two lunches and no dinner, or whatever the case may be. We always keep hotel room service in our back pocket as a promise/reward if we’re underfed by the end of day. Curious if you’re the same way, or if you go out of your way to eat a really big breakfast or full meal before embarking on the travel portion of the day, or have a dinner reservation waiting for you?
OK, your turn — what are your strategies for meals and dining while traveling? How does it change when with kids vs without? And any specific London spots you’d recommend when visiting with kids?
Post-Scripts.
+Some of my pre-trip thoughts on London.
+The conversations gripping our mom chats right now.
Shopping Break.
+Reminder that the best mockneck, retro-vibe sweatshirt has been restocked and will sell through! A bunch of you ordered this. Take your true size — runs intentionally roomy — and throw on over bike shorts.
+New in at Negative: a whipped night dress! This looks like want I want to wear while getting ready to go out. Also, I somehow missed their swim drop this summer, but this looks perfect.
+Smart striped popover dress — love both colorways.
+These Casa Bombon x Hill House bags have been having quite a moment. So fun and whimsical, especially paired with a contrasting print! Love!
+Love Suzie Kondi and eyeing these denim pants of hers! Currently wearing one of her iconic tosk pant terry sets. I can’t stop putting it on in the evenings. I noticed the sweatshirt from my set is on sale in great colors. It’s exactly what you want to wear — slightly fitted, ultra-soft, interesting. Reminder not to sleep on her sale section, where standouts like this striped poplin skirt are on sale for $150 (orig $425).
+Fun The Great cardigan sweater, on sale, and have we already discussed this fantastic Gap bandana-print wrap sweater?! Order if you’re heading out west any time soon, or just thinking ahead to fall. She’s perfect.
+Back to The Great — they’re running an end of season sale but pieces/sizes are extremely limited. How great is this colorblocked fleece or this bandana motif cardi?
+Related: hard to think about fall right now, but I will say that I have this pinned to my fall wishlist already. I’m also not sure I can pull this off (because I’m petite and length of skirt could look awkward / hit at my knee?) but I’m obsessed with this pleated capelet dress. Such a statement! Wow! Never seen anything like it.
+Julia Amory brought back her perfect shirtdress in two airy transition-to-fall patterns. These are a perfect dress for maternity-through-nursing — and beyond. I still have two of these from maybe three or four seasons ago that I wear every summer. Ultra soft cotton, so breezy and body skimming. Look elegant but feel like a nightgown. Use code JEN-15.
+A couple of Magpies messaged me about these $31 Ruti look-for-less pants. Has anyone tried?! Meanwhile, these $32 pajamas remind me of Lake!
+One of my favorite pairs of leggings, on sale in great colors. (My other favorite: Vuori All the Feels.)
+Truly epic sale happening at Goop — up to 80% off great designers. My Doen dress from my audiobook post is included, and selling fast!
+Fun retro style shorts.
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Agree with the other magpies about life stages!!
For me, I’m gluten free, which means a hotel breakfast is near-useless to me. I need to get there first thing if I want to avoid cross-contact from other diners. In Paris, I was eating a side of bacon (cooked to order) and a half avocado most days, maybe a boiled egg, and I was deeply bored. I too ventured out for the good yogurts! Also, my kids didn’t eat as well at the breakfast as at home, lots of sugar, and that turned into cranky kids and power struggles. That said, the hotel breakfast was one of their favorite parts of the trip, especially since we had family staying there and they might find an aunt or cousin.
Usually we stay in rented apartments, which means a grocery breakfast at home, venturing out for coffee and a hearty midmorning snack, nap time for my youngest, then a substantial late lunch or early dinner, stretching out a glass of wine maybe. Bedtime snack for the kids (cured meats, store bought gazpacho, mozzarella sticks) or a very casual restaurant (Breton galette aka buckwheat crepes with ham, egg, and cheese were a favorite, or onigiri aka Japanese rice balls stuffed with sour plums or tuna). My ideal dinner would be a really good soup, or maybe a plate of dressed fresh sardines.
If we have a favorite we go back. The repeats in Paris were Boissonerie (incredible vibes, better food), the aforementioned onigiri, and a gluten free tuna baguette from a chain that I had for dinner most nights. Everyone else would be at a gluten restaurant, I would have my wine, and I’d leave to wolf down this sandwich and come back.
In Dublin, the repeat was Boojum, the fast casual Mexican chain, for bowls with Cholula hot honey chicken and Cholula ranch.
Snacks to tide the kids over: bananas, apples, applesauce pouches, chorizo or salami or saucisson sec. Stuff that doesn’t need fridged and can survive being shoved under the stroller. Lots of babycinos and lots of popsicles.
I do a crazy amount of research beforehand to build a map of gluten free spots, but we usually pick where to actually eat based on the vibe. We’re suckers for atmosphere and for kind or cheery staff. Going to recommend Boissonerie again, the thing that made it perfect was the obvious rapport between the staff.
Also, my kids only sit in restaurants if I tire them out, we usually walk 14-18 km/day on a trip!
Kelly! I read this comment yesterday and thought of you at least three times running off to scarf down your dinner sandwich. You are so accommodating and forbearing! That must be a really tough condition to have when you’re trying to hang ad be social. Just so impressed with you.
Thanks for sharing these notes!!
xx
I’m in a very different stage of life (my 8 month old just started eating most table food!), but this is great food for thought (pun not intended) for future travel.
Since our honeymoon, my husband and I have generally structured our trips as follows: have at least a small snack at the hotel breakfast (sometimes supplemented by snack out or swapped for a larger breakfast out if there’s something specific we want to try), head out for the day’s adventures, eat somewhere casual and on the go for lunch, go back to the hotel to rest and freshen up late afternoon, and then head out again for dinner/drinks/ice cream/etc. We make dinner reservations for every night of the trip, but we don’t always use them. We have found towards the end of the trip a night in having room service is really luxurious in its own way (I have fond memories of enjoying a delicious meal in our excellent hotel in Porto after a day of port tasting and tours, ha!).
But with a little one who loves his 7 pm bedtime, I’ve already been wondering how to adapt this schedule. In our daily life, we’ve switched to brunch/lunch as the main meal we eat out. Dinner is just so tricky when you have a baby hoovering on the edge of being overtired (and sometimes tipping over!).
On future trips, I think we’ll try the following: hotel breakfast, out for a morning activity, have lunch as our big meal of the day out, back to the hotel for a rest/nap for everyone, out again to run off some energy before bedtime, then pick up something casual/take out/room service for dinner. As with everything with children, I’m sure what works will constantly be evolving!
You’re so right that our current approach is a true snapshot reflecting our life right now at this exact short season! It will definitely evolve. I like your idea of centering around a bigger lunch and then ordering in / room service for dinner when you’re traveling with baby. Frankly I don’t have much advice on that front as we mainly rented houses / visited friends at their houses when the kids were younger…! I so admire the parents (like you) who GO for it with travel/hotels with babies in tow!!
xx
Hi! So many thoughts to share as we are wrapping up a 10 day Scandinavian trip with 3 littles 7 and under. We are learning a lot and hearing your strategies is helping me reflect!
– Hotel breakfasts: definitelt had its pros and cons. We are big on coffee too and will seek out cafes for breakfast, but on this trip, we chose to eat at the hotel breakfast on our first morning at a new hotel. For the sheer convenience and variety, it was worth it. The kids were disappointed when we said we wouldn’t be going the next day. I enjoy breakfast and like when the included breakfast has a more localized tilt and/or room service but I also get tired of the same food after a few days.
– Afternoon siesta: we are tied to this because of the 1 year old’s nap (she isn’t one of those who can nap in a stroller) but hearing you share confirms this is a good idea even past the napping years.
– Bull in a china shop: on day 1, a kind Danish barista brought 2 glasses of water to their outdoor bench where my kids and I were sitting while my husband ordered coffee. Lo and behold, one glass shattered within 15 minutes. You betcha we asked for to-go cups for the kids for the rest of the trip. Funny enough, every time we passed the bench, the kids asked “I wonder if the glass is cleaned up.”
LOL! Funny what makes an impression on those little ones! They’ll probably remember that for a long time. YES to the afternoon siesta! Even Landon and I do this while traveling on our own — even if not to sleep, just to pause and collect and sort of veg out in quiet for a little bit before gearing up for dinner.
Thanks for chiming in here — sounds like we have a similar approach!!
xx
Love this discussion, helpful to have more of a strategy before a trip. We just got back from Tybee Island and Savannah, and we had some great food but also some learning experiences! I wish we would have planned our meals a bit more, but also didn’t want to be beholden to reservations on a beach trip. For all of our trips lately, we’ve been in an air b&b so the kids have breakfasts at home, and I haul my high-maintenance pour over coffee situation with me (RIP gooseneck kettle that now lives on Tybee – whoops, haha). This vacation we only ate two dinners at the house, but when we’re up north it’s the reverse and we eat dinner (and lunch) mostly in. We only had one night in a hotel, en route, and we did eat the breakfast mostly for budget reasons – although we did grab Starbucks on the way out of town. Our days mostly looked like this: wake up too early, walk dog, kid breakfast (I brought a batch of muffins I made before the trip, or they have yogurt) and adult coffee. Set up beach stuff and swim until I walk back to make a late morning breakfast. Everyone comes back for lunch and a beach break or lunch out and an adventure. Back to the beach for the rest of the afternoon until showers and dinner. And ice cream – we ate so much ice cream on this trip! TBH I miss my fancy ice cream – guess I am a coffee snob AND and ice cream snob. On our Savannah day, we had the same walk/coffee/kid breakfast routine, then stopped at a coffee shop when we got to the city before we hopped on the trolley. For lunch, even though we had researched restaurants, we still spent a cranky few minutes googling in a picturesque square before deciding on a place and walking too far. But the food was worth it! After a late lunch and, yes, more ice cream, we just had a snacky dinner at home. I may borrow your order for the table, no kid menus idea for our next outing. We left too many half-eaten kids meals in our wake. We also relied on chic-fil-a and Culver’s on the road trip. We needed outdoor seating with the dog in tow, and didn’t really have time to spare to go off the beaten path. Definitely need a fast food break for a while. My favorite meal was probably Bubba Gumbos, right on the shrimp boat docks on the creek.
These are great notes and I love the idea of packing muffins/yogurt so you don’t even have to think about breakfast the first few mornings. I even wonder about doing this when traveling to a hotel — like why not pack something like that so you have it and aren’t beholden to making a plan on day 1? Thanks for that.
I also personally LOVE your heavy-on-the-ice-cream summer!
xx
Thank you for shouting out a nursing friendly dress! Feeling seen! I realize you don’t do your shopping Q+A anymore but I think some Magpies might enjoy a motherhood/postpartum friendly curation once in a while. Maybe everyone exclusively does bottles now, but for the few of us that nurse, it is always nice to see some nursing friendly fashion options that help us still feel like ourselves! Tuckernuck makes a lot of button down dresses but otherwise it’s a been a looong journey to find nursing friendly pieces that aren’t ugly. 🙂
Oh I’m so glad to hear this – and congrats! Can put some more thought into this. I remember it was surprisingly challenging. I have a big shirtdress roundup going live tomorrow and I think a lot of those will fit the bill. More to come!
My husband and I typically split our trips between whatever city we fly into and the countryside.
In the city, we will skip the hotel breakfast in favor of coffee and a pastry or smoothie/green juice depending on how healthy we’re in the mood to be; this entails two stops each morning, but we don’t need them to be back to back so the morning still has a relaxed feel. We are also coffee people, and we lean into the local coffee culture so our vacation coffee orders differ from our usual at home. For lunch, I love your approach, but we usually prioritize a salad (or few depending on the spot as some do not offer entree potions). Salads sounds boring, but I am often inspired by the salads I eat on trips and love recreating them at home afterwards. If not a salad, we will still eat something vegetable-forward. Our dinner approach is similar to yours (but without the drinks beforehand), and this is the meal where we typically prioritize the cuisine that the area is known for. Dinner will almost always include a drink or dessert and sometimes both. We will always do one fine dining meal where we have miraculously managed a reservation as it’s a passion of ours.
In the countryside, we always book the most luxurious accommodations possible, because this portion of the vacation is where we relax before returning home and mostly stay at the property itself, including for all meals. We love michelin-keyed farm-to-table properties, and our trips are usually built around visiting these. All of that to say, we just lean into what the property has to offer dining-wise, and these meals are often the highlight of the trip. While I don’t have kids myself, I have seen families with kids at these properties enjoy all of their meals there too; often, the property is very flexible with where meals are served and there is almost always an informal restaurant in addition to their more formal one if a given family has very young children who they might not want to take to the more formal one.
Love these notes and preferences! You sound like a couple who knows themselves well, and have learned to organize a trip perfectly. I like the idea of salads for lunch, too — we almost always come back from trips craving as much fruit and veg as possible, and I’m now wondering if we’re just not finding enough veg-forward lunch options or something. Food for thought.
Thanks for sharing!!!
xx
Several years ago (2013 I think), I visited a close friend who has lived in London for years. You noted that you saw people drinking in front of a pub — my last afternoon there, we were walking from her office over to the Tate Modern and it was a beautiful day in May. Sunny, warm, no rain or clouds. One of those days that London so rarely gets I think. I remember seeing tons of people standing in front of the neighborhood pubs with their pints and my friend assuring me it was legal. It was the best vibe. It truly felt like the entire city was out enjoying the beautiful weather. I have a photo taken on a film camera that came out a little blurry and distorted from the sun but I love how much it perfectly encapsulates the joy in the air at something so simple as the clouds clearing up.
This is so lovely! I can imagine the feeling. There is something really special about the first moment the weather changes and everyone is out, wearing short-sleeves, sunning themselves! It’s like a big city-wide party!
xx
Very belated London rec, but Marks & Spencer is my go-to for easy hotel picnic (or real picnic) lunches- good quality sandwiches, salads, snacks at good prices. And do not miss the candy aisle. Percy Pigs! The best gummy candy of all time. Also, the flapjacks, which are buttery oat bars.
Also, I love a fancy hotel breakfast specifically in the Nordics. They really know how to do it up but in a way that manages to feel both special without being overly indulgent. Finland, Sweden, the Faroes…I still reminisce about some of these hotel breakfasts. In Copenhagen, though, I always hit a bakery for a BMO (butter and cheese on a roll). Truly my death row meal right there.
Yes! We moved to Richmond (outside London) when my son was 6 weeks old and M&S was a lifesaver when he was a toddler. And I fully agree about the delicious Scandi breakfasts! And Jen, I am also so grateful for the Amex breakfast perk. Even if it does get repetitive, it’s the best way to start a day of lots of travel adventures. Honestly, not having to dress and get fully ready for the day without consuming lots of coffee alone makes it worthwhile. The Nespresso machines in rooms are for emergencies or while waiting for real coffee to arrive with room service. Having said that, part of the fun of travel for me is wandering around local groceries and trying random new things!
Agree, the hotel breakfast is super handy even if it’s not exactly what we’d prefer to eat every morning…! So grateful for it on this trip with the kids. They of course LOVED it.
xx
Thank you! Dogearing the M&S rec for any future trips there. I actually saw several groups of Londoners with M&S bags in Hyde Park so had filed that away for future as well. Percy pigs — so sad I missed those! Though we did have a good amount of good candy while there AND in Norway.
We didn’t get to try the Nordic hotel breakfast on this trip! We stayed with my brother and then in hyttes in a remote fishing town. Next time, next time! And I MUST try one of these BMOs!!
x
It sounds like you had a great food trip! The Grenadier is a longtime family haunt of ours (my father was embedded with the Welsh Guards in his 20s), and I’m so glad you enjoyed it.
For traveling with our kiddo, here’s our view:
We get up EARLY every day (we do at home anyway!), so we enjoy the hotel breakfast around 7:30 or 8 at eat a big meal. I prioritize booking a hotel with a fabulous restaurant so we feel the gratis breakfast is actually worth something to us. For hotels with free breakfasts that are sub-par, it feels like a wasted meal. We stayed at the Intercontinental in London this spring and honestly ended up eating most of the meals at the hotel because the food was SO fabulous.
We end up spending the morning walking around, then stop for lunch at a local place we bookmark in advance. After lunch, we do our big sightseeing thing of the day, then walk back to the hotel for some downtime before we dress for dinner. After dinner, baths and reading before bed! I love food, and found we can prioritize great meals while keeping regular schedules (and no kids’ menus–we actually don’t do kids’ menus in the States either) is really doable and easy for us!
Hi! Sounds like we have similar tacks when traveling with kids — hotel breakfast, out of the hotel on the early end, then back for downtime before dinner out! I think it’s a great formula and flow. We had such a good time.
xx
Yes!! I think the biggest mindset shift for me with kids (especially longer trips–we did almost 3 weeks in Europe this spring) is to prioritize one thing at the beginning of the day, one thing after lunch. Anything else was a bonus. I loved following along on your trip and made notes for our next visit!! xx
“Anything else is a bonus” – love this phrase. A good cleansing question to ask at the top of the day (traveling or not) — what’s core, what’s bonus, what’s inessential?
xx