The Wow! of traveling with grandchildren

In October 2013, in Westways Magazine (an AAA publication), I read a brief article by travel writers John and Sally MacDonald that chronicled their travels with their seven grandchildren after they had granted each of them a Dream Trip.

I began to think about my own travels. I had traveled to 50-plus countries, and my wanderlust had started when I was very young. At 19, I hitchhiked halfway around the world. After getting married, I convinced my wife, Vera, that we should sell our belongings, buy a Volkswagen camper for delivery in Europe and “schlep” our son Aaron, who was almost 3 years old, around the continent.

So I felt confident that she would agree to the idea of gifting a Dream Trip to each of our grandchildren. It was an easy “Yes” for her.

The recommendations of the article were that 15 is an optimum age for the grandchild to travel, no parents are allowed, and the trip should be outside the United States to a place the child hasn’t been to.

We crafted and mailed our Dream Trip letter to our grandkids, telling them they each could choose any destination in the world. Only our oldest, Madeleine, was eligible at the time, as she was 15.

As soon as Madeleine got the letter, she called us. She said she wanted to see orangutans, so I called our friend and travel advisor (and ITN advertiser), Hima Singh, owner of Asian Pacific Adventures (Tarzana, CA; 800/825-1680, asianpacificadventures.com), to ask where we could find orangutans. She responded, “Borneo!”

Madeleine wanted to travel during Christmas vacation, which was around the corner. I had her phone Hima to share her other interests.

We began our 2½ week trip in Borneo with three days on a private boat journey. After breakfast every day, we traveled through the jungles on our way to see orangutans in their natural setting in the Camp Leakey area. Seeing Madeleine on her chair each day at the bow of the boat, watching the jungle unfold in front of her, is a special memory.

We were amazed at how close you could get to the orangutans, though there was no touching them.

We then flew to Bali, staying in beautiful Ubud, a remarkable town of arts and crafts.

We saw dance shows and traditional art centers, traveled by car up to the greenest mountains blanketed by rain clouds, and enjoyed an overnight stay in an elephant safari park, where we were able to feed and wash elephants. Madeleine topped it off by zip-lining over jungle treetops in the rain.

It also was arranged for her to go shopping in a market with a Balinese chef and cook a meal at the chef’s restaurant. So tasty!

What a great way to spend a Christmas/New Year’s vacation!

• In 2016, our youngest granddaughter, Mackenzie, was forward enough to say to us that we weren’t “getting any younger” and we should consider moving up her dream trip to allow her to take it then, at the age of 13. We laughed and agreed with her.

Like her cousin, Mackenzie wanted to see animals — many animals — but on an African safari.

Through Road Scholar (Boston, MA; 800/454-5768, roadscholar.org), we found a grandparent/grandchild tour to Kenya during the great migration of animals from Tanzania to Kenya, in June 30-July 12.

We had decided to take a group tour this time, since independent tours to Africa can be difficult. On the way to Kenya, we broke the trip up with a stopover in London, renting an Airbnb apartment, which turned out to be a smart move.

Mackenzie was a natural traveler, and she picked up London’s subway system expertly. With her as our “Tube” guide during our 3-day stay, we easily found our way to the British Museum; Buckingham Palace, for the changing of the guards; Piccadilly Circus, and the River Thames for a boat ride, also taking a day trip to Windsor Castle, Shakespeare country and Oxford College.

We met our Road Scholar group of about 20 grandparents and grandchildren in Nairobi and set off to see the animal sanctuaries on the city’s outskirts. It was amazing to see Mackenzie interacting with giraffes and orphaned baby elephants.

The best part of the trip was seeing many of the hundreds of thousands of migrating animals and watching Mackenzie viewing them through the pop-top roof of our vehicle, memorializing it all with her super-duper camera.

She interacted with kids at a local school, where she learned they all lived there full time, as it wasn’t safe to walk from their homes because of the dangerous animals in the area.

It was a long flight home, but it was filled with thoughts of the contrasts of the city of London, the poor towns we saw from dirt roads in Kenya and the magnificent migrating animals, all with our granddaughter at our side.

• Madeleine’s younger brother, Jordan, was delayed on his trip because of his baseball schedule. When we finally asked him where he wanted to go, he said China, as he was taking a Chinese-language class in school and was interested in the culture. He was 16.

We immediately contacted Hima Singh again and told her the winter holiday break would be the perfect time for a visit. She interviewed Jordan to find out what his interests were, and they planned out the trip.

They decided to make Hong Kong our first stop, and Hima arranged personal tours for us. We saw beautiful landscapes, waterways, Victoria Island and even some unique cultural places off the beaten path. Throughout our entire trip, Dec. 22, 2016-Jan. 7, 2017, there were not many Western travelers where we went.

Knowledgeable, English-speaking guides and drivers led each part of the rest of our trip. We left Hong Kong to travel to Guilin via a high-speed train, arriving in the center of the famous karst landscape.

While Jordan’s language classes hadn’t made it possible for him to discuss matters with the locals, they did enable him to order a little food and find restrooms.

The highlight of our trip was our visit to the Giant Panda Reserve to see the adorable pandas and their babies. We got there very early, before the crowds arrived, to watch them being fed. Jordan, camera in hand, was in panda heaven.

Our time with our grandchildren, away from everybody else, allowed us to gain deeper understandings of each other. When asked in early 2019, each of our grandkids shared their thoughts about their trips:

Madeleine (Tulane University) — “My grandparents always took me to different cultural events around the city I live in and to different museums over the years, so going on a trip to a foreign country was a natural extension of learning about other cultures and people with them. I feel very lucky to have had this experience with my grandparents.”

Mackenzie (then a high school junior) — “Traveling so far with only my grandparents helped create a new type of bond. It also gave me the opportunity to see what the world is like outside of my home, allowing me to begin to sculpt opinions about the world.”

Jordan (Wooster College) — “One of my most memorable trips in my life. Every grandchild should go on a trip with their grandparents and get quality time with them.”

STEPHEN DEM
Northridge, CA