Traveling Without Kids

2025-12-01

This week, Monday through Thursday, my wife and I are in Mexico City. It is a large city, very car driven, with lots of food and culture. We are very lucky to be traveling and even more lucky to be traveling without kids. Sneha’s Mom and Grandma is taking on the burden of primary care for both of our kids with help from lots of other people. We tried to get them ready and make our house ready for them, but they are doing of the hard work of rangling two kids for 4 days and we so appreciate it.

And this type of vacation is starkly different than a vacation with kids. It has only been one day but we are doing very different things, we are going to nice restaurants, traveling with a single checked bag, walking as often as we can, napping, taking long and bumpy car rides to see things. If our old us were with us he would have definitely thrown up in one of the bumpy car rides, he does not do great with motion sickness. Also traveling with kids in Ubers is a weird thing, it is too hard to strap in a car seat but it feels unsafe just holding a child in your lap.

And perhaps the most different thing that I am able to do is to read during the daytime. When I am at home reading is only a nighttime activity right before bed. On the week days there is work and on the weekends there is a heck ton of play dates, naps, and feeding to be done. I get a few minutes of reading at night in the time before putting the kids to bed and going to bed myself if I so desire. But on this trip I forgot my book and bought ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood at the airport and am working through it at 5PM. So far it is really good and interesting, Hopefully I can through it this trip but we will see.

Again I feel very lucky and privileged to take this trip and read during the day.

-Gary