Vacationing With Celiacs: How I Travel & What to Plan For

Hi loves! Today, I want to talk about a topic that is very near and dear to a lot of people with food allergies. Traveling while having an allergy. Some people may not think this is a big deal, however, it is, especially for those with Celiacs Disease. 

Imagine being on a cruise and no food they can offer you can be guaranteed gluten free other than plain salad with olive oil and lemon wedges as dressing? It's happened to me. It's also happened while I was in California at a photo shoot and luckily, I was able to score two boiled eggs with my plain salad as protein. So, lets imagine going to New York City and you find a few restaurants that are gluten free, but by the time you walk there and back your already hungry again after eating? Usually, when I rely on restaurants I end up loosing weight while on vacation and it's stressful not really knowing where your next meal is going to come from. 

So first and foremost, before I travel anywhere I try to find at least 10 GF restaurants for breakfast, lunch, dinner. I also try to stay at a hotel that has GF items on their room service menu as well as in house restaurants. But you can't always rely on that because errors can be made. I have the perfect example, I stayed at the Swann Resort at Disney and Disney is supposed to be well known for their GF accommodations. For breakfast I ordered a 25$ omelette that was listed as GF. I guess they got scared making it (for some reason a lot of people think meat contains gluten) and they sent me an omelet that was empty. Just one big old empty omelet for $25.00. Dinner and Lunch was also impossible at Disney because a lot of their GF menu items are geared towards children ie.; chicken strips, fries, pizza. And I am well aware of all that Disney has to offer, but this area (Downtown Disney) did not have what I was looking for. Animal Kingdom was also a bust, and the hotel was a bust. I won't go any further into that though.

So now I travel "smarter".

So as you can see, in our suite its fully stocked. These are photos from our last trip to Bonnet Creek by the way. I usually do this before I get to the hotel. So I will get things that do not need to be cooled ie.; water, chips, bread etc and we bring that on the ride up. Then I find the nearest Publix or Whole Foods Market and I get the rest of my groceries from breakfast to dinner. How do we transport this? I bought a wagon that is completely compatible and all of these groceries fit inside it as well as my purse, blanket, wine, and anything else I am bringing. As a Celiac pre-planning meals is a must so I don't get stuck with no options, but this is also great if you want to save money while on vacation. Let's be honest, $25.00 for an omelette is outrageous and $18.00 for a grilled chicken Cesar salad is even more outrageous. So if you pre-plan you will save a ton of money.

Now, one thing I want to make clear is that traveling like this is not possible if you are going out of the country. In cases like that I bring sunflower seeds and little items for the flight or to get me through a meal if I have to. When vacationing in another country the only thing I can do is do my research on the property and area and bring NIMA with me. If I can't find any good reviews on restaurants having GF options that vacation won't be happening.  Thanks for checking out the post today and if any of you are going on a cruise remember I have reviewed in full Royal Caribbean. Holland America, and Princess Cruise Lines and you can just type "Gluten Free Cruise" in the search box and they will come right up.