Holiday destinations with multiple allergies

[Bellabella82]

My daughter is almost 2 and has multiple allergies- dairy, peanut, cashew, egg, sesame and possibly wheat. She also has eczema on her arms and legs. When she eats foods she is allergic to she either has an immediate hives reaction or eczema flare ups which can last hours or even a few days.

I had planned on travelling abroad for our first family holiday together this summer but my OH wasn’t keen as he felt it would be a stressful holiday while she is so young with multiple allergies. We have decided to plan a holiday for next year to Europe all inclusive so we don’t need to go to restaurants which could be more difficult with allergies.

Can anyone recommend any countries, resorts or hotels in Europe which cater well for multiple allergies?

We just self cater when we go abroad. We bring certain safe foods and then buy meat , veg ,.potatoes,.pasta fruit etc at the supermarket

I wouldn't relax on a holiday where I had to rely on other people getting their allergies right for every meal

Self catering we 've had great breaks in France, Germany, Italy,.Denmark, Netherlands,.Ireland,.Spain...

I’ve tried self catering in Butlins but found it not so relaxing having to go back to the accommodation twice a day to cook and prepare food. I wouldn’t mind as much doing that in the UK but not so much abroad.

Pack a picnic? That's what we do for days out.
In hot countries we'd always get out of the midday sun for a few hours anyway which fits with lunch

Greek islands. Find a small resort- many of the restaurants are family owned.

we went last year. Took us a while to get out of the “chain” mindset where we look at a menu and ask “does this have x ingredient” because they’d just say yes.

they’re not chains and don’t have the formulaic buying and cooking of recipes, and use local ingredients. We learned to say “we can’t eat x, what can you do”, and they’d go off and come back with a number of off menu options.

if we visited the day before to book and explained, they would ensure they had something in for the next day. They’d get gluten free bread in specially for example, or sorbet/dairy free ice cream for desert.

we found that also there were less contaminants- no gluten filler in the burgers for example as they came straight from the butcher, and they’d know where everything came from and what was in it rather than buying from factories.

i’d probably avoid all inclusive for that reason. We tried it once and cos it was mainly buffet the staff didn’t really know and it wasn’t safe enough.

print out cards in the local language as well!

Thank you. I’ve heard about these traveling cards, will look into this.

to add- again the “chain” mindset- dc has their “safe” foods- but we had to rethink. What is usually safe elsewhere like chips, and English-style beige food was bought in frozen so often did contain gluten fillers, milk contaminants etc.

it was actually pretty good for dc because they had to branch out. Gyros, souvlaki, salad, potatoes, lamb, basically any grilled meat was an option. Dairy tends to be cheese and tzatziki so it was easy to avoid those.

menu’s didn’t have allergens but would indicate when food had been previously frozen. Once we knew to avoid that it was easier.

as for the cards, I used google translate as it’s quite hard to find generic ones for multiple allergies. I did ask in a restaurant where the wait staff spoke good English, and checked it was reasonably accurate.

My daughter has egg, peanut and tree nut allergies and we are currently in Corfu at an all inclusive Grecotel resort. They have been absolutely fantastic here and very helpful when it comes to advising about ingredients. DD has been able to eat so much, I was worried about her missing out but it’a been fine (apart from with desserts as is usually the case at home anyway apart from vanilla ice cream). We also brought a lot of “safe” food from the UK for snacks for her when there is nothing available for her or we can’t get labels with an English translation.

You can get cards from allergy UK in other languages that help with any language barriers. If you find a hotel you like, it might be worth emailing them to ask what their policy is regarding allergies, also I find groups on facebook for particular hotels very helpful to find other people’s experiences of going to places with allergies.