We care about your safety and health, so please take extra precautions when travelling, this article is meant for when things are stable and safe. Post updated on April 28, 2021.
Travelling to different places is a fun and exciting way to spend a vacation with the family. However, you may find that the journey to your destination is filled with lots of time and little to do whenever a trip involves long distance travel on cars or trains. (Vienna to Venice is about 9 hours for example).
Keeping Long Hours of Travel Short on Boredom by planning activities for the journey should be part of your travel plans. It is as important as having to pack properly for your trip. Let the family holidays be free from boredom and let it be interesting from start to finish.
A Classic for each of us
So what do you do when you travel by train? What are ways in keeping long hours of travel short on boredom? Travellers who don’t get motion sickness may entertain themselves by reading a book or magazine (that’s me!). Others are better with working on crosswords, Rubik’s cube, or Sudoku puzzles (son 1), and watching movies on a portable DVD (hubby).
Trains usually have free WIFI, so make use of those and search your favourite game on Plays.org, which has an extensive list of games – and they are regularly adding new ones. Your kids may even like the old game Minesweeper for its simplicity. You may also bring along portable game consoles or gadgets for kids who can’t live without their video games. Those who are prone to motion sickness are better off sleeping during most parts of the journey. 🙂
Comfort
If you opt to sleep, a neck pillow to support your head is a must. Comfortable pillows that will keep pain away like this one, costs about 13£!
Your favourite stuffed toy (or the kids’) will also do. You can also have a travelling buddy in photos if you bring one with you!
Board Games
Classic games that promote family bonding are the best travel games that parents can teach their techie kids. It can be a refreshing change from the impersonal gadget games that they are used to. Travel-friendly board games for classic games like chess, monopoly etc. are easily available in toy stores (get the small magnetised ones).
A deck of cards can also pack loads of fun for a family trapped in a moving train for long hours. Numerous card games like UNO, Go Fish, Crazy Eight, Poker, Slap Jack and others, can keep both kids and adults preoccupied in the entire trip.
Word Games
There are also word games that you can play with kids of varying ages like the game we call Starting Letter Factory. The game starts by choosing a letter and a category base for the words (i.e. Letter D, animals). (Prepare pens and papers too.) Each player will give a name of an animal that starts with the letter D (i.e. dog, donkey, etc.). A player who runs out of animal names gets taken out of the game and the last player standing is the winner. This game is fun and keeps one’s mind busy thinking of appropriate nouns related to the given topic (i.e. Letter C, city; Chicago, Cairo, California).
Older kids can make the game more interesting or challenging by adding a consequence for the first person taken out of the game like singing a song or doing a favor for the winner. The first player who gets taken out of the first round usually starts the second round of the game.
Keeping Long Hours of Travel Short on Boredom with Fun Travel Games
Family travel games that allow interaction between kids and adults are the most fun games that you can choose for long hours of travelling by train or car. We forgot the classic “I spy game” 😀 and there’s just so much to spy and take photos of while in a moving train. However, keep in mind that there are also other passengers in the train and be conscious with the amount of noise or movements that your party makes on the train. Consideration aside, long journeys can pass quickly when everyone is travelling with fun company.
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I travel on a weekly basis. Although it’s not that long, it’s still about 1.5 hours. And most of the time, if I’m not asleep during the trip, I look out the window gazing at the scenery or perhaps watching a movie. The games for kids will come in handy when I need to travel with the children. Thanks for sharing!
We also play I Spy when traveling. After a awhile ,my daughter gets bored,so we switch to a different game
great idea, why didn’t I think of this game…
I play games on iPad on long trips and at times just sleep the whole time or watch movies in my laptop.
so convenient nowadays
Seems they are not bored at all. I myself used to travel a lot before and I rarely felt boredom
I’m still single but I have 4 nephews/nieces. I just went home last year so everything with kids is so foreign to me.. hehe. went on a family trip lately and the kids have all their gadgets in the car and yet they keep on as asking every 30 minutes “are we here?? are we here??” hehe..
Last night I got an email from a friend who sent it on board a train from Vietnam to Bangkok, then again this morning, on another train from Bangkok to Malaysia. The boredom sounded less 🙂
My eyes has a very low tolerance on motion movements. I get dizzy if I read when inside a moving vehicle. Even looking for something in my bag, say about 5 staright minutes of looking something in bag, I get dizzy easily. And it doesn’t go away easily too. I have to take paracetamol to remove it. So when I travel, I usually sleep or bring lots of chips. Haha!
my kids enjoy long travel as long as they bring with them a good book or their handheld gadgets, it was me who is always problematic during long travels because of the motion sickness lol
awww 🙁 it gets better through time… ahaha
I rarely go traveling and if ever i do it is only during breaks. My family isn’t really the adventurous type when it comes to the local country. But we do go hiking and road trips whenever we visit our homeland.
Travel with kids take a lot of preparation,those are helpful tips and great consideration.