Has anyone been abroad with allergies to CMP, egg and nuts?

[BobTheBassett]

dd is 6 and I would really like to take her and the rest of the family abroad for a holiday. We've never plucked up the courage to do it.

Does anyone have any recommendations about how it can be done? I have no idea where might have English brands with English labelling - which seems a reasonable place to start.

Or is packing it all up and driving the way to go?

Anyone with any experience? Many thanks

yes. france, italy, spain, usa,

get some translation cards.

family holidays when children small, we went on ferry, took some snack food. Eurocamp holidays are pretty good .

flew when kids older. took own food on long haul.

Yup, France a couple of times. We also do self catering anyway so can buy suitable food but we have managed to eat out as long as we picked basics e.g. Steak and chips and specified no butter etc.

Get a good phrase book so you can translate menus and explain allergy.

Yes, done this a bit. Easiest place we have found is Madrid, and Amsterdam and Berlin were pretty straightforward too.

Madrid is good because they have a very active coeliac society who have done lots of education for restaurants on gluten and also cow's milk protein due to it being a common cross reaction, then once they know how to avoid cross contamination with one thing it's easier for them to get their heads round another allergy.

We go self catering and have found 3 or 4 restaurants we go to a lot who cater for us very well- I started off emailing them in advance with the help of google translate and now they know us. The really good places are Parilla del Mago (grill house), El Barril de las Letras (fish and seafood), La Vaca de Argentina (steakhouse) and La Gastroteca de Santiago (modern Spanish with a little asian fusion influence).

Also found these very useful. Not only do they translate it well, but they make it "official" and the waiter can take the card though to the kitchen to show the chef.

And a smartphone with google translate has really helped when looking at labels etc. We tend to just get unprocessed food (fresh meat, fish, vegetables) etc plus take a few things from home.

Yes, france, Spain, Italy, Denmark to name a few. We found that alternative milks were widely available and restaurants etc as clued up as here.

yes; though (allergy) DS2 was only 2. We took translated allergy letters (lots of copies!) for the chefs, explaining not just the allergies, but that what the 'range' of issues were (we have many many allergies), indicating that while some just made us feel very sick, some were life threatening. I gave some ideas of simple, quick food the chef could make if he wasn't sure (eg grilled plain fish, or steak fried in oil with chips).

For the plane, and just in case (and to avoid overweight luggage), i bought a load of meals that DS2 could eat (ella's pouches type stuff) and had them delivered to the boots - airside of the airport security, for pickup ... so i could take them on as carry on :-) We had them on the plane to eat, plus knew we'd have them when we got there even if things went awry with luggage.

Yes, we went to France with allergic DS1 (not cmp, but egg, peanuts, pulses, sesame). It was fine though he did rather live on baguette and plain pasta! Tbh DH and I are vegetarians and that was harder, we found staff in shops/restaurants happy to help find something safe for him, but I got laughed at in a hypermarche for asking if they had veggie sausages!

We went self catering so took some of our own food too.