Month: October 2007

Categories
Tips

Is there any doubt about car seats and air travel?

Lemme out! Sure, when it's safe....(courtesy shc32 at flickr's Creative Commons)On a recent flight to Albuquerque, I watched a mother, grandmother and child board the aircraft, and Mom was lugging a car seat along with the usual diaper bag, purse, water bottles and one wiggly daughter.

Grandmother seemed rather addled (I’d already watched her flustered search for a missing boarding pass back in the terminal) so I stood up and helped hold various things while the family settled in.

The Mom & Dad Protection Society works that way.

The car seat was, of course, the biggest, bulkiest thing that mother was carrying, and just like in a car she had to manhandle it into a dinky aircraft seat, get all the straps and buckles sorted, then lean onto it with a knee to ensure that it was tightly secured into a window seat. Meantime, daughter was getting fussy and the flight attendants had that slightly pursed-lip look.

A car seat is just too much hassle, you’re thinking?

Take a look at this ABC News video about a 3-year-old sole survivor of a plane crash.

The only thing that saved that child was a car seat that her grandfather had properly strapped her into before takeoff.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says that for children’s safety on airplanes, they should be in a restraint that is appropriate for their weight, in a window seat so that there’s no chance of blocking the aisle in an evacuation. TravelWithYourKids.com also has a good post about travel with car seats on planes.

There’s even a less-bulky harness device that is FAA-approved, if you don’t need a car seat for your rental car at the other end of your journey.

Yes, it’s one more air travel pain-in-the-neck thing to deal with, like 3 oz bottles and taking off shoes, but just do it for your children’s safety, and help other parents with their kiddie flight logistics when you can.

Related post: Why don’t airlines provide restraints for kids?

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, car seats on planes

Categories
Blog

The Relationship Blogger: not a one-link stand

One-link stand — I wish I could claim credit for such a great line, but it belongs to one of my favorite mentors and friends in the on- and off-line world, Liz Strauss at Successful Blog.

A year ago this month I wrote a tribute to Liz for all of the help and guidance she’s offered. It was titled A Place To Come Home To: Successful Blog, because at Liz’s place, you’re only a stranger once.

This year, Liz threw another virtual party and invited a bunch of friends from around the world to visit Successful Blog, say hello and bring a link that was special to them.

You know me, I wandered in late as usual, but I took a post about the Dutch Waddenzee Islands, Texel and Terschelling in the North Sea because it’s like Liz; unusual and welcoming and a little off the beaten path (the Nov/Dec 07 National Geographic Traveler magazine Destinations Rated/Islands article lists Texel as a lovely “pastoral experience.”)

In tribute to all that Liz teaches me about community, I’m going to blast out the many wonderful links that Successful Blog birthday partiers brought to the festivities, and thank Liz again for her encouragement and vision.

These Links Were Shared in Just the First 210 Comments!!

Categories
Tips

Escape the holiday vise on your head: plan now for MLK weekend

I know, I know, travel around Thanksgiving and the December holidays is either….

1) already nailed down at your household, and reservations/tickets have been in hand for months, or

2) OMG, Thanksgiving is when?!

Look, it’s not too late; you can still be a family travel genius. 

Monday, January 21, 2008 is the Martin Luther King holiday in the U.S. and a great excuse for planning a trip with the kids right now.  Throw in an extra day the previous week or the week after, and air travel might be worth the hassle, but at a minimum you can certainly work out a little 3-5 hour drive somewhere.

Let’s see, depending on where you are, here’s some planning inspiration:

**  Celebrate the anniversary of the founding of Lima, Peru.

**  Haitianfest explores the music & culture of Haiti and the Caribbean, in Miami FL. There’s also Miami Art Deco Weekend in South Beach, with free events to take you back to the 1920s and 1930s.

**  The National Western Stock Show in Denver, CO.

**  See Tales from an Eruption: Pompeii in a special exhibit at the Birmingham, AL Museum of Art. 

**  The Inferno amateur ski race in Mürren, Switzerland.

**  The January Basho at Tokyo’s Kokugikan Sumo Hall.

**  Catch the Sydney Festival for cultural riches in Australia.

**  The handy calendar at GoCityKids can help you find U.S. events that weekend. 

Look for a chance to reach out….this holiday is often called “A Day On, Not a Day Off,” and a volunteer opportunities map can help you find a way to get involved in your U.S. state.

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, travel with kids, MLK Day, Martin Luther King Day

Categories
New York City USA

You must take the A train in NYC

The A Train in motion (courtesy keithcarver at flickr CC)

Did you know that this year is the 75th anniversary of the world’s longest subway line and a New York City icon?

It’s the A train, and it takes you 31 miles from the northern part of Manhattan to Far Rockaway in Queens.

(I want us all to pause here and acknowledge that “Far Rockaway” is a really cool name for a place.)

Anyway, on one of my first trips to New York, I insisted on boarding the A train and humming a few bars of the Billy Strayhorn song made popular by jazz great Duke Ellington:

“You must take the A train, to go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem….”

There’s a lot of history right there; Sugar Hill Records was one of the first big rap labels.

Considering an NYC visit? Budget Travel has some great tips from an interview with Charlie Suisman of the ManhattanUsersGuide. There are also recent hotel and sightseeing tips for Brooklyn from the UK’s Observer.

Just remember to take a ride on the old gal and wish her a happy 75th birthday.

Categories
USA

Colonial Williamsburg: a homeschooler report

Last month I put up a post announcing Home Educator Week in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and one of our homeschooling readers seized the opportunity to take her two kids and immerse themselves in Colonial America for a day.

I thought you’d enjoy Lydia’s fun report (complete with her son in a tri-cornered hat) on her Little Blue School blog: Colonial Williamsburg in Inappropriate Shoes.

The next special educational event is African-American history programs throughout February 2008, and the next Home Educator Week is February 20 — March 5, 2008.

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, homeschooling, Colonial Williamsburg

Categories
Tips

7 museums where history lives

Bread baking demonstration, Norwegian Folk Museum, Oslo Norway (photo by Sheila Scarborough)It’s tough to re-create history with buildings and costumed people and not have it seem theme-parkish, but when it’s done well, there’s no better way to engage kids in another world and time.

Here are a few places where families can meet history face-to-face, in a largely outdoor setting so you don’t have to keep saying “Shhh!” and “Don’t run!”

** Bunratty Castle and Folk Park. The 1800s-era Folk Park is laid out around Bunratty Castle, built in 1425 and the “most complete and authentic medieval fortress in Ireland.” My family took a long weekend trip to the Shannon area of western Ireland and this attraction was a big winner. It’s an Irish “living village” of homes, businesses and people; very accessible to children.

** Edo-Tokyo Museum. “Edo” is the old name for “Tokyo,” and this museum captures many different historical periods in this sprawling Japanese city, including temples and apartments. The main indoor museum has wonderful re-created street scenes and exhibits, but there is a branch in western Tokyo called the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum that has many more buildings and artifacts. The Web site is in Japanese, but Metropolis Tokyo (sort of like Time Out) has a great description of park highlights. Japan-Guide.com lists other open-air museums in Japan.

** Old Sturbridge Village. Often considered the granddaddy of U.S. open-air living museums, I even remember visiting this New England history stalwart as a child and getting my first horehound candy stick. From their Web site:

“The period portrayed by Old Sturbridge Village, 1790-1840, is of major significance because it was a time in which the everyday lives of New Englanders were transformed by the rise of commerce and manufacturing, improvements in agriculture an transportation, the pulls of emigration and urbanization, and the tides of educational, political, aesthetic, and social change.”

Translation: there’s a lot going on for kids of all ages to watch, participate in and enjoy.

** Bokrijk. This park is in a little section of Flemish Belgium near the town of Hasselt, not far from the Dutch border (and hopefully Belgium as a nation will get over its current French/Flemish tiff.) Only open March-September, it features 3 different villages complete with daily life, farming, cooking demonstrations and handicrafts. The “Haspengouw” represents “grandmother’s life” about 100 years ago.

Tribal interpreters at Indian City USA, Anadarko Oklahoma (courtesy dj buzzard at flickr's Creative Commons)** Indian City USA. In the southwestern Oklahoma town of Anadarko, there are seven different tribes within a 30 mile radius. At this popular attraction with the unfortunate billboard-y name, Plains Indian tribe members give tours of their authentically re-created living areas, encompassing the Navajo, Chiricahua Apache, Wichita, Kiowa Winter Camp, Caddo, Pawnee and Pueblo Villages. Sure, it’s culture compressed, but if you’ve ever driven across the hundreds and hundreds of miles of central US highways with itchy, bored kids, you’ll appreciate some one-stop history of the native Americans on the Great Plains.

** Norsk Folkemuseum. I keep seeing Oslo popping up in travel magazines these days, but we found it first! 🙂 One of the highlights of our trip was this outdoor museum of 155 traditional Norwegian buildings, including a lovely wooden stave church. Many of them are occupied with costumed interpreters doing crafts and cooking (yes, it was great even in the winter snow, when we visited in March.) Where else could you “tour Norway in one day?”

** Virginia’s Historic Triangle: Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown. I’ve written before about what a terrific place this is for kids, but with the holidays approaching, I encourage you to visit this part of Virginia that recreates the 1600s and 1700s. Colonial Williamsburg in particular does distinctive holiday special decorations and events.

For further reading, there’s an Education.com article on U.S. living history museums.

Categories
Blog

Twittering the blogosphere

Who's that guy? Darren Rowse, the ProBlogger (photo courtesy Darren Rowse)
Blogging is all about community through comments, feedback and links. I enjoy being electronically “out and about,” looking for not only for good travel ideas but also learning about other bloggers and communicators.

Anyone who starts blogging is going to eventually learn about Aussie Darren Rowse and his ProBlogger site. It’s a real giant in the online world, so I’m thrilled to report that Darren accepted a guest post from me that went online yesterday, “Why Twitter Isn’t a Waste of Time.”

Twitter is just one of those many Web 2.0 applications that you keep hearing about: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, etc. Blogging is considered a “Web 2.0” application as well, because like the others, one of its bedrock ideas is two-way communication.

I don’t jump into every application that I see, but after following my old friend Dwight Silverman on Twitter and reading his thoughts about it on his TechBlog, I went for it.

Twitter is basically Instant Messaging to a Web site; a stream of micro blog posts answering the question, “What are you doing right now?” although I prefer another question; “What’s on your mind right now?” It’s great for people like me who can’t shut up. 🙂

Read through my Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/SheilaS if you want to see what I talk about, and sign up to follow me if you’d like.

Since I read just about everything in Darren’s Blogging for Beginners ProBlogger section last spring as I began building Family Travel, it’s a real honor to now be in a position to contribute something to him.

Here’s why online networking is so cool — my on- and off-line friend Connie Reece mentioned my ProBlogger guest post on Twitter yesterday, and her friend Kim (khaynes) saw the “tweet,” went and read my post and then was kind enough to write about it on her Texas Gal Ramblings blog. We found that we both live in the Austin area; who knew?

For a more humorous summary of Twitter, here is a great graphic from Pete Cashmore at Mashable:

Evolution of social media apps (courtesy Pete Cashmore at Mashable)

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, Twitter, blogging

Categories
Blog

Blog change: opening links in a new window

We’ve had a previous discussion about whether readers prefer their links on this blog to open in a new window, or do they just want to use tabs or the “Back” button up on the upper left side of the blog page.

My personal preference was to have links open in a new window, but the more I look into this, the more I think that I need to have them open in the same window on Family Travel. 

An article by blogging expert Lorelle VanFossen in this month’s Blogger and Podcaster magazine, “7 Steps to a Better Blog,” sealed the deal for me (and schooled me on the proper use of block quotes in a blog post:)

“In fact, forcing links to open in a new window now violates Web and accessibility standards, and can even cause the blogger to lose readers. The ability of Firefox and Internet Explorer to open Web pages in tabs instead of full windows with a simple click or keystroke combination gives control back to readers, letting them decide how they want to visit link recommendations. Most know how to use their back buttons, too.”

I’ve also been tracking how other sites that I respect do business, and the fact is that I’m one of the few who opens in a new window for a link.  While I generally have no problem at all with going against the grain, this is a situation where I fear I’m just annoying people.

So, from now on, starting with this post, once you choose to go look at a link on a Family Travel blog post, you’ll need to come back here via the back button, or other method that you prefer.

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, blogging

Categories
USA

Small state, big heart: 10 reasons to visit Rhode Island

Fall in Rhode Island with a baby who was born in the state (Scarborough photo)We’ve had that first crisp fall morning here near Austin, and it made me think about a state that’s rather differently-sized.

Compact Rhode Island may be tiny compared to sprawling Texas, but that makes this New England state very accessible to short road trips and family travel.

Its official name is quite grandiose: “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” but locals call it Little Rhody.

Here are my top ten reasons to hit The Rhode:

Providence

This revitalized city combines the intellectual heft of Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design with an Italian/Portuguese soul. The result is smart, interesting people, a lively arts scene and good food. Don’t miss the last Waterfire of the season, at sunset on Saturday October 27th. It’s like a campfire on a river, set to music. Kids like the easily-walkable Roger Williams Park Zoo, or see what’s playing at the venerable Trinity Repertory theater company (maybe A Christmas Carol?)

Newport

Yachting, tennis and Gilded Age mansions might be this town’s claim to fame, but look deeper. It’s a fun sailor’s port that combines atmospheric Colonial architecture with quahog stuffies. Eats range from Flo’s Clam Shack to the White Horse Tavern (for older kids.) Conde Nast Traveler‘s Wendy Perrin has a great series of blog posts about taking kids to Newport here, here and here. Check out Save The Bay’s Seal Watch Tours November 2007 through April 2008; their boats depart Bowen’s Ferry Landing. Starting November 17th, see stunning holiday decorations during Christmas at the Mansions.

Block Island

Geographically-picky types claim that it isn’t an island if you can drive to it on a bridge. Not a problem with ferry-supported, picturesque Block Island, which has much of the windblown allure of Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard but zero attitude. November 23-25 is the annual Christmas Shopping Stroll and Turkey Trot 5K — see the island’s Chamber of Commerce site for more info.

Little Compton

Drop by the summertime-only Olga’s Cup & Saucer bakery café for divine pastries and breads, then pick up produce next door at Walker’s Roadside Stand (don’t despair in winter, because there’s also an Olga’s at 103 Point Street in Providence.) Unfettered parents may want to finish the afternoon at nearby Sakonnet Vineyards, imbibing some true Rhode Island reds.

Bristol

This charmer is at its most Yankee Doodle Dandy on the 4th of July, when the oldest continuously observed Independence Day celebration rolls through town. Nearby 18th century-style Coggeshall Farm Museum shines in winter with maple sugaring.

Pawtucket Red Sox Baseball

In summer and early fall, take me out to the ballgame (on Bobblehead Night!) with the Triple-A team for the Boston Red Sox. While sucking down a local Del’s frozen lemonade, be on the lookout for future Hall-of-Famers passing through on their way to the Show.

Newport, RI clambake fun (Scarborough photo)

Jigger’s Diner in East Greenwich

How can you miss with gingerbread pancakes or traditional johnnycakes for breakfast? Get there early since the shiny narrow Worcester 1950 dining car fills up fast at this “East G” institution. Can’t make it there? Try Haven Brothers Diner in Providence.

Slater Mill

Known as the “Birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution,” Rhode Island spearheaded New England textile manufacturing starting with Samuel Slater’s mill on the Blackstone River. Today, many artists use the abandoned Pawtucket factories. Learn more at the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket.

Watch Hill and Misquamicut Beach

Younger kids clamor for the Flying Horse Carousel in the elegant Victorian seaside retreat of Watch Hill. As teenagers they want the more rambunctious salt water taffy delights down at Misquamicut Beach. Other family fun in the South County section of the state includes Charlestown’s Frosty Drew Observatory for young astronomers and the Biomes Marine Biology Center in North Kingstown.

And a seasonal bonus….

Ski Rhode Island. Only slope in the state: Yawgoo Valley. Believe it.

For more details and ideas, see the helpful travel planning site Quahog.org or the Visit Rhode Island tourism Web site.

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, Rhode Island, New England

Categories
USA

Halloween family travel: the witches of Salem

Salem MA Witch Memorial, Rebecca Nurse, hanged in 1692 (courtesy Foxicat at flickr's Creative Commons)Most parents will someday see Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible,” about the infamous 1692 Salem Witch Trials, on their teen’s English class required reading list.

Why not pay an October visit to the actual seaport town, plus see the real House of Seven Gables?

Salem, Massachusetts is a National Trust “distinctive destination.” They really do it up for Halloween month, but instead of a lot of fake blood and skeletons, your kids can learn some of the history of intolerance and fear (scarier than any amusement park “Howl-o-Scream,” I think.)

The Puritans in Salem had a bit of a problem from the beginning when it came to getting along with other folks. They didn’t like the outspoken pastor Roger Williams and tossed him out in 1634 — no matter, he just went and founded Rhode Island. Even the local Quakers were persecuted for their beliefs.

Intolerace came to a head with the 1692 trials of approximately 190 citizens for “witchcraft.” As a result, 19 people were hanged and one man was crushed to death.

Today, visitors can learn more at the Salem Witch Museum, and there are many historical interpreter-led special events and reenactments offered in October. Un-witchy things to see include fine art at the Peabody Essex museum and Salem’s proud seafaring heritage at the Maritime National Historic Site.

Travel & Leisure magazine reflected on The Salem Witch Project and the town itself a few years ago.

Your family can stay at historic lodgings in the middle of town; the 1925 Hawthorne Hotel. Even better, they blog. 🙂

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, Salem, Massachusetts, New England, Halloween, witch trials