travelling to LA, san diego, phoenix, grand canyon, route 66, vegas, bass lake, yosemite national park, san fran, santta barbara for 2 1/2 weeks than flying to newyork and than hawaii
my partner and I will be travelling for a month with our 15month old and roughly 6-8week old. we were originally thinking about catching public transport everywhere but now were contemplating renting a car for the first 2 1/2 weeks as it might be more practical; some taxis might not have baby car seats, prams on and off buses and subways may be hard, luggage.
any thoughts on this ? thanks fo any help 😊
Reply to this rent a car. some of the city you name have awful public transport (la is a good example). baby seat in cab... I don't think so.
I think it will be more pricey to use bus that rent a car. It will give you way more freedom also
Reply to this I'd rent a car too... as mentioned public transport is very complicatd or non existent and often it is difficult to get between tourist things, hotels and airports.... and that was travelling pre kids 😊 And as also mentioned, i very much doubt they would have carseats for cabs or you'll be waiting a long time for the specific one to show up.
Reply to this You will definitely need a car. Of the places you want to visit, NYC is the only place I consider having suitable public transit for you, your partner, and two kids. Here, parking becomes the issue and cabs are plentiful (and the subway is convenient sans luggage). No car seats though - you will need to bring your own. The buses in Hawaii are also pretty good, depending on where you are staying and where you want to go.
In other cities, cabs and taxis are often not around when you need them, you have to call ahead, the buses don't run on schedule ... it can be a real pain
without two young children. I do not know of any public transit that will get you from San Fran to Yosemite; if it exists, I'm sure it is either ridiculously expensive or tailored to party-happy backpackers. The Grand Canyon would also require the purchase of a tour-type package to get public transit.
Fortunately, for week+ trips, renting/hiring a car can actually end up being cheaper than cabs and such. You can also save money by renting at non-airport locations. Some rental companies will pick you up, so if your hotel has an airport shuttle, you could use that when you first arrive and then arrange for a car to be picked up later.
America is designed for the automobile. It's a car culture. And having one gives you the freedom to explore where you want, when you want (and also the freedom to stop, pull over, etc, if the kids need you too).
Reply to this thanks very much for the replies! 😊 were definetly going to hire a car now, much cheaper and less hassle with the kids 😊
Reply to this Um, you want to do how much in 2 1/2 weeks? You will not see much. You will be happier if you cut that back some. You are going to want a couple of days in each city. Then it is a long drive for route 66. You are looking at about 5 days of driving alone. Those kids are going to sleep in the car all day and then want to keep you up all night.
Also you would want to do Hawaii while on the west coast, not go to New York and then do Hawaii, that is a long flight.
Reply to this You will have to rent a vehicle if you intend to travel to the US except for New York , Washington DC, and San Francisco. I wouldn’t even consider using public transportation in any other city if I were a woman with children. Public transportation in the US is purely designed for getting people to and from work and packed full most of the time. They are pretty much used by only those who cannot afford a car. These are the locations you mentioned wanting to visit…. travelling to LA, san diego, phoenix, grand canyon, route 66, vegas, bass lake, yosemite national park, san fran, santta barbara for 2 1/2 weeks than flying to newyork and than Hawaii…There is no possibility of visiting all these locations in as large a country as the US in the time mentioned even if all you did was drive through them and did not take time to look at anything. You will need to save something for another trip later on or allow much more time. If you do decide to rent a vehicle and drive a very good investment would be to get the Rand McNally road atlas (going online if needed to buy it) and study it, mapping out routes, distances etc. before you leave.
Reply to this As others have suggested your itinerary is very aggressive for 2 1/2 weeks. You will be very rushed. If you have not been to the US before you may not realize how spread out these locations are----
The drive from LA to San Francisco is about 6 1/2 hours.
From San Francisco to Yosemite is about 4 /12 hours.
LA to San Diego is only 2 hours but another 6 hours to Phoenix.
Sounds like you may spend a lot of time in the car driving.
Traveling with children can be complicated and you will need to adjust to their circadian rhythm-- you may want to pick a couple of locations and really take a good look around.
The United States may not be similar to the country you are traveling from in that our public transportation systems are weak. This country was designed for the automobile. Buses and taxi's do not offer baby car seats and such.
Good luck and let us know where you end up.
We would love to read your blog!
Reply to this hi, my initial reaction was a general, public transport is bad...but i was just looking at the list you have there and we flew to nearly all those cities - only exception was grand canyon where we went to las vegas then hired a car and drove the 4 hours to the closest rim. So.... you might want to investigate flying instead. Might be a good way to break up the travel for the kids and also a lot easier to keep kids entertained if youre sitting beside them, giving them a meal, literally playing with them and not having to worry about directions etc. You can get very good deals on things like expedia that include hotel and car at each location and there are some very cheap airlines in the US. We used to find that that the normal hotel price was pretty much what we ended up paying per night and the airline (or the hotel) comped the other part ind eals. Perhaps use expedia again to look for them but i think you'll find you cant actually buy through expedia with a non-US creditcard so you'll need to go directly to the airline once youve found the flights/price you want.
Also, in LA, san diego, phoenix and vegas we didnt hire cars but just caught the double decker tourist bus to get to all major site seeing things or did little 1 day tourist things or just walked around the central area - you'll need to make sure you get a hotel in the middle of everything though! From san diego we caught the train to tijuana for the day which was fine - light rail system and 1/2 hrly trip for an hour i think. San Francisco i think we really needed a car...it was a really big city with things spread out plus there is a seaworld 1 hour north which the kids might want to go to....althoguh their are trams around if you want to catch those for something fun. Vegas itself you definitly dont need and wouldnt want a car but you'd probably want to hire one for at least a day to go to hoover dam and grand canyon - but there are heaps of tourist buses goign to those places so you can catch a bus instead if you want...or helicopter if youre feeling rich 😊
sorry, a change in info but was chatting to my hubby and although we didnt catch public transport as such we did often catch trams or light rail and didnt hire a car...so i guess we did use public transport lol!
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