• Michelle and Sasha with friends, and the friends are all paying their own way, in Spain. Even with friends around, the focus for Michelle is on one child instead of two, and it is often appropriate to do things separately. Then do something next time with the other child.  One parent, one child.  Good idea. And an exciting location.

Going with one child, and not taking even the spouse, is a new idea for many.  Try it. See ://www.takingthekids.com/Blogs/EileensBlog/The-Obamas-and-mother-daughter-trips.aspx/; and ://community.todaymoms.com/_news/2010/07/28/4770552-michelle-obama-is-right-take-kids-on-individual-vacations/

1.  Time your trip when they are well mobile, and curious.

• Kids grow.  Take them when they are ripest for the experience -before peer groups take over, and all that.
• Can you wait several years and still get the same trip? Not long. FN 1
  
  
  
  
  
  Cultural exchange. The Dracula Club, Bucharest

2.  Place.  Perfect. 

• Spain's places and history and variety - wonderful. And its issues are our own - economics, the place for minority populations, multiple traditions, cultures.  And the fun.  Don Quixote and Carmen and Sultans and Basques and Pilgrimage sites. If you choose one country in Europe to see, see Spain  .  Hope you get to try the braised pigs' ears.  A benefit of one parent one child travel is freedom in eating. Free to try without a predictable Ew-w-w-w-w-w from too many other people. Bring home some recipes.
  

3.  We spend our money better on memories than things, once there is enough to keep you going at home.

Comparing alternate choices for spending:
Taxpayer Perspective on Costs: Prefer a Spain and other vacations vs. other presidents' duplicative and egotistical insanity of a second White HouseThis is not a new idea - just an under-covered one - see ://www.sodahead.com/united-states/bush-spends-millions-of-taxpayer-money-to-go-to-texa-camp-david-kennebuckport/blog-342631/  All that wiring.

• Why not recoup Crawford for use as the New Guantanamo? There are always ways. 
• Critics of this trip? Maureen, you know nothing this time of what you speak. And that hair is so yesterday. That's a joke, Maureen. You look lovely, as do I.
  
  
  
  Stonehenge. The Attitude.

4.  Who go "foreign"?

• The best way to vet your own perspective, if it interests you to check things out, is by changing your looking post. And you as a parent may well be able to do it, too. Even if you are of moderate means. If you are wealthier, don't gripe when you choose to put your own priorities elsewhere than in being actually with a child on your own, say you choose a McHouse or a McCar.  Michelle has the right idea.

• Foreign can be cheaper than at home, except for the airfare perhaps. Go by budget allocation, if you can.  Of course, any trip is discretionary and other expenses may have to come first.  But many parents who tut-tut at the cost of a president's family going to a foreign country could allocate their own budgets to have one parent take one child abroad. Go! Just to see it, and feel part of the bigger world, and have a ball. Just trade off the bigger car, the overnight camp, whatever - going to a foreign country is manageable, barely - depends on family priorities - with belt-tightening elsewhere.

5.  American Values - weigh, balance, consider, decide

• Give a child a sense of Freedom
• Freedom from other people's roles and their views of ours being imposed upon us.
• Freedom to take a child and relate on our own: even with a horde of photographers, there is alone time
• Could you do it? Michelle's idea may work for some. Just look at your choices, and see what choices you really have. FN 2

Contemplative time abroad puts issues at home in perspective.  Do we really need to get into others' personal lives? Offer a child contact with real other people, regular residents in other countries, other population groups, religions, communities; free of one's own group's pressures.  Start travel early? That's when kids learn. Start kids in global cultures as early as the gun people start guns early.

Time passes.

...........................
FN 1 In our family, we didn't think of trips like this until our son was grown. But our son has special needs, and going abroad with him is like going abroad with a far younger person than his years, every year. And is it fun?

Need you ask?

Are we jeopardizing our own financial future?  Sure, if you think that "jeopardy" means not being able to maintain what we used to do without thinking when I was working. We just can't now, and so we don't. Some doing without is not jeopardy. We'll get along. Fine. Drive that car until it dies. Great. When jeopardy does knock, as with people who already are in real jeopardy, we will recompute.

Meanwhile, we favor every tax or other break possible for people in marginal or middle situations, a special tax deduction every time they do something directly with, or provide a talent or cultural enrichment for, their children.  You figure out how to draft it.  If you ain't marginal and are something at middle or a little over, don't complain, and pay up so others can keep their children above the margin. Their kids are our kids.

FN 2 You have choices in how to get somewhere, if you decide you can possibly go and be reasonably responsible on all fronts. The Misery Index is too high for so many that this idea of travel is not intended to diminish that, see ://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/08/05/10-worst-places-to-live/ So, if you can, and prioritize for it, go this way: Cheap. Economy, compact rental car, no reservations for hotels or ferries, stay where you find and that may be a pensione or small place. A big hotel is but not by choice. We stay there because it is 7PM and we are tired and this one is right by the big square, or the flight out is 6AM and we need to be near the airport. Eat street food at the vendor carts, or pub food (huge portions), or smaller bistros, sometimes places with tablecloths, but that is to do fancy for fun.