How to Get Away with Murder (AKA Traveling with Sisters)

As the title suggests, traveling with family, or anyone really, can be quite challenging; hopefully none of your trips have resulted in murdering one of your travel companions but sometimes you can feel very close to it! There are pros and cons to traveling with other people – as I travel with my sisters I will be talking about family members however most things apply to any travel companions.

Sisters bicker. This is pretty much a universal fact. If you happen to have a sister you don’t argue with, what’s your secret? Being in a different place does not always stop the inevitable bickering. This can make for some tense holidays however it can also lead to discovering things you never thought you would. On our last sister holiday, the three of us went to Denmark and, whilst there, we had an argument over riding bikes to a deer park. It was a pretty impressive argument and resulted in me walking away and saying I didn’t care about what we did, I was happy to do nothing because I was so annoyed. This isn’t the way you want to spend your holiday, however once we had all cooled down a little, we ate and came up with a new plan of what we wanted to do with the afternoon. This led to us visiting Dock 1, Aarhus’ public library. Now I’m a big book person (English literature student, and all) so I’m always going to be happy in a library but this was one of the most amazing libraries I have ever visited and I have seen a fair few. If we hadn’t have had our argument we never would have visited it, so small disagreements aren’t the end of the world when you’re travelling with other people.

Not only do you get to experience new things when you’re traveling with others, but you also get better pictures out of it. I’m used to traveling alone and as such have no shame in a good selfie but having someone else to take pictures for you means you can get some really good photos of yourself (without having to talk to strangers). You also get the opportunity to take pictures of your other companions, so you can take some real belters which can be used at the most embarrassing moments to annoy your friends – particularly fun with sisters! You may, however, if you are traveling with particularly “photogenic” people find you spend a lot of your time taking photos of them which can get a little annoying (yes, Lucy, I’m talking about you!).

This speaks to differences in taste which can be difficult to overcome when traveling with other people – especially if you’re traveling in a large group. In some cases you may find you want to split up and do different things (we’ve done this on larger family holidays) or you may find ways to compromise and each get a chance to do what you want. Our solution to this was to each pick our activity for each of the three days we were in Denmark. This meant that we each got to choose what we wanted to do equally among us. It worked out very conveniently for us as we had three days to spend there and three of us.

Convenience is also a big bonus to traveling with others. If you find you’ve forgotten something that you need then you’re with people who hopefully remembered to bring it. You also always have someone to talk to, and look lost with, and eat meals with which can all be quite daunting things when you’re traveling alone. It also allows for you to be in multiple places at once, for example when we had the bikes I waited outside while the other two went into a shop to get us breakfast, and in Disneyland I was able to go and find us a table while Lucy waited for the food. This also comes in handy should one of you ever require emergency assistance whilst you’re traveling. Additionally, as we’re sisters, only one of us needs to text our mum so she knows we’re all ok!

Obviously every relationship is different, and you may be able to go four days away with your siblings without a single fight, or you may have exactly the same taste as your best friend and want to do every thing exactly the same, but these are just a few tips about how to get the best out of traveling with others.

Do you travel with your sisters a lot of any other family members? What are some of your tips for getting along whilst traveling? Let us know in the comments! And if you like it, pin it!