Picking out the Right Double Stroller

Everyone who is expecting twins will go through the pain of trying to find the best double stroller.  It's a fact of life that no matter what stroller you look at you are not going to find one that is perfect, they all have their pluses and minuses, it just comes down to which ones you want to overlook.  After months of looking around at reviews, opinions, options, prices, specs, and going to different stores we more decided on the Mountain Buggy Duet.

When we were looking for strollers we had already booked our tickets to Germany, so we wanted something that could accommodate us on our trip.  We wanted something that wasn't a giant monstrosity, super heavy, folded well, but also not too lightweight and flimsy so it could handle a bit of a beating.  What sold us on the Mountain Buggy was the width of the stroller(or lack there of.)  It comes in at only a few inches wider than most single-wides and fits through pretty much any doorway, and we squeezed through some small ones without a hitch. Being shorter than tandems and narrower than every other side-by-side gives it great handling and makes going up curbs super easy.  We took our two test subjects(nieces) down to the store to try out a few strollers with some weight in them, when you are pushing an empty stroller they all seem like they handle great.  Once loaded up with two toddlers it was clear that the side-by-side handled way better than the tandems, and trying to pop the front wheels up on something like the City Select(our second choice) was far and away easier with the Mountain Buggy.  Our other major concerns with the Mountain Buggy were the weight and the lack of width for the future.  Our two test subjects aged 4 and 2, fit just fine, s owe figured we'd have no problem fitting the boys in for a few years.  The weight of the stroller is a big downside, however, I don't think you'll find a double stroller that is as light as you want it to be.  The Mountain Buggy is average weight for a double, so we'll just have to live with it.

If you take anything from this post it should be to take kids with you to the store, hell, you should take sandbags if you have to.  Without getting a real life picture of how it feels with some weight in it you shouldn't buy it.


 

Mountain Buggy Duet Double Stroller.

You can look, but don't touch!

I know I've mentioned this in another post, but when you are travelling with twins there is a good chance that you will become an attraction yourself.  Everyone loves twins, even back at home we get stopped by people who are twins, have twins, want twins, know twins, hell, even people who just happened to have seen a set of twins sometime in their life.   Just like back home, be prepared to get stopped and talked to, you won't know a word of what's being said, so smile and nod, or learn how to say the equivalent of Sprechen sie English? everywhere you go.  One thing you might find while travelling with twins is that you are now someone's photo op.  We had people ask to take pictures of us, just stop on the street, or even in a couple instances try to pose with us.  Just an observation here...most of the picture takers were fellow tourists, from somewhere in Asia.  We had been told by a Chinese friend of ours that Twin Boys were very good luck in China, so we weren't really surprised by the extra attention.  Luckily pretty much everyone followed the "You can look, but don't touch!" rule.

Baby A&B Napping on a swelteringly hot day...To you parents of singletons, your baby is cute, but nothing compared to twins, sorry! :)

Planes, Trains, and/or Automobiles

When you're travelling around with 2 infants getting from point A to point B can become way more than just an after thought.  The logistics of hauling two kids and weeks worth of gear between two places can be a pretty daunting task.  Every mode of transportation is going to have it's drawbacks.  In our 4 weeks in Germany and Hungary we did them all, we rented a car throughout Germany, took the train from Munich to Budapest (via a night in Vienna), rented another car in Hungary and then flew from Budapest back to Munich.  Along the way we ran into some road blocks, thought we lost our stroller, and dealt with all varieties of screaming babies.

We knew we were going to be renting a car to drive around Germany so we lugged our car-seats with us onto the plane.  That's drawback #1 for renting and driving, even with our seats being able to attach to the stroller we still had to lug the seats and attachments around with us.  Attaching the seats to the stroller also makes the stroller (ours at least) heavier and wider.  We would have been much happier not having to deal with the car seats all trip long.  Drawback #2, see "Kicking Baby to the Curb." Drawback #3 is having to deal with parking, whether it's finding a spot, figuring out what actually is a spot, or paying to keep you spot, it's a pain in the ass if you will be in any major cities, or even small old cities with narrow streets for that matter.  But with the bad comes the good; you're free to do things on your own schedule, no rushing to get to the train station, or finding out that your train is delayed, just get in and go!  Travelling by car opens up certain routes and small places you may not get to by train, at least not very easily.  Since this is specifically regarding travel in Germany(and Hungary) how can you go there and NOT drive on the Autobahn? You'd have to be crazy to skip it, its part of the experience cruising along at 160km/h and being passed like you were standing still.

We took a short 1 hour flight from Budapest back to Munich, and I must say it was nice to have the trip done in an hour, but when you add in the half hour taxi, the two hour early arrival, the extra hour I always pad into any flight because I have an irrational fear of missing a flight, the delays, waiting for your baggage, then getting back into the City again, you've turned your nice quick 1 hr flight into an all day affair.  So hey, your 1 hr flight is really 6 hrs door to door, that's still better than 9 hours on a train!  In the end dealing with security and check-in, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, then the mad rush to board, the dread of how long you're going to be stuck on the tarmac waiting while your precious little ones' melt down clocks are tick, tick, ticking away just doesn't seem worth it for an hour flight.  Maybe that's just us, but the pain in the ass to actual travel time ratio is too high for most situations where your flight is less than an hour,

Our other "long haul" was the train from Munich to Budapest, not to be confused with the "short haul" flight  the other way from Budapest to Munich.  Sure 6 hours of travel for less than an hour of actual travel on a plane seems like a nightmare, but so does a comparable 9 hour train ride.  It wasn't that we couldn't survive that amount of time on the train, we just didn't want to.  We opted instead to stop for a little layover mid-way through the journey.  We got off the train in Vienna in the early afternoon, checked into a hotel for the night, and left the next morning to continue our journey into Budapest.   Looking back on our two journeys in opposite directions they were really both lose-lose.  The plane was a pain in the ass, the train was long, stopping over for a night was great....until we had to pack up and leave immediately after we got there.  I think that distance of the trip just isn't in the sweet spot time/distance wise, if we had a couple more days to spare, the stop in Vienna would have been great...for real.

For shorter journeys though, the train is definitely the way to go, it's convenient, and way more relaxing.  Even at our boys' age, they like to look out the window and watch the scenery go by, as did we.  One of the great benefits, at least in Germany/Hungary, was that when booking our two adult seats, the kids seats were included for free(small booking fee in Hungary).   If we only had two seats it would have probably been miserable, but with the two seats for the babies, we had room to throw car-seats, diaper bags, water bottles, and any miscellaneous crap you didn't want to deal with at the moment.  Beware though, if you are bringing a larger stroller, like our Mountain Buggy Duet, you will be hard pressed to find a good solution for storing it, especially if there is no luggage car.  When you are shuttling bags back and forth between your seat(that someone has already claimed to be their own) and lugging car seats down tiny aisles the last thing you want to have to do is lug a stroller back and forth trying to find somewhere to put it. On our first train we barely managed to squeeze it onto a luggage rack...after taking off the wheels and car seat attachments.  After that headache I dreaded having to deal with it on the next ride we took, but it all ended up working out in the end despite some hiccups along the way.

(Baby A enjoying his first train ride)

Kicking the baby to the curb.

Our boys aren't the car lovers that most people think babies are, they do not fall asleep after driving around the block, in fact, they do the opposite and scream for hours on end.  When we could, we would try to leave around nap-time so that we avoided as much screaming as possible, this isn't always a feasible task though.  The worst example of this happened as we were driving into Budapest, Baby B surprisingly fell asleep pretty quickly on our drive in, which was about a 45 minute drive from where we were.  However, he decided to wake up screaming a half hour later, then I took a wrong turn, then I got caught on a major street needing to make a left hand turn with no possible place to do it.  Eventually through all the screaming, my teeth grinding, my hands sore from choking the life out of the steering wheel, we arrived....almost.  Of course there was nowhere to park, after a half circle of the block, almost turning the wrong way down a one-way street the frustration got the best of me and I kicked my wife and Baby-B onto the curb!  In relative silence Baby-A and I cruised around for a few minutes and found a parking spot not too far of a walk away.  We loaded up into the stroller, grabbed as much stuff as we could and headed off to find Mom and Baby-B.  Apparently Baby-B stopped screaming the second after getting out of the car seat and was happy as a clam. Moral of the story, don't hesitate to kick your wife and baby out of the car, it can only end up for the best!

Proud Papa - First Stamps

After our amazingly easy flight into Germany our boys got something most Americans can't even get at the moment, no matter how much they want to....a passport stamp!  At a time when only something like 35% of Americans have a valid passport and even then only a fraction of them are actually using their passports annually(~5% of American depending on your methodology), our boys have already received their first stamps!  This is a trend I hope we can continue for years to come, long after their baby picture passports expire in 5 years.

That's enough gloating for one post, I'll try to be a less snobby self-righteous prick next time . :)

Travelling with Twins, Where to Stay? Hotels or Apartments

Hotels or Apartments, that is the question:   People would ask us before our trip how we were going to stay in a hotel room with our twins, as if it was the only option.  If you need someone to come in a make your bed and fluff your pillow everyday, you should probably stick to a hotel....if only it was that simple.  For us hotels can offer more than just some housekeeping, but apartments still give us the best bang for our buck.  Even with the boys sleeping in one crib and not needing much space to move around, we find even the more spacious hotel rooms don't quite have the space needed.  Even a studio apartment we booked through AirBNB during our Germany/Hungary trip provided much more space than a hotel, plus we had a kitchen and a washing machine.

There are some things though that hotels could provide that made us happy we opted to stay some of our nights in one.  A bed that isn't two twins pushed together is probably one of our biggest reasons to go for a hotel over an apartment.  After spending weeks sleeping on sub(american)-standard beds, a night on a good hotel bed felt a tad bit like heaven.  Hotels can give you an options for a much needed splurge, it is vacation after all. We stayed on the Regency Club Level room at a Hyatt in Germany and took full advantage of the breakfast and evening cocktail "hour," with snacks and free drinks.  Pools also make a hotel a worth option at some point, it's just nice to be able to go and have a dip in beautiful, heated hotel pool, the boys especially enjoyed those benefits.  Lastly one thing that we especially missed at times in our apartments this trip was some nice high powered, bone chilling, air conditioning.  Those Europeans and their energy efficiency sure are missing out when it comes to the A/C.  There are other small things like ease of booking/cancelling, easier check-ins, nice big lifts, and maybe a feeling of added security(sometimes),

Apartments though will be our main choice for accommodations.  It really just comes down to the extra space available and we can find somewhere with a washing machine. Especially next year when the boys are moving around and we have two cribs to set up, an average size hotel room just isn't going to cut it.  Sure you can get your clothes washed at a hotel, but for a price, knowing we have a washing machine where we are staying allows us to cut way down on the amount of clothes we are bringing, which is a HUGE plus. We used AirBNB for the first time this trip, and we are hooked.  It makes the booking process smooth, you get a good sense of what you're getting through reviews, and we found all of our hosts to be really accommodating and super easy to work with.  Two of our hosts even had cribs set up and some baby toys for us when we arrived, the whole AirBNB thing was amazing, I can't imagine using something else to book an apartment.  Places like Homeaway/VRBO seem to be such a hassle and booking upon arrival is just not an option for us anymore.  Our Italy trip is probably going to be mostly setup in advance and booked through AirBNB, but we'll probably also sneak in a couple hotel nights, just to lay on a huge king bed :)

If you click the AirBNB link to sign up you'll get $25 off your first stay(full disclosure: I would get a $25 referral after your stay)

Follow-Up: Booking before Babies

After all the dust has settled I guess it's time to put up a quick follow-up to how the whole booking before babies work around went.  All in all booking an extra-seat for an unborn infant was a great idea and it more or less went smoothly at the airport and in the air.  

If you'll be travelling close to your due date, or if you're like us and used miles and need to take advantage of availability while you can, booking an extra seat for an unborn infant may be the only way to actually get a seat.  There were a couple drawbacks to booking the extra seat though. It cost a little more, we had to pay the co-pay on the extra seat, as well as the lap-infant fare, which amounted to about $100.  The other and more annoying drawback was that we officially had two lap infants.  While in actuality we only had one, they were both booked as lap infants, and the airlines system could only see us as passengers with lap infants, the empty "extra seat" apparently counted as if someone was there .  Due to the amount of oxygen masks in each row airlines limit the number of lap infants that can be in any given row at a time.  So if the plane is 3/4/3, like the 747 we flew to Frankfurt the system would not allow us to be put into a row together next to a window, because as far as it was concerned we were 3 people and two lap infants and there are only 4 oxygen masks.  Luckily for us the flight to FRA was a 2/3rds full and the gate agent just blocked out a whole middle row in front of the bulkhead for us.  On the way back was another story, our connecting flight in Chicago was nearly full, and we barely had any connection time.  Due to the whole two lap infant thing they were unable to get us seats next to each other.  Luckily other passengers on the plane were fairly understanding to our plight and agreed to swap seats to allow us to all fit together, it probably helped that they didn't mind getting away from the possibility of 4 hours of screaming.  

If you are set on not travelling with a lap infant(or two) and you must book your tickets before they're born then booking "extra seats" is a no brainer and well worth a little bit of a headache and a few extra bucks.