Hard work = City visit with young kids

[Lavenderdays]

We have just come back from an overnight stay with 3 dcs in London.

So glad to be home - the peace and quiet!

Travelling in the city with a large pushchair was a bit of a nightmare. The train was late or something so the seats weren't reserved (scrubbed - we had previously reserved the seats but because the train was late, there wasn't time to put tickets on the seats). We didn't realise this and had an altercation with a bloke sitting in our allocated seats. Travelling by bus was weird - we had to use separate credit/debit cards and fortunately the children travelled free.
The place we were staying in was an upstairs apartment with a very narrow hallway so we had to carry pushchair etc. upstairs as couldn't store downstairs.

Stopped off at what we thought was a bakery/sandwich shop, only to find it was a lovely organic shop selling salads etc. to which the dc turned their noses up (but which I enjoyed immensely). We had to carry around a ridiculous amount of food to keep the dcs energy up. The well known park we visited was completely rammed, my very energetic/fearless 5 year old dc found every nook and cranny going to escape/explore.
Have told myself that's it for a couple of year now. Anyone else find their city trip with young kids totally exhausting/exasperating?
Glad we went in a way because it was a bit of an adventure but it took a huge amount of effort, with two young dcs, thought as a family we would be better at accommodated but the whole experience proved a bit of an ordeal. Anyone else had this type of experience over half term?

Sounds par for the course! If you lived in a city you’d have ways of managing it - eg small buggy/sling. You’d know your way around with buses etc.

Maybe you should've done a bit of research first?

skippy congratulations on getting in early with a nasty comment.

I think going round big cities that you may not know very well, with children, is quite a slog. We live in London, but when DGCs are here, we often don't go that far from home with them - they get bored and restless on buses, they're not used to places being very crowded, they're always hungry or tired or something!

Bloody well done for trying! I mean that, not trying to patronise, sorry if the tone comes across differently.

Yes it gets easier when they all walk. Public transport is always a lottery. Research, military style planning and low expectations help enormously

Thanks Bloodybridget, I think you've hit the nail on the head - we don't know the city well and yes it was a slog and you live in the area so it wasn't just us and red yes, I think that too...bloody well done for trying, I think I was probably expecting a bit much - even my legs ached and yes public transport is a lottery. I suppose I just wanted to expand our horizons a little, hopefully it was memory making though but my stress levels went through the roof and it was far from relaxing. My eldest is at secondary school - it is quite a different experience when you don't have young children to keep safe. My middle dc did enjoy aspects of it...the transport museum was fab, it's just all the logistics. Being placed in a quiet carriage on the train back home was not great either...the trip in was okay, the trip out was difficult. Military planning is definitely required!