The One of A Kind Travel Mom: An In depth Interview
Looking for a little travel inspiration? Look no further! Michelle from the travel account Liviehudson is my go to travel mom for family travel inspiration and recommendations.
Travel Mom Michelle By The Numbers
As an expat living in Germany who has been traveling since she was 8 months old, Michelle has been to too many countries to count. Talk about travel goals! In addition to traveling, Michelle keeps busy raising her two kids ages 10 and 8.
Have You Always Loved Traveling?
Yes! My parents are both retired airline employees, so we grew up hopping on free flights all over the world. Whenever we had a school break, my parents would take us on an adventure.
Why Is Travel Important To Your Family?
Experiencing/learning new things is what brings us joy and strengthens our family bond!
How Do You Find Time For Travel?
When the school calendar is released each summer we try to roughly plan that year’s adventures. We take advantage of the 4 day holiday weekends. A lot of places are less busy on those holidays, then on longer breaks like spring break.
What is it like being an american expat?
We live in Stuttgart Germany. My husband is in the U.S. Navy, so the military brought us over here.
My favorite part of being an expat is just experiencing every day life in the Germany. No matter how many times a person visits a country, they can never replicate the experience of actually living there. Things like having to sort all our trash into 5 cans everyday, going to the grocery store 4 times a week since the refrigerators are so small, chatting with the farmers at our town’s weekly farmer’s market, teaching my kids to use the train system, every village having their own Biergarten they hangout, sunset rides through our neighborhood cabbage patch, hiking in forest with our friends to the public fire pits and roasting sausages while sitting in front of castle ruins, experiencing how kids birthday parties are done here, the daily airing out of your house, etc.
And of course there are really hard parts such as the communication barrier and not knowing all the laws/rules certain cultural behaviors. It can be very frustrating and anxiety inducing learning a new way of doing things; especially when you are an adult. But overall the good outweigh the bad.
What Advice Can You Give To Families Who Want To start traveling?
I would say to remember that you are on your own schedule, there is no rush to do anything. If you are feeling overwhelmed, go back to the hotel to nap or swim. Or go to a bakery to grab some snacks and take them to a local playground to eat. Don’t feel that you have to do everything on your trip. Plan what you want to do and if you do it all then that’s great, and if you don’t then that’s fine too. You still got to experience more than if you never took the trip at all. And most importantly: every country in the world has kids! There are restaurants, activities, hotels, tours, etc. that all cater to families.
Do you involve your kids in travel planning?
Yes! We involve the kids as much as possible. For example, our most recent trip was to Prague. I gave the kids a choice between glass blowing and falconry, they chose holding the eagles of course! We ask them what type of food they want for dinner. And in this day and age, they often find things they want to do on YouTube. They watch some kid shows and will see that this person went to Legoland or this person got to feed a stingray and will show it to us.
How do you research what activities to do when you travel?
It probably sounds strange, but I love looking up our hotel on Google Maps then enlarging the map and clicking on all the restaurants and activities nearby. I have found so many good restaurants, playgrounds, and activities by doing this map play. The other way I find activities is by looking up hashtags on IG. I like to see pictures and hear from people that have explored the areas we will be visiting. And I have found that if I have a question about one of the places someone posted about on IG, they are very helpful in answering as long as you follow them. I feel like this works better with smaller IG pages. People that have hundreds of thousands of followers are probably bombarded with questions and can’t answer them all.
What is your favorite travel destination?
There are so many!!! My favorite place I’ve ever visited is Tasmania. I went scuba diving for Leafy Sea Dragons, went fishing for Sea Abalone (you need a permit to do this), watched the wallabies hopping around our friend’s home, drank great local wine, and my brother saved a penguin!
What is one travel mistake you’ve made? so we can avoid it!
Doing the exchange rate incorrectly and thinking I was paying much less for things than I was. Yikes!
I loved getting to know Michelle more. She has been such an inspiration to me on Instagram, I hope she has made you feel like unique family travel destinations and activities are within reach!
If you’d like to learn more about travel mom Michelle, make sure you follow her on Instagram. If you want to hear from another expat mom, check out my interview with Lindsey.
