Month: February 2008

Categories
Europe

Ahoy, it’s Rotterdam!

Kubuswoningen (Cube Houses) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (Scarborough photo)Most people think of Rotterdam as some sort of industrial seaport town without much to recommend it for family travel, but the city’s spectacular architecture and maritime heritage make it well worth a trip, even with kids.

I like to show my children interesting buildings; I don’t have a background in design or architecture but I really like to see imaginative structures, and my kids like the eye candy, too.

Rotterdam is full of “look! cool!” futuristic sights, many of them clustered on the Maas River that runs through the middle of the city.

We visited during the annual maritime festival World Port Days in September, so there were continuous daytime demonstrations on the water for us to watch plus music-themed fireworks at night.

One of our favorite activities was looking around inside the cheery yellow Kubuswoningen (Cube Houses) that you see in the photo above; their unique cantilevered design was just plain fun for the kids to look at and walk through. The “Show House” Cube House is open 11:00-5:00 daily — for a nominal charge, visitors can see the imaginative built-ins, great views and thoughtful layout inside a typical house.

Erasmus Bridge and KPN Building, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (courtesy SvdR on flickr)

To orient ourselves, we took a 75-minute narrated harbor cruise with the Spido tourboat company.

The tour showed us all the waterfront sights, including the famous Erasmus Bridge and glimpses into the seaport industrial area (complete with an entire huge tank full of orange juice awaiting shipping. The kids were in awe of that much OJ.)

For lodging, it’s hard to beat the waterfront location and reasonable prices at the Tulip Inn Rotterdam. Ask for a riverside room to look right out onto the spiky Erasmus Bridge.

Consider picking up a tourist Rotterdam Welcome Card for discounts on many popular attractions.

We didn’t get around to these but want to try them on our next visit:

  • A cruise around Rotterdam while munching on traditional Dutch pancakes; set sail on De Pannenkoekenboot (the Pancake Boat.)
  • Go to the top of Euromast for awesome views of the city.
  • From modern architecture to rows of historic Dutch windmills along a canal — take a boat trip to see Kinderdijk.
  • For older kids who are jazz fans, check out the North Sea Jazz Festival every summer.

Related Family Travel posts:

Categories
Blog

Our internal links and Search are borked

Just made the most unpleasant discovery that many of the internal links to about two years of Family Travel posts are FUBAR (did you ever wonder what that means? It’s “F*d Up Beyond All Recognition.” I like to teach things even when tearing my hair out.)

This probably has something to do with our recent upgrade to a better version of WordPress, the our blogging software, because the most recent posts seem to be OK. It also looks like it has something to do with my categories & subcategories going haywire.

Since we’re borked, (a more polite and techy term) that means that if a link to a specific FT post comes up on Google, or I link to it in another FT post, or you click on it over on the Favorite Posts section to the right, you will end up on the front page of the blog, not at the specific post that you were looking for.

(Update at 1:09 pm:  tech assist helped me fix the Favorite Posts links – yay!) 

This is a Bad Thing.

If you look for something on the right side of the blog under Categories, it seems to work, but that obviously makes it a hassle for my readers to have to hunt and peck. They’ll just give up and leave (unless they’re my Mom, or one of my close friends, who will pick up the phone and call me and tell me politely that the blog is, well, FUBAR.)

Rest assured that the Boot Boyz tech assist folks are laboring away on the problem (thank you!) and we’ll have our site navigation sorted soon.

Categories
Blog

Family Travel taking a break

I’m going to back away from Family Travel posting this week to give me a chance to catch up on some other blogging assignments and get my head, home and calendar ready for the upcoming South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference here in Austin March 7-11.

Based on my experiences at SXSWi last year, I’ll be going full-tilt the entire time. If I don’t do some prep work now, it’ll get ugly in terms of general organization and functioning at chez Seafarer.

See you again on Friday, February 29th, when I’ll be back in the saddle.

Categories
USA

Kids explore the New Hampshire home of Curious George

This is a guest post by writer Andrea Calabretta–thanks, Andrea! Where do we go to meet the “man in the yellow hat?”

A Visit to Waterville Valley, Childhood Home of Curious George

Curious George cottage, Waterville Valley, New Hampshire (courtesy Andrea Calabretta)Hans and Margret Rey, the creators of Curious George, fled Paris in 1940 with the manuscript of a children’s book in their luggage. Like many other Jews of the time, Hans and Margret left the city in a hurry—mere hours before it fell to the Nazis—and the story goes that a German officer who saw their illustrations of the lovable monkey allowed them to pass.

Years later, the Reys had sold the Curious George series to Houghton Mifflin, and Hans was at work on another book: The Stars: A New Way to See Them. Needing a good place to see stars, the couple found a small cottage in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire.

They proceeded to spend summers there, inviting local children to regular “chalk talks,” where kids could watch Hans sketch and help him imagine new adventures for Curious George.

Curious George Cottage

Today, you can visit the Curious George Cottage and Studio in Waterville Valley, about 2 1/2 hours north of Boston in the White Mountain National Forest. Artist Nat Scrimshaw continues the tradition of chalk talks with local and visiting children. On Saturday afternoons, kids crowd around the local illustrator, and each one of them goes home with a poster-sized drawing.

The actual home where the Reys lived still stands, right next to the Waterville Elementary school. The picturesque red cottage is a meeting place for nature walks, snowman-building sessions and other family activities.

New Hampshire sleigh ride (courtesy Andrea Calabretta)Winter Family Fun

The surrounding Waterville Valley provides additional opportunities for family fun—including back-country skiing, snowboarding, snowshoe-ing, an astronomy observatory, an ice-skating rink and more.

Children as young as three can join the Kids’ Venture Kamps, and on-mountain childcare is also available.

After a day of skiing, grab a round of hot chocolates and take a horse-drawn sleigh ride across the valley for great views of the White Mountain National Forest.

Family Festival in August

Though Waterville Valley is often considered a winter travel destination, the Rey cottage also hosts a family festival in August, and summer activities include nature walks, farm visits, children’s theater and swimming.

Before You Go

Pick up a copy of The Journey That Saved Curious George, a children’s book that details the Reys’ story.

For more information on Waterville Valley, check out www.visitwatervillevalley.com.

Andrea Calabretta is a freelance writer, editor and blogger based in Boston, MA. Visit BellyGlad (https://bellyglad.blogspot.com) to read about her culinary adventures.

** Related Family Travel posts: How Books Can Enrich Travel With Your Kids and Literary Travel With Kids

** You can also find Curious George in Mississippi (thanks to my Twitter friend @shawnz for the link. I’m @SheilaS if you want to follow us on Twitter, a sort of mass IM/microblogging site.)

Categories
Blog Video Posts

Video Series Part Three: Inexpensive Travel Souvenirs

(This series is cross-posted with the Perceptive Travel blog.)

Welcome to the third and final video in this series about inexpensive and unique travel souvenirs. I want ‘em cheap, I want ‘em to bring a smile to my face and remind me of the place where I bought them and if at all possible, I’d like ‘em to be useful.

Part One started us out with a variety of small items that you can find almost anywhere, Part Two covered “the obvious” T-shirts and coffee mugs, and here in Part Three, I will take a walk through my home to show you a few of my souvenir favorites and tell you the story of the “Diarrhea T-shirt.”

Thanks for your patience as I learn the ins and outs of my Flip video camera….including the discovery that I need to do better with the closeup feature. 🙂

For my RSS/feed readers and anyone else who can’t see the video box below, click this URL to go straight to the video on YouTube.

Categories
Blog Photos

Photo of the Day: I’ll see this at SOBCon08

The Chicago River, in the home of SOBCon (courtesy wallyg at Flickr’s CC)

This photo (courtesy wallyg at Flickr’s Creative Commons) shows one of the great things about Chicago, or any city that is on or near the water. There’s just something about the sense of space around open water, and the possibilities for adventure when you look down a moving river.

I’m headed to the Windy City for one of the best events of the year, the SOBCon08 “Biz School for Bloggers” conference May 2-4 2008 (no, no, SOB means Successful and Outstanding Blogger — coined by SOBCon founder and Galactic Blogger Liz Strauss.)

Last year was an absolute blast, and I know that the 2008 version will give me a stack of both new friends and superb ideas for Web 2.0 communication.

Will you join me there?

Categories
Blog Video Posts

Video Series Part Two: Inexpensive Travel Souvenirs

(This series is cross-posted on the Perceptive Travel blog.)

Welcome back to this three-part video series about shopping for inexpensive travel souvenirs. I had no idea how much stuff I’d collected over the years until I pulled it all out to shoot a video.

Part One was a general overview of my souvenir philosophy (inexpensive, evocative of origin and hopefully useful in daily life) with some examples of fun items I’ve scored, like a rubber ear acupuncture training device from the medical supplies section of a Hong Kong department store. Gee, maybe that’s not very useful in daily life….:)

Part Two below talks about the items everyone seems to find: coffee mugs and T-shirts. Watch the video for my suggestions on how to find unique versions of them during your travels.

Part Three, the final video, will give you a quick tour of assorted doo-dads in my house, many picked up for a song, including a fun Harry Potter movie poster in Japanese.

For RSS/feed readers and anyone else who may not be able to see the box, click here for the YouTube URL for the video.

Categories
Blog Video Posts

Video Series Part One: Inexpensive Travel Souvenirs

(This series is cross-posted with the Perceptive Travel blog.)

I envy those folks who travel but don’t have a burning desire to bring back tokens of their visits. My own home bulges with tangible reminders of the places I’ve been lucky enough to see.

The ideal travel souvenir is relatively inexpensive, evocative of its origin and (hopefully) useful in one’s daily life. It’s easy to find costly items to bring back that serve no function other than as dust collectors or to impress others, but the true traveler’s challenge is to find unique, fun mementos that bring good memories without flattening the wallet.

In the video below (Part One of a three-part video series – here’s Part Two and Part Three) I discuss a variety of ideas for inexpensive travel souvenirs that can be found just about anywhere in the world. There’s no shopping snobbery here; ideas include plastic floatie pens and medical supplies. (!)

For RSS/feed/email readers and anyone who can’t see the video box, click here for the video’s URL on YouTube.

Correction: the Hong Kong map I show is in Chinese, not Japanese (duh) and I said it was a two-part series, but it’s a three-part.

Update 15 Feb 4 pm, the video has been mysteriously “deleted,” so am working with tech support to restore it. The URL link above for YouTube DOES work. Thanks!

Update 18 Feb, now I’m going to try an embed box straight from YouTube.

Categories
USA

Ground Control to All the Kids: Cool NASA sites to visit

A model of the Mars Pathfinder rover at NASA’s Glenn Research Center (courtesy NASA Glenn)The space program has taken a few lumps and seen some rough times in recent years, but the magic and excitement of reaching beyond our planet still draws our eyes upwards to the heavens.

I just had an article published on education.com about exploring family-friendly NASA sites across the US.

Highlighted centers include:

  • The Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, Virginia
  • The Stennis Space Center in Bay St Louis, Mississippi (yes, thanks in part to political influence and largesse, NASA’s rocket-testing center is located in southern Mississippi — and so is a major Navy weather tracking facility.)
  • The Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California
  • The Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas
  • The Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio

I hope to show parents that their young ones can learn about space operations someplace besides the famous Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

One neat facility that we didn’t have quite enough room were able to include is in Cleveland, Ohio….the Glenn Research Center.

Named for Ohio native John Glenn, the first person to orbit the Earth, this Center conducts research on planetary exploration, space propulsion and communications technology. Six exhibit galleries include the Apollo Command module used on Skylab 3, the Aero Adventures interactive flight simulator, a tribute to Glenn’s historic Mercury flight and a life-sized model of Sojourner, the Mars rover.

Special events every third Saturday of the month give unique insights into topics like the Constellation program to return humans to the moon, the Phoenix mission to Mars and the Hubble telescope.

By the way, NASA has lots of podcasts, videos and blogs, including Shana’s Blog by Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, and NASA EDGE (where “hosts Chris and Blair offer an offbeat look behind the NASA curtain.”)

The initial rush of excitement about going to the moon is almost forty years old; today’s children will push beyond our solar system, and visiting a NASA facility can inspire their dreams.

Categories
Blog

Family Travel blog recognized by Real Simple magazine

Real Simple magazine logo

It’s quite an honor to be noticed….

The March 2008 issue of one of my favorite lifestyle magazines, Real Simple, includes the Family Travel blog in its list of The Best Blogs.

Thank you! That’s a pretty nice 2-year birthday present, don’t you think?

I’m in august company with some heavy travel hitters:

There are a variety of topics on the “Best of” list; I saw my own personal favorites Zen Habits, Kathy Maister’s Start Cooking and personal organizing with 43 Folders. Even though I’m a bit constrained by budget, I also plan to check out the perfectly-named Blogdorf Goodman (written from non-fashiony Youngstown, Ohio!)

That’s a serendipitous moment in blogging — toiling away, hoping you’re being helpful to someone, and big ol’ Mainstream Media actually stops and takes a look. 🙂

For my fans at Real Simple and wherever else you are, I do appreciate it very much.