50. Parent's Guide to Actually Enjoying Family Travels with Lee Friedman

Ever pondered the possibility of globetrotting with your tots in tow? It's a daunting thought for many parents, but our guest, Lee Friedman of Mango Tree Travel, turns that challenge into charming chronicles of exploration. She's traded her corporate law briefcase for a passport full of stamps and a wealth of knowledge on family travel. Join us as Lee debunks myths about vacations being on hold until the kids are older, revealing instead how these escapades can deepen the parenting experience and create indelible bonds.

Embarking on a family journey often seems like navigating a maze without a map, but that's where the expertise of modern travel advisors comes in. This episode peels back the curtain on the meticulous planning that goes into tailor-made vacations that cater to the pint-sized traveler without sidelining the parents' desire for luxury. We cover everything from the nitty-gritty of starting a travel-focused business to the joy of incorporating your own family into the research process. It's an insightful look at how the right advisor can turn your family holiday from a logistics nightmare into a dreamy escape.

Wrapping up with practical pointers, we crack the code on choosing the perfect locales for both tiny explorers and teenage adventurers. Find out why shallow pools and calm beaches are the secret ingredients for toddler-friendly trips or how a villa in Grenada can teach you a lesson or two about childproofing on the fly. Plus, she'll share a sneak peek into my own family's travel bucket list, stirring up wanderlust for safaris, Caribbean escapes, and European adventures. So tune in, and let's chart a course for family travels that are not just manageable, but magical.

(00:09) - Traveling With Kids

(06:37) - The Rise of Modern Travel Advisors

(16:02) - Traveling With Toddlers and Teens

(23:50) - Tips for Traveling With Kids and Dream Vacation Spots

(28:32) - Traveling With Kids

You can connect with Lee here:
https://mangotreetravel.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mango_tree_travel/

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Email: katie@burntpancakes.com

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Transcript

00:09 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Hello, hello, and welcome back to the burnt pancakes podcast. I am your host, katie Fenske, and I am here reminding moms that everyone burns to first pancake. Okay, imagine this you are sitting in a luxurious resort in the Caribbean, the sound of the waves in the background, you're laying by a pool, everything is gorgeous and your kids are actually with you and you're having a wonderful time. Okay, this is not a dream. This is actually a reality, and my guest, lee Friedman, is going to tell us all about how this can happen. 

00:44
Lee is a mom of two and she is leaving her job in corporate law to run a family travel company called Mango Tree Travel, which she launched in 2022. Her mission is to help parents feel prepared and optimistic about traveling with kids, something that a lot of us usually dread. The website is a resource where busy moms who don't have the time to plan vacations can find family friendly hotels that they can actually get excited about. So get ready to pack your bags, because we're going to the Caribbean with my guest, lee. Well, lee, welcome to the podcast, thank you. 

01:22
I think this one's going to be really, really fun. I think it's very ironic that we're recording this on a day that's pouring down rain, gray and cloudy, and we're going to be talking about Caribbean vacations. I'm all in. It's the best time I know. Okay, so you are, um, you founded the Mango Tree Travel um company and your job is to help parents travel with their kids yes, incredible. Now I will say, my husband and I are always like, oh, and when the kids are 18, or when the kids are on the house, we're finally going to take that trip. You believe differently, so tell us a little bit about how this all came about. 

01:57 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Yeah, um, I do believe differently. I, um, I am one of these people and I think there's a lot of us out there that always said travel was such as like a really important part of who I am, and it was um increasingly important to me in the years right before I had kids. Um, because I had a disposable income, I had all the time in the world, right, uh, right, like it was like. 

02:19 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Oh, I'm not before kids Before kids. 

02:22 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
I got my paycheck and I would think about constantly like what the next trip was going to be, and partly, too, was my professional background. Uh, you know, I was a lawyer in New York City. I had a very busy job and I wanted to get away whenever I could, and then, when I had kids, I kind of we, we prioritized keeping it up and that just was something that we were always going to do. It wasn't really a question for us, um, though I learned later, sort of through this process, that that is not how it goes for everybody, um, that that transition to traveling with kids can be very daunting, um, and very overwhelming and very expensive, and that, um, if you don't start doing it right away the way we did, then almost sometimes becomes more that barrier, almost becomes greater, because it's been longer. 

03:08 - Katie Fenske (Host)
You keep pushing it off. Exactly, I'll do it when they're older. I'll do it when they're older. Yeah, exactly, exactly. 

03:14 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
And for me, I'm lucky enough to have sort of had the ability to do it when my kids were young I very quickly started to see myself as a better parent when I was prioritizing travel. I'm more laid back when I travel than I am when we're like hanging out at my house and I can see the dishes in the kitchen, Like I. I am a better person when I'm traveling and, it turns out, I'm also a better parent when I'm traveling. And that was sort of a reinforcing cycle where I then would prioritize taking more trips. 

03:43
Um, and now we had one really great trip with our daughter, Jane, before we were going to stay in, before COVID, Um, and before we had our second, where we took her to Columbia and we actually which was amazing and we felt that we had a better trip because she was there with us. Uh, like people, like, like, like you know, like more, more doors opened for us, Like people were so kind and went out of their way to help us because we had a little one and she had a good temperament for it by that time she was three because we traveled with her quite a bit and I don't know they were just like little things about that trip where I thought you know it doesn't have to be that you're traveling in spite of having kids and expecting like a lesser than experience. It can even add to your experience because it forces you to travel in slightly different ways when you're traveling with kids. Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying like this kind of continued to be the soapbox I kept finding myself on. Everybody should travel with their kids and then COVID hit. 

04:41
I had my second baby. I hit a lull in my career as a lawyer and I was trying to plan a trip and I like couldn't. I couldn't do it. Like the travel planning part of it suddenly became much more frustrating once I had a second and the internet kept showing me a room with two double beds and I thought I don't want to stay in that room with my seven month old and my two year old. Why do you think? 

05:05 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I want to stay in that room. 

05:07 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Where is the like creative room arrangement that actually allows me to like find spaces Like why do I have to put in the ages of my kid every time I search If you're not actually going to like take that into account when you're showing me pricing, anyway? So I got very frustrated. I ranted about it over like a bunch of mimosas with my friends and then I was like I want to build. I want to build something better. 

05:28 - Katie Fenske (Host)
And then I sort of like the birth of that idea. Yeah, like, yeah, one moment you can remember sitting there. Oh God, this is where it started. 

05:36 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Oh, I sometimes regret that. I sometimes regret that moment. 

05:39 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Mostly, mostly, I don't regret that I have that moment where I was in, like I, my job was changing Um, and my husband said well, if you're not going to teach, what do you like doing? And literally the word just blurted out my mouth I like talking to moms. And it was just like ha ha ha, funny, Like how are you going to make a a career out of that? And I was like, well, fast forward a couple of years and we got a podcast. 

06:01 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
I love that. 

06:02 - Katie Fenske (Host)
That's amazing, it's like the birth of that idea. 

06:04 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
But yeah, and I used to joke, you know people say like, oh, if you weren't X, whatever it is that you're doing, what else would you want to be? And people say I was like I kind of want to be a travel agent, I don't know, and people would sort of like roll their eyes at me. 

06:16 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I was like, oh, do traditional travel agents exist anymore? Like I remember when we were younger, like that's how our parents would do it and it's like here's your physical flight ticket. 

06:26 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
but now with so much online. 

06:27 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Are there travel agents? 

06:30 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
or so that's such an interesting question too, because it's the industry is made, or the profession is making, a huge comeback. 

06:37
I did not know that I had never used a travel agent before I launched May, and Go Tree and now I'm part of this group of travel advisors is sort of the more trendy term for it and it is a lot less like book my flight and find me a deal. 

06:51
It is a lot more help me design and curate a trip. 

06:56
And it's kind of amazing because it's people, now me, who spend their days like learning about like what are the best hotels out there for their different types of clients, who are the best partners to work with in country, who arrange the transfers and the tours in a way that you're going to feel comfortable with, and then like think of all the legwork you do planning a trip like instead, that gets handed to you in a curated itinerary that really takes into account like your interests and your family or your like, whatever your situation is, and I think it's becoming like a much more popular way to plan travel as travel planning. I think that's more challenging because the online resources have kind of overshot and we're now in like total information overload. And how do you sift through it all to actually find the experience you want and not waste hours and hours of time? And I think that has opened up this sort of hole for a newer version of a travel advisor to come in and help people navigate that. 

07:54 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, it's just the thought of how do we get from the hotel to from the airport to the hotel with two kids with car seats like with car seats, right, I don't want to have to figure that out, Like I would love it. Someone's like I've got that. I've got that covered. I'll tell you how to do it. 

08:07 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Yeah, and that's something that, like, I have noticed that you're not alone of. Like, that's one of the first things we have to think about is, like, am I bringing my car seats? Are there going to be? Because it's not just that, what if I want to go out to dinner while I'm staying at this resort or wherever you might be staying, but I haven't brought my car seats because I arranged them as part of the transfer. Like then, am I stuck, like do I just bring them with me? And so little things like that. Or like, um, one of the things that always bugs me and this is true all over the Caribbean is that a lot of Caribbean restaurants don't open until noon, but my, my children don't eat lunch at noon because they weigh their early risers and they wake up early at 6am Exactly. 

08:47
I can navigate that, but I have to think ahead about it, right, like I either have to have a kitchen that I can stock with some snacks and breakfast foods, or I just need to know my plan for what's going to happen at 1130 when they want lunch. 

09:01
Right, um, yet another one I learned by mistake once, Uh, but you know you don't like think about those little things, but when you work with someone who doesn't day in and day out and they've sort of learned, like, what are the trigger points that sort of parents need to specifically think about, yeah, um, it's kind of helpful. 

09:18 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, so you had this idea with your friends. How did it go from that idea to I'm starting this and now eventually quitting your boy? 

09:27 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
No, I can't believe it. Um, I had the time at that moment, like I said, I had hit a lull. I had just come back from maternity leave, um, my legal practice sort of hadn't picked back up yet. Okay, so I have. 

09:42
I did have some time, which was nice, and we just happened to have a family friend who is a luxury travel advisor, uh, in California, and so I think I was on the phone with him two days later and my husband pushed me to set up the call. He said I think you should try to do this, why don't you have some calls? And that first phone call I sort of learned a little about, about what it looks like to be that, what this modern day travel agent or travel advisor does. And I started doing a lot of research to see if this sort of family travel resource that I envisioned, what made sure it wasn't really out there in the way that I thought, um, and I think, like a month later, I had hired somebody to help me build a website. First I thought I was going to build it myself, which was really awesome. 

10:24 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, your website is beautiful. I did not build it myself. This makes me want to take a trip to the Caribbean right now. 

10:30 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Thank you, Uh, okay, well, I, I hired an amazing woman, um, to help me design and brand it, because I wanted it to actually like really sort of convey. But once I realized that that was not something I should do by myself, um, and then I sort of like, I just kind of went all in, like, and then and when I say sometimes I regret that moment, um, I, I didn't have any idea what it would look like to be an entrepreneur. Like, that was not, that's not my professional background, it's not really what I set out to do. I just had this idea. And now I'm, um, two years later. I'm two years and change later from, like, the moment of the idea and now, like, I have a business and I have to learn what that looks like, and but I like learning and so I sort of just sort of dove in and the website itself launched about nine months after the idea. So I got the website up and I took nine trips to the Caribbean that year. 

11:26 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Uh, that's like the perk of this job. Right your research, which is amazing, Did your? 

11:30 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
kids go on all those trips with you. So I made a promise to my husband that I would take at least one child with me on every trip. I think that first year I took one trip by myself because I there was just something with the timing, I can't remember why now, but every other trip that year was either my whole family with us, one child with us, some some of them we brought like a friend, like one child, plus another family with their kid, Like. So we kind of mixed it up a little bit over the course of that year. You know what? I bankrolled it myself and I was lucky enough to have this other income while I was doing it. But that first year I just sort of was like, let me just see if I can build this expertise and build this site and see how it goes. 

12:11 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Um were they all in the Caribbean. Mostly in the Caribbean is where you went. 

12:14 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
That first year I decided I was going to specialize in Caribbean travel. I said this is what I one thing I love, it's one thing I know, and I think there's a way to approach Caribbean travel that nobody really does that often, or at least not as a like focus, which is that, you know, the easiest thing to find in the Caribbean are the big all-inclusive resorts, and I there are just so. There's just so much beyond that in the islands in terms of culture and boutique hotels and adventure, and that's like I, that's sort of your jam passion of mine, yeah, and so I was like let me start with that Right. 

12:50
Like I want to focus on family travel in a way and that was another big part of the idea. It wasn't just Can we find a hotel room that fits everybody, it was can we find places where parents would have been excited to go to this hotel even without kids? 

13:06 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Or are still excited to go to this one what I see in the website. I see it looks luxurious, it looks like a retreat, it looks like an escape, but there are kids there at the same time. 

13:17 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Yes, I'm so glad you see that that was like the goal. 

13:20 - Katie Fenske (Host)
We did go recently to Legoland, which is super kid. It was like it's my son's birthday. This will be great. It is very much geared towards kids and they make it easy for parents to do. But my husband and I are like I can't believe we're sleeping in a pirate ship tonight. Did you ever think it'd be here on a day so? It was fun for what we wanted, but it was like to have a vacation that our kids could enjoy just as much and we get enough out of it too. 

13:48 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Oh, that's a sweet spot. I try not to get too much up on a soapbox about you have to always travel this way. You must always travel to places that are sophisticated with your children. I don't believe that I like Disney. I've been to Disney, I've done all-inclusive resorts when it was what our family needed at that time. But I also try to mix in trips where we can get excited about them too. And then we have increasingly done that, and then you tweak it as your kids evolve and change and you learn what they like and you can think, ok, well, how do we factor this in? And that might mean this is just an example I recently have had a huge crush on the Dolomite region of northern Italy. 

14:31 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Oh, cool, desperate to go there. 

14:33 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
There are all these family hotels there that have strollers and gear, but beautiful hiking. So I could get excited about hiking and I can also get excited about the playground that looks like a pirate ship that's on the property of this hotel. So it's not always like it doesn't have to be. They're not mutually exclusive, but it's finding ways to find something for everybody. That, I think, is heart and overwhelming, because you just don't know. 

15:02 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I'd say overwhelming, like I don't even know where to start. You put in your location. You're like, oh, there's a million hotels. 

15:09 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Right. So how do I start? How do I find the ones that are going to be the best for families and for me as a person who's a parent and a person who's also on this vacation Right, who's also on this vacation? Exactly? And for some families that means child care, For some it doesn't. There's all sorts of different things that go into that, but I wanted to really focus on that aspect of it too. 

15:32 - Katie Fenske (Host)
OK. So when we first spoke, you told me about your first international trip with your 18-month-old daughter. So, in true burnt pancakes fashion, I think we need to hear about this travel fail that you had. 

15:45 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Oh man, it was excellent. So I mentioned my love of the Caribbean. So when my husband and I, before we got married, we spent six weeks in Grenada, which is my favorite Caribbean island, it's sort of where I fell in love with the islands and we really wanted to go back with our daughter. Once we had her, we were thinking about what our first really big trip be with her and we thought let's go back to Grenada and we'd always also wanted to bring friends back with us. So we planned the trip with a couple of friends who didn't have kids and then several of our sort of new mom friends that we'd met on maternity leave. We sort of said, hey, we're going to do this trip. Does anyone want to come? They barely knew us at that point and they were like, yeah, we all want to come. So we end up in Grenada. 

16:28 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Travel when they're young, oh my gosh, when they're little babies. 

16:30 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
There's so much to hear Well so when we were planning it, they were little babies, and that's what we all thought Once we got there. 

16:39
They were little toddlers, and we had four of them and we had booked this villa. 

16:45
There's a picture of it on my website and I'll never forget it. It was an indoor, outdoor living space, and so there, and there was no air conditioning upstairs, so you had to leave the doors open, which meant pure access to the pool for the toddlers and we have one kid in the group who was, like always, described as a runner and so you couldn't leave those doors open, and so you had to close them. So we were all sweating all the time. And then there was a spiral staircase that went up right above the pool, up to a rooftop with a balcony that had a toddler-sized gap underneath it, and so these 18 months old kept trying to climb the spiral staircase to go up to the very unsafe roof next to the pool. At one point, my daughter did fall in the pool and my husband had to dive in after her, and it was just like you couldn't take your eyes away from them the whole time, like not relaxing at all At all and we made it work. 

17:40
We had a great time. We got some babysitting help. We found one room in the villa that was child safe and the babysitters were only allowed to be in that room with our children. Like, stay here, it's fine. But in hindsight that was the first of like oh, when I was a new parent with a nine-month-old, I didn't know what it was going to be like to have an 18-month-old. I didn't even think to check the size of what the balcony I mean. Maybe I should have Right. 

18:07 - Katie Fenske (Host)
You didn't go to look for that. 

18:08 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Yep, I just didn't know what to look for at all when we booked it, because we just didn't know, and so I always look back on that trip. 

18:16 - Katie Fenske (Host)
And I didn't even have this in mind, this idea of starting a family travel company, but it's almost like you went through the hard stuff so that other people can benefit from it. Don't have to. And if someone with a toddler comes to you and says I want to go to the Caribbean, do you have a list of hotels or resorts like OK, this one's perfect for toddlers, and then you can just show? 

18:38 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
it, I do, I have, I mean, I've also funny. I've kind of come full circle where I also tend to think that, like Most islands can work for most families. It's more about what your tolerance for some of these things are. But for toddlers there are a few things that I think just make your life easier. One is a shallow pool where they can splash around someone independently, where you don't have to be in the water with them every moment. Right, those platform pools, the calm beaches. I think that the sleeping arrangement is almost most important when you have a toddler, because that's when, if you're in the room with your kid at least for my kids like you're not going to sleep as well, whereas as you get a little older, you might go back to sharing a space with them. 

19:21
Exactly so little things like that. It's less that I have specific hotels, though I certainly have some favorites for certain age ranges, which is part of the guide I know that you downloaded. 

19:32 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I did get the guide because it's incredible. Yeah, I want to go through some of those tips, yeah. 

19:38 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
But it's more like developing the checklist of, okay, what are the toddler things we should be thinking about? And then I naturally have had some like some hotels that are better for toddlers, but more I more have other locations that I actually, I do think make sense to wait until kids are older, where you can really take advantage of the activities on that island or that hotel and that you'd be sort of disappointed to miss if you were there with a toddler Right. 

20:05 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Like oh, when they're older, we'll try that. 

20:08 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Yeah, I don't like that feeling of being in a place and feeling like you're not getting to experience it and your kid is holding you back from experiencing it, and so that's part of like picking your places somewhat strategically so that you can enjoy it. And that, I think, is partly why that Columbia trip was so successful for us, because it turned out that, like Cartagena is an extraordinarily hot city and everybody takes a siesta in the afternoon and it has all these beautiful boutique hotels with these courtyard pools that you sort of want to experience, and so, with the toddler, we would get up in the morning, we would go have our morning and we would be excited to go back to the hotel for nap time, rather than feeling like we were missing out on something, to not be able to continue on the adventure. And so it's thinking about like how to structure your days in a way where you'll enjoy it at your kids specific ages and won't feel like you're missing out. 

21:04 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Oh my gosh, a place that's designed with a nap time, that's right, totally toddler. Why wouldn't you go there with a toddler, right? 

21:10 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Well, again, you don't think about it, unless you sort of experience it and you think, oh, this turned out to be a perfect toddler destination. 

21:16 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, I love it. Well, I would still prefer that place. I love naps, yeah. Well also, do you have tips for traveling with like preteens and teens? 

21:26 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Yeah, I think I don't have preteens and teens yet, so you should know my kids are still young. 

21:31
But from other clients and from families that I've worked with, one of the things that I think a lot of families see is wanting to give their kids some independence and get their buy-in so that they don't feel like they're being dragged along on the trip. So part of it is, I think, in the pre-planning process of helping, say, giving them a few options and saying which of these destinations has activities that you would be excited about. Would you want to plan or pick the excursion or the activity or the restaurant so that it's something you can get excited about? And I've always liked small hotels with kids because it allows for a little bit more freedom of movement where you're not nervous about where they're going to be at all times. And I think with teens in particular, thinking about is it a place where you feel comfortable having them walk down the beach to a restaurant without you? Is it an island where they can get around by golf cart and they can take off on the golf cart again without you hovering over them? 

22:33 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Oh my, gosh, is there a place on a golf cart? I can't even imagine that yet. 

22:37 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Yeah, right, but it's trouble. But is there a way you can do it? Yes, Like there's a resort in the Bahamas that I really love. It's a private island resort and there's not a ton going on other than a gorgeous beach and it's a natural beauty. But you get around by golf cart and like they could go off and explore the island and you wouldn't feel nervous because there's literally nowhere for them to go. 

23:00
So things like that, I think, working in their interests, whether it's like history or nature, and getting them involved and giving them some freedom. 

23:12 - Katie Fenske (Host)
That's fun. Okay, what is your favorite place in the Caribbean to visit? Oh, I mean, it probably changes based on how old your kids are, but your life? Yeah, three places. 

23:23 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
I would. My favorite place is Grenada and I just went back a few months ago for the first time since the 18 month old adventure and I went by myself to stay at my favorite hotel there which I'd never stayed at and I send clients there a lot so I wanted to go and like, stay there and going back I had that moment of like. Oh yeah, this island is as special as I remember it being, now that I've been to a lot more since the last time I'd been. I also really love Bonn air, which is a little bit off the beaten path for a lot of families. It's a dive island. It's a tiny island down by Aruba. It's a Dutch island and the snorkeling and the ease of it there's something about that island that really I really, really like. 

24:07 - Katie Fenske (Host)
So there's a lot of these, a lot of these places you need to take like one flight and then like a smaller flight to get in most of my Some most most of them have direct flights from Miami, and so it's often a connecting flight unless you live in New York. 

24:22 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
You're lucky enough to live in New York you can often fly direct. You are not lucky to live on the West Coast when it comes to Caribbean travel. Although I think there's a long flight for us, it's a long flight for you, though there's a few islands that have direct flights from. 

24:36 - Katie Fenske (Host)
LA. 

24:36 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Well, I was expecting that. 

24:40 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Flying tips for kids, because with the older kids you know they're pretty easy to fly with. What about when you have little kids and you're flying a good distance? 

24:49 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Yeah, let me. I'm gonna give a plug for somebody who else who I love. There's a website called mini Voyager, though the mom who founded it Bree. She Came up with these travel kits for kids of all different ages, and so, rather than like, because I think one of the big things with little kids is. Keeping them constantly entertained and, as you know, their attention span is like five seconds long yeah so she came Every toy in take off. 

25:13
Exactly. Oh, my god, that's the worst. So she came up with this kit. She sells these kits that are designed and you can. It comes with all small toys designed for airplanes, but a whole set of them, and so it's something you can like, swap in and out. I think her kits are amazing and I but that's sort of how my approach was snacks, snacks, snacks, all the snacks, and I don't shy away from screen time on airplanes like guys, some parents do, and I do not. 

25:43 - Katie Fenske (Host)
And I'm before I had kids. I said I wasn't going to, and then we had kids and we were like yeah, this is. 

25:50 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
I watched three movies on an international flight. Like why are they not allowed to watch three movies on an international flight? And so I do. You know, not everybody feels the same way as me on that, but I, you know, I do feel very strongly that if you're gonna put your little kids in front of a tablet on an airplane, that you need to put headphones on them. Don't be that parent. 

26:10 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Volume up. 

26:11 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
But I think you can teach little kids to wear the right headphones. I think you can and, and I think, proud Two things on toys and screens. One is something like headphones for like a two-year-old practice at home so that when they so that they associate, when you pull those headphones out, they know, oh hey, I'm gonna get screen time if I put that on, I'm gonna wear it. And also save some toys for the flights that are new, so that it's a surprise, it's something new. They aren't tired of it yet. So like a little bit of preparation and Surprise, I think it's goes a long way. 

26:46 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I've always been so nervous, like when my kids are like kicking the chair and doing this, but I've never had anyone like, yeah, complain. Most of the time they're like we've all been there, we know exactly like people are so understanding. 

27:00 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Exactly. And if they aren't, I hear there's new airlines that are gonna do like adults only sections. They can fly on those ones. 

27:06 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, get me out of that. My kids right here, yep, right, that's right oh lollipop. 

27:12 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
lollipops is another good one, yes, especially because the ears right, yeah, yeah, and they take a long time to eat. 

27:19 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Mmm, yeah, okay, what is your dream vacation spot like on your bucket list that you haven't been to yet? I know you talked about Italy is yeah, and where else? 

27:29 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
I'm starting to really get excited about the idea of doing a safari with my kids. They're just getting old enough to think about how you could do that in a way that is family friendly, but also on my own personal bucket list. So that is definitely up there, and I'm also. Central America is a big priority for me this year, so we're going to believes for spring break. I've never gone to believes, and then I really wanted to try to Learn and understand the Costa Rica, nicaragua, some of these like Caribbean adjacent. 

27:58
Yeah countries that also offer you know more jungle and land based. 

28:04 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I could see this is standing this totally yeah, it is the European trip. And then, yeah, that's so fun, yeah. 

28:12 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
I'm going to a conference in Spain this year to learn about like off the beaten path it's European experiences, so like starting to dip my toe in a little bit of. I think the family hotel market in Europe is incredible. There's a, there's a lot there, and it's it's hard to know about it and learn about it, so I Very impressed. 

28:32 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Our neighbors took their three boys they're like eight, five and I think one Two London and Paris over a Thanksgiving break and I saw her pictures and I was like oh my god, how is she doing? I'm so impressed. 

28:46 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
But yeah, you know but you can do it, you can, I don't think we've ever regretted a trip We've taken they're exhausting, like the flights are tiring, but when we look back we never regret it, and my kids still talk. You know, you were. 

29:01 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Chicago last year and they were like and they saw me, fancy hotel. We say it was not a fancy hotel, but for them but it to them it was the coolest place ever. It was like eight stories. It was so cool. Yeah, yeah, you're not regretted. 

29:14 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
I had two responses to that. One is my husband made me watch a bluey episode recently, like travel should watch, and it's called it's one of the new ones that just came out. It's called relax and it's about a mom and her family that arrive on vacation and she keeps trying to get them to do stuff so she can get to the pool and relax and they keep being like the bathtub, the shower, and they're just like so excited to see the hotel room. Yeah it was very like on point for my family. 

29:40
Oh, that's too funny, yeah, yeah, but the other you asked we were talking before we got on the phone together about, like, some tips for thinking about travel with kids, and I've recently been thinking about more and more the idea of travel with your kids being an investment and and what I don't know. One of it was thinking about like the Travel is very expensive right now, or can be, and there's a lot of price Pushback I get from parents who are nervous about spending too much and I was trying to think of like, why that is like, why do we think about travel that way? And part of it is because we see it as like, like gluttonous, as like a treat and, as you know, it's like something we're treating ourselves to, and so there's a little bit of that guilt, like should I really spend $10,000 or $20,000 or whoever much it's going to cost on this trip? And we feel guilty about it. But when you think about like, what you just said is like you've never regretted Any trip that you've taken. And that's not to say you have to spend more money to have great trips, but thinking of it as something you're going to talk about and the investment you're going to remember, and that at these, especially with young kids, thinking about if spending a little bit more money is going to really overall increase your Comfort level and happiness level on this trip, when your kids are in this window where it feels challenging Like you're not gonna look back and remember that extra $500 you spent on this thing that made your whole trip easier, right where it's the same thing like we think about. 

31:10
If you think about how much you're willing to spend in your daily life Like a couple hundred dollars here or a couple hundred dollars there to make your life easier. It's harder with travel because you often see it in this one big number of like this is what this trip is going to cost, going to be so expensive, yikes, um I. But have you ever really regretted the investment and doing the trip the way you wanna do it? I don't know. I've been thinking about that a lot the last couple of weeks, trying to help some families plan spring breaks and like how I wanna advise them to think about trips with their kids Without being-. 

31:43 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I'm not just throwing in these extras just because, yeah, yeah, yeah, like I do know, when we went to Chicago we splurged on I cannot remember the travel service, but it was a service that picked us up from the airport but they had car seats already installed. 

31:58
It was like it was like Uber but like to the next level and it was a little bit more expensive. But we got in at, I think, one in the morning, so knowing that we had some guy on his phone saying I am right here at the gate, I'll be ready for you, the car seats are installed and got us right to the hotel, it was like that was worth the extra, whatever. Cause we were like how are we gonna bring three seats with us? We're not doing that. Yeah, exactly, A piece of mind was like that was worth it. 

32:26 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Yes, and I often tell parents like, what's the thing that stresses you out and like for you it might be car seats, for somebody else that might be sharing a sleeping space with kids or whatever that thing is that might it might be, or the plane of like, try to solve for that piece a little bit ahead of time. You can't solve for everything right. Travel is unpredictable and that's part of what makes it great. Kids are unpredictable. But if there's a couple of things that are causing you anxiety in the planning process of like, how are we gonna handle this? Like, spend a little extra on that thing, you know, and the amount of peace of mind that it gives you can be so like great. Or like London, for example. 

33:03
Like I think about some of the museums or tours you'd wanna do, and I can imagine a parent being very overwhelmed of like, how are we gonna tackle a day in this city in a way that makes sense for our kids? We have a partner in London called Family Twist that does tours, private tours that are all organized with kids in mind, so they'll do like a Harry Potter tour of the city and they bring like scavenger hunt materials for the kids and it's like a way to really again involve them in some of the sightseeing that might otherwise be boring for them. That's so cool. But it's like so cool, right, and like those resources are out there and they can take some time to find, and so that's why having somebody in your corner to help you find them is great, but even still, like approaching the trip research in a way, that's like what's stressing me out and how can I make that more kid-friendly? How can I fix that thing? 

33:51 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, when people come to you, so they go to your website. Do you work one-on-one with people or is it just like here's your guide? What do you do? 

34:01 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
I have a few different ways that I can help families travel, ranging from sort of like depending on the investment you wanna make and the amount of customization. So, yes, I do one-on-one custom trip planning. So take your trip from A to Z, you know, talk about your goals, help you pick the destination whether it's the Caribbean or somewhere else and sort of do the whole thing. I also do like for the Caribbean, just like destination advice and booking. Like you just wanna figure out which island to go to and which hotel, with a little less of the like daily itinerary planning. And then I also do I try to do consultations for families who wanna do the planning themselves but maybe wanna run some of these things by someone who's really thought about the family travel piece. 

34:44
And then the website was designed. 

34:46
I mean the original funny doing the travel planning was a little bit of a byproduct of the original vision, which was to create a website that itself can be a resource for parents. 

34:56
So on the website there are really detailed hotel profiles for some of my favorite Caribbean hotels that are good for families, that can be filtered based on room types you know, babysitting, the type of pool for toddlers, things like that and I will always book, like I do complimentary hotel booking. If people find the site, find a hotel on our site and wanna book it through us to try to get some perks or just to have us sort of handle it and be an extra touch point, I do that as well. And then there's a ton of blog content. I'm putting out travel guides this year for all my favorite islands so people can buy a travel guide that has sort of like our three favorite hotels in this island that are different budgets, so anything from budget to luxury. A seven day itinerary links to booking tours, so a little less custom but more affordable if someone just wants like a resource to help them plan their trip. So it's a sort of a range of things. 

35:56 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, okay, random question. I thought of yeah, what is your favorite airline for flying with kids? 

36:02 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Ooh, I actually think Southwest is my favorite airline for flying with kids. I do love Southwest. They have family boarding right after they have unassigned seats. 

36:13 - Katie Fenske (Host)
See that stressed me out at first, because I was like, oh my gosh, what if, like, we don't all sit together? 

36:18 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Have you ever had it where you Okay, I was gonna say have you ever had it where you did not get to sit together? Nope they do A boarding first and then they do family boarding right after that. So by the whenever family's bored, you're usually like the back two thirds of the plane because the people in the A boarding has like but by the time that group's boarding, there are always still free full rows available. 

36:39
So I've never missed out on sitting with my family, and when you've got a baby in particular, there's that sort of trick of trying to see if they'll let you bring a car seat on and get them their own seat, even if you haven't paid for their own seat. That's much harder when seats are assigned and they have to move people around to give you the free seat. But on Southwest if there's any empty seats, you're more likely to get that empty middle seat or they'll let you bring your car seat on and so you end up being able to kind of like, get that extra space for free More easily than other airlines. 

37:14
That is good to know. And I guess, like if you have a teen. 

37:16 - Katie Fenske (Host)
They might be like mom. 

37:17 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
I don't wanna sit by you this is fine if I can, and this is fine, yeah, yeah, so I don't know. 

37:23 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay. So if we wanna find you and book our fabulous trip, how do we find you? 

37:27 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
So the website is mangotreetravelcom, and Instagram's another great way to get in touch with me Also Mango Tree Travel, so pretty easy to find. There's forums on the website for if you wanna plan a trip, so it's the easiest way to talk about trip planning. You can see the travel guides on there, but I also always respond to, when I can, to Instagram messages as well. 

37:50 - Katie Fenske (Host)
But I'm not laying by the table. I shouldn't say always, I shouldn't say always. Well, I did get your travel guide and I will say like there was stuff in there that I'm like never even considered this Cause. I mean, I don't have babies anymore. So now I'm at like elementary school age and I was like, oh, these are brilliant ideas that didn't occur to me. So, thank you, and that's the travel guide, the traveling guide too. 

38:11 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Yeah, thank you, and yeah, so I just put it up. So I'm so glad you liked it. It's a free guide to traveling in the Caribbean with kids and I try to give tips and advice for every age group and a couple of my favorite hotels for each age group. That just to spark ideas, and it links back to the more detailed hotel profiles on the website, so if you want more information, I need to plan a dream vacation. 

38:31 - Katie Fenske (Host)
This is too hard. Good, that's the goal. That's the goal. Okay, I was gonna wrap this up, but I wanna know where did the name come from? 

38:39 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
Oh, grenada. The book that inspired my husband and I to go spend time in Grenada before we got married was called An Embarrassment of Mangoes. It's a great book about a family that, like, mortgages their house and sales through the Caribbean. Not a family, a couple, but Okay. 

38:54
And she, the author who wrote the book loved Grenada and that's how we picked that island. And so once we were thinking about it and in talking to other friends, I know that, like mangoes are not only a symbol of the Caribbean but sort of like travel in various parts of the world like around the equator. There's like all kinds of memories that can be evoked by thinking about mangoes. 

39:16 - Katie Fenske (Host)
So, but that's where it came from. It's very catchy, it's cute. I like it. Thank you, I appreciate that. Well, thank you so much for coming on. This was very enlightening and it brought some sunshine to my gloomy rainy day. 

39:27 - Lee Friedman (Guest)
I'm glad, I'm glad. Thanks for having me. This has been such a fun chat, so fun, thank you. 

39:33 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, who is ready to pack their bags and come traveling with my crazy family, because I think I'm ready to book my vacation? I hope you enjoyed this mom conversation. It was so fun for me to chat with Lee and I am so inspired by not only her passion for traveling, but the fact that she is helping parents and moms get away and enjoy life and living in vacation. If you enjoyed this podcast, I would love it if you shared it with someone, if you subscribed to my YouTube channel or left me a five star review, and until next week's mom conversation, I always wanna remind you that everyone burns their first pancake, even while traveling, so just keep flipping.