Month: November 2007

Categories
USA

Family fun in central Colorado

                    Near Grand Lake, Colorado (courtesy justasungod at flickr's CC) 

This is a guest post by Linda Walsh, who runs the Family Travel Gear Web site and online store. 

We have to test our family travel products every month, and are “forced” to explore our wonderful state of Colorado with our 3 little kids (ages 2, 5 and 6.)

Some of our favorite spots to go while still staying on our family budget include:

**  Tiny Town and Railroad Park — 6249 South Turkey Creek Rd, Morrison, CO 80465 (303) 697- 6829. 

Simply too much fun, for only a few dollars.  We ride a miniature steam train (the kids ride in the little red caboose) and play in the miniature buildings. There is a picnic area under the lodge pole pines; it is a very relaxing and fun way to spend the day.

**  Cave of the Winds — Highway 24, exit 141, Colorado Springs, CO 80929 (719) 685-5444.

My son was fascinated with bats one day and wanted to know where they lived, so we drove down to Cave of the Winds (didn’t see any bats though) and had a great time taking the tour through the caves, exploring, learning and having a great time with our kids.

**  Town of Grand Lake  One of my favorites is to take a 2-hour drive up to Grand Lake and walk along the boardwalk through the little town to get candy apples at the local candy store there.  We try to get up to Grand Lake a couple of times a year.  We made it again this year and even went into Rocky Mountain National Park, which has very little traffic in October and lots of wildlife to view right from your car.  It was simply spectacular. My kids have been practicing their elk bugle calls ever since!

These are some of our favorite places to go in Colorado…but the list is so long, I will have to send you more in another post. 

Oh, one other thing….I also sell a book on our website titled “500 Places to Take Your Kids Before They Grow Up” and we plan to start checking those locations off the list after we see everything here in our own state.

Thanks for contributing, Linda!

Categories
Uncategorized

Things to do, places to go 11.29.2007

Welcome to the first iteration of the regular Thursday Family Travel feature “Things to Do & Places to Go.” I plan to run this weekly, as a worldwide overview of family-friendly events in the near term, and then some a few months down the road.

This time of year, there’s so much going on that I had to pare it down to this weekend and then a little of early January.

Coming up this weekend/soon:

  • It’s almost the end of whale-watching season in Hermanus near Cape Town, South Africa.
  • Welcome the holiday season in Houston, Texas with choirs, fireworks and a tree-lighting. November 30, 2007. Here are some more tree-lighting events.
  • Admire the luminaria displays starting this weekend, through December, at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona.
  • Enjoy an ethnic holiday festival with examples of Christmas cheer from around the world, at the Durham Western Heritage Museum, Omaha, Nebraska. November 30, 2007.
  • It’s an Old-Fashioned Cowboy Christmas in Medora, North Dakota. November 30-December 1, 2007.
  • See Santa Claus at Germany’s biggest theme park, Europapark (near Rust in Freiburg, close to the French border) on December 1, 2007. We visited Europapark and loved it; check out my FT post on European theme parks.
  • Marching down Atlantic Avenue in Virginia Beach, VA, it’s the Hometown Holiday Parade on December 1, 2007.
  • There’s a lighted boat parade sponsored by the Fell’s Point Yacht Club in Baltimore, Maryland’s Inner Harbor, December 1, 2007.
  • The San Diego, CA Maritime Museum has a Family Fun Day this weekend, getting underway December 2, 2007.
  • Celebrate Saint Barbara Day in Bulgaria (she’s the saint who protects children from disease.) December 4, 2007.

Coming up in early 2008:

  • New Year’s Day Polar Bear swims are always a hoot (my brave husband did one at Easton’s Beach in Newport, RI one year.) Check out the Coney Island, NY plunge.
  • Three Kings Day Parade and concert events, January 4 & January 6, 2008, sponsored by El Museo Del Barrio, New York.
  • The Winter Flower and Train Show ends January 6, 2008 in Chicago IL.
  • Prague Winter Festival, Czech Republic, January 2-7, 2008. Classical music, opera and ballet in ornate venues. Includes Bambini di Praga children’s choir.
  • Illawarra Folk Festival, Bulli, New South Wales, Australia, January 17-20, 2008. More than 400 folk performers and 150 events, including a children’s festival.
  • Shindig Set Dance Festival, Tralee, Ireland, January 18-20, 2008. Great Irish music, storytelling, singing, Guinness and workshops for dancers.

Technorati tags: travel, family travel

Categories
Blog Photos USA Video Posts

Video of the week: Colonial Williamsburg

Earlier this year we took a family press trip to Virginia’s “Historic Triangle” (Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown) and our tourguides gave us a disposable digital video camera to play with.

The CVS disposable costs about US$30 and then another US$12-13 to develop, but it did motivate me to film without my usual over-analyzing and artistic angst. Once I show you the good clips from it, I’m going to start using the video mode on my Kodak digital camera, for better video quality.

I’ve never had a video camera, so I made all of the usual newbie mistakes: panning/moving the camera too fast so that the resulting video induces vomiting, simply forgetting that I had the thing in my purse, and then not getting around to getting the clips off of the camera and onto my computer.

With great fanfare, I’d like to announce that in addition to filming a little video clip of me with a laptop camera, I actually drove over to my local CVS pharmacy yesterday and got the contents of the camera onto a DVD. I popped the DVD into my laptop and voila — a whole lot of “OMG, I forgot I filmed that!”

So, here is my first attempt at doing a little travel video work for Family Travel’s Photo/Video of the Week — it’s a short narrated clip from July 2007, taken on Duke of Gloucester Street in front of the King’s Arms Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg.

(1/12/08 – The original video seems to have somehow disappeared, so here is a link to it on YouTube in case it drops out again….)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uAza9uCLKM

Categories
Europe

Visit bountiful Brussels

Mini-Europe, with the giant Atomium behind it (Scarborough photo)

Are you looking for a beautiful, easily accessible European city that’s not on the London-Paris-Rome standard tourist circuit?

I recommend Brussels (or Bruxelles in French; the Belgians are arguing a lot lately about their nation’s heritage split.)

Located in the northern, historically Flemish part of Belgium (along with medieval Bruges/Brugge, artistic Ghent and industrial Antwerp) Brussels is elegant, cosmopolitan and culturally-rich, plus it’s fun for families.

The “To See” list….

** To start exploring, orient yourself in the middle — the center of Brussels is the magnificent town square called the Grand’Place or de Grote Markt. It’s huge and spectacular, with ornate Gothic and Baroque buildings, lots of cafes and historic businesses. It’s a “wow, we aren’t in Kansas….” moment when you walk into it.

** You have to do it, and the kids will get a giggle….view the symbol of Brussels, a small bronze statue (often in costume) of a boy peeing. Yes, that’s the Manneken Pis.

** See the hokey but fun theme park called Mini-Europe; scale models of European landmarks that you can walk through. My children both really liked it.

Manneken Pis, dressed that day as....hip-hop guy? (Scarborough photo)

** Next to Mini-Europe is the Atomium, a bizarre-looking giant building that’s supposed to look like an iron crystal, with nine 200-ton balls connected to each other.

There are exhibits inside and and you can go from one ball to another, all the way to the top. 2008 is the 50th anniversary of its construction.

** Eat! They say that the Belgians eat as well as the French and as much as the Germans, and I’ll vouch for that. Big portions of yummy stuff.

Okay, maybe your kids aren’t into the traditional steamed mussels with garlic and white wine, so pawn them off with croque-monsieur/tosti while you snarf shellfish and drink fabulous Belgian beer. Belgian frites (fries) are the best you’ll ever taste.

Everyone gets dessert….Belgian chocolate, of course.

** Hotel tip: Lodgings can be pricey because there are a lot of diplomats around (EU Headquarters is here) and businesspeople visit Brussels on expense accounts.

Try for weekend or off-peak rates at a business hotel, when they’re trying to fill rooms. We stayed at the Novotel Brussels Centre Tour Noire; it was a business hotel but we got a great weekend rate and the modern hotel is built around a medieval tower. Kids thought that was cool.

Brussels Novotel Centre Tour Noire, complete with tower (Scarborough photo)

More links of interest:

Don’t forget, you can pop over to Brussels from London on the Eurostar high-speed train in less than two hours.

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, Brussels, Belgium, Europe

Categories
Blog

Regularly scheduled programming (and we do have some)

As my writing and blogging life gets busier, with some possible consulting work coming up, it’s time to seek order in the universe and create some semblance of a publishing schedule, known in writer parlance as an editorial calendar.

The entrepreneurial life without set working hours (or meetings!) is quite heavenly, unless you’re an inveterate multitasker and overloader who could use a little structure.

Ahem.

So here’s the plan; Family Travel is going to move to roughly Monday-Friday posting, in anticipation of a blog upgrade/re-launch here on BootsnAll in the near future. Here’s the current plan for daily topics, posted here to keep me honest: 🙂

  • Monday – Great Travel Links (news, good articles/blogs/Web sites, updates, tools, products and travel deals.)
  • Tuesday – an original post from me, or a guest post.
  • Wednesday – Photo or Video of the Week (mine or a cool one that I find) and Blog Carnival Round-up, if applicable.
  • Thursday – What’s On Worldwide (worthwhile, often seasonal events for travel with kids in the next week, in the next month or so, and about 3-6 months down the road.)
  • Friday – an original post from me, or a guest post.

I will write extra posts and also post on weekends, or course, if something’s too good to wait. Once I get some tech stuff sorted out, I’ll add more video blog posts and possibly podcasts.

Over at the Perceptive Travel blog, I plan to post on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because I share writing duties with two other authors on that site.

If you don’t want to have to visit here every day to see what’s new, you can subscribe to my RSS feed. The buttons are at the top of the page.

Ah, now if I can also remember that Wednesday is Laundry Day at my house….

Categories
Tips

I’m thankful

              Sign in Mt. Dora, Florida (Scarborough photo)

I’m thankful for all of the wonderful people across the world who welcome traveling families, and make us feel at home in their home.

Have a pleasant Thanksgiving wherever you may be…. 

Categories
Tips

Holiday travel tips for the weary

Airport line/queues - ugh. (courtesy aleksi_aaltonen at flickr's Creative Commons)

Are you really going to schlep kids along and travel this week?  The agony….:)

OK, really, I do understand that these things are often out of our control. 

We might want to hole up at home and not go anywhere that involves “planes, trains and automobiles,” but that’s not always possible (and the holiday fun at the other end is usually worth it.) 

There are plenty of great tips out there for helping you through the holidays, from

But look, here are my basics:

  1. Just assume disaster of epic proportions, then you won’t be surprised by monster traffic jams, giant freak snowstorms that delay flights, etc.
  2. Also assume unknown dumb stuff – there were radio-related air traffic control delays at major hub DFW this morning.  You have no control over this other than to plan for mess and be pleasantly surprised if it turns out OK.
  3. Check latest TSA rules if flying. Duh. 
  4. For gosh sakes, try to avoid checking luggage. You’ve just got to. It’s one more thing that you can control. Luggage in the cargo hold, you can’t control.
  5. Watch the weather. My local paper shows a band of rain/snow/general ick running through part of the US northeast, Chicago and Denver over the next day or so. Can you say delays at JFK/La Guardia, O’Hare and Denver Int’l?
  6. Check in online if at all possible, and print your boarding passes at home. It’s really simple, and if you do this AND don’t check luggage, you can march straight over and start dealing with security. One less line to fiddle with.  A no-brainer.
  7. Mail or ship stuff there, and mail or ship stuff back. Even paying next-day or two-day delivery charges may be worth it, just to avoid dealing with getting items through the airport.
  8. Road trip?  Get maps.  I’m telling you, MapQuest and other online map services are great but they aren’t always accurate.  If you print out a point-to-point MapQuest route and get detoured, you’re suddenly in unknown territory. Just buy a danged map (your AAA membership may include free maps.) They always boot up, too.
  9. Road trip – don’t wait till the tank is low before gassing up. You never know when some colossal traffic jam will have you idling for hours and worrying about running out of gas.

Remember, the whole point of all this is to enjoy the company of the ones you love. 

Next year, consider something fun like Thanksgiving in Paris or someplace else to gather away from home for the holiday.

Why not?

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, Thanksgiving travel tips

Categories
Blog

Houston, we have a problem

Good morning readers, and my apologies for some problems on the Family Travel blog’s back end.

None of the side links or permalinks seem to be working, and you can’t scroll back to previous entries.

Thanks very much to the Less Than a Shoestring blog for shooting me an email about it this morning, and I’ll get in touch with the Boot Boyz, my tech support here on BootsnAll.

Ah, Monday….

Update late morning:  looks like there was a server shift and the problems are related to that — the Boyz are on it.

Update later morning:  Seems to be fixed, thanks tech folks!

Categories
Florida USA

Non-Disney fun in Florida

A Florida fruit stand at Crystal River, near Homosassa Springs State Park (Scarborough photo)I’ve recently had the pleasure of writing a series of educational travel articles for the Education.com Web site.

The latest one gives families some things to do in Florida that do not involve Mickey Mouse or any other Orlando theme park:

Non-Disney Fun in Florida.

Ideas and links include saying hello to a manatee at Homosassa Springs State Park, and seeing the “Real Florida” of freshwater springs, sinkholes and the Cracker farmhouse belonging to the author of “The Yearling.”

Previous Education.com articles include All the Little Houses: Following in the Footsteps of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Check it out….

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, Florida

Categories
Blog

Travel links round-up

I want to thank all of the blog carnivals that included my blog posts in the past few weeks — we’re all over the blogosphere.

This week’s Carnival of Cities on the IgoUgo travel blog featured Family Travel’s Get rubbed the right way in London, about the London Brass Rubbing Centre.  They also included a Perceptive Travel blog post about the amazing Renninger’s Flea Market down in Mount Dora, Florida (near Orlando; it would make a fun side trip from you-know-where.)

I enjoyed a quick “trip” to India from this carnival:

  • “India:  Alfa King writes from his home in Mauritius, but his mind is squarely in India as he demystifies Divali so we too can enjoy the Hindu holiday with a delicious gâteau batate.
  • Goa, India:  Blogger Sidhusaaheb, on the other hand, is actually in India, where he introduces us to Goa through the city’s often overlooked villas.”

The Principled Discovery blog hosted the 97th Carnival of Homeschooling; it featured the Family Travel post about 7 museums where history lives (a worldwide tour of living history museums.)

Principled Discovery did a great job of taking lots of submissions about all aspects of homeschooling and turning them into sort of a “curriculum.”  I liked the ones on art and music in education:

On November 1st we went Blogtipping, and I posted about three blogs that I’ve found and enjoy.  The Blogtipping Guru himself, Easton Ellsworth, was kind enough to mention it on his Business Blogwire blog.  Thanks also go out to November tippers  Sizlak, Sandy Renshaw, Drew McLellan, Melonie and Rob O.

The Carnival of Family Life – Bonfire Edition commemorated Guy Fawkes Night, and also featured the FT post Is there any doubt about car seats and air travel?

Finally, I’m a little late, but my “frustrated traveler” post entitled I’m paying HOW much to be unimpressed? over on the Perceptive Travel blog was featured in the Customer Service Carnivale “Gumbo Edition.”

For travelers who drink all of that bottled water, I was struck by a post on the Customer Service Carnivale that was written by Charles H. Green, Customers and Bottled Water: It’s the Coverup Not the Crime.  Charles says, “One of the trickiest problems for customer service is when marketing has sold a product as something it really isn’t.”

Thanks for all of the great links and carnival action.

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, blog carnival