The funky slanted yellow things behind my daughter and I are the Kubuswoningen or Cube Houses in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
You can tour the interior of one of them to see how clever design and architecture creates interesting places to live.
Month: January 2009
I don’t know about you, but lack of time and cash flow have both combined to really crimp the ol’ travel plans this winter. Too bad, because you can find lots of bargains in January and February, when many places are in the off-season and people are busy cocoon-ing in their houses.
This past weekend, we had a nice Saturday in downtown Austin, Texas, and even though it wasn’t a “trip” per se, it was at least a day out of the house despite rather crummy weather.
Our main reason for heading downtown was a summer camp fair sponsored by Austin Family Magazine. Yes, it’s already time to think about summer camp options, and we wanted to get on the ball because I’ll quite cheerfully admit that we blow it every year and my kids tend to end up in front of video games instead of leaping into some Hill Country lake, as they should be doing during a sweltering Texas summer.
If we hadn’t gone to the fair, we still might have had some fun at the excellent Austin Children’s Museum or maybe the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, which has three floors of exhibits and a popular IMAX theater.
The Texas Capitol is also in Austin and is always good for a stroll, especially when the Legislature is in session. There’s a good Visitor’s Center to get you started.
We also keep meaning to check out the O. Henry House (the famous author lived in Austin for awhile) but I particularly want to take the family to see the annual O. Henry Pun-Off, held every May. My Sainted Husband and son adore puns!
As for our personal excursion, once we finished at the camp fair, we drove over to Zilker Park to see if anyone was swimming at Barton Springs, a lovely freshwater spring pool that is open year-round, with a constant 68 degree F water temperature.
That means that on a 45 degree day, the water feels positively balmy, and we watched a couple of lap swimmers motoring through the 3 acres of clear spring water.
(We also needed to make a bathroom call for the kids. Don’t they ever go at a convenient time?)
After admiring a nice view of the Austin skyline from Zilker, we headed back down Barton Springs Road to find some dinner. Local Tex-Mex joint Chuy’s is a perennial hit (the downtown location has a room with the entire ceiling covered in car hubcaps) but I was feeling burger-y so we went to Hut’s on Sixth Street.
It’s been around forever and serves up excellent burgers, fries and humongous onion rings. The waitstaff is friendly and efficient, and there are lots of kids.
We wanted a reasonably quick turnaround, because we were wrapping up the day at the venerable Paramount Theater on Congress Avenue – they were playing a beautifully restored 70 mm version of the movie West Side Story, on a big screen, the way it was meant to be seen. My nine-year-old son likes music and dance, and he loved it.
The Paramount has a popular summer film series that’s a don’t-miss here in Austin, but they play special movies throughout the year plus lots of superb live performances, many quite family-friendly. The theater’s Executive Director even writes an excellent blog, Off-Stage with Ken Stein.
My Dad went to the Paramount as a child, and he always comments that his first movie there was Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, which apparently scared the daylights out of him.
I promise future Austin and Texas highlights, as we continue to travel close to home. Let me know if you have any particular requests.
I was rummaging through some of my non-digital photos this morning and found this one of my daughter participating in the Japanese festival Setsubun, which traditionally chases away dark winter and welcomes spring (according to the lunar calendar.)
It’s always held around February 3rd or 4th (I think it’s Feb 3 for 2009.)
The objective is to toss out the old, drive away evil and welcome good fortune.
Temples all around Japan hold ceremonies; we attended one when we lived in Sasebo, on the southern island of Kyushu.
Mame-maki, or the bean-throwing ritual, makes this event a real hit with the kids. My daughter was a little surprised that the adults were encouraging her to throw things in the temple, but it didn’t take her long to get into the action.
The idea is to throw roasted soybeans at the evil spirits to chase them away – at the same time, you shout, “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” or, “Out with the demons, in with good luck!”
Try yelling it in Japanese – there’s something about the melodic words that always makes me smile and feel a sense of triumph over evil things like my perfectionism, lists of things that aren’t done yet and my messy living room. Out with those demons – get your gomi (trash) to the curb!
During January, stores in Japan sell special red oni devil masks (wear one to represent evil, and you’ll get beaned!) and little fuku mame bean packets – I like how this writer reflects on her early Japan discoveries each year during Setsubun time.
After we tossed beans at the temple, there was a bonfire outside. You eat special soft mochi (sweet red bean) rice cakes and watch the previous year’s bad fortune go up in flames. There were special decorative wooden tags to buy; scribble a description of your personal frustrations on it, then toss it into the fire. We bought a tag, but now we use it as a Christmas ornament.
BootsnAll’s own Roving Ronin Report blog has a post about Setsubun, and that’s where I found RoninDave’s video below (here’s the URL on YouTube if you can’t see the box.)
I want to support the travel industry in tough economic times, so on occasional Thursdays (when I have time) I’ll put up a post with short excerpts from relevant PR pitches that have come to me via email.
It has to be something that I think my readers will like, it would help if it included links, and I’m not copying/pasting a whole press release. Readers should know that this is PR info and not independently vetted by me.
Here are a few recent items that might interest you….
- Kid-friendly Hollywood Holiday Inn – The Beverly Garland Holiday Inn is nestled on seven acres in North Hollywood, less than a mile from Universal Studios Hollywood. The 255 room property, which has been owned and operated by Hollywood actress Beverly Garland and her family since 1972, features seven “KidSuites” that are ideal for families. In addition, the property offers discounted VIP packages with Universal Studios.
- New York City tourism site revamped – The site NYCgo.com features a comprehensive one-stop hub of information for visitors and residents, tailored to the interests of a variety of lifestyle categories, with select information available in nine foreign languages….Additionally, the website for the first time will house a dedicated cultural calendar from the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, featuring more than 300 event and exhibition listings submitted by cultural institutions across the five boroughs.
- Ice Hotel in Quebec, Canada – If you are looking for a unique, entertaining and educational experience that ties together nature and the environment, you absolutely have to visit the Hôtel de Glace in Duchesnay, Jacques-Cartier region….With its towering snow archways and crystalline ice sculptures alongside inviting fireplaces, North America’s only ice hotel stands out both for its ethereal beauty and excellent service. The ice hotel is completely redesigned each year. January 4 to March 29, 2009.
- Hawaii Whale Watching – Humpback whales are being spotted in Hawaii’s warm waters as the whale watching season is in full force around the islands, which typically runs from November through May. While the whales are here, visitors can enjoy the impressive acrobatic displays of these large mammals from the sea or from the shore. Besides the various whale watching tours available, humpback whales may be spotted from just about any beach park around the state with the right timing and with some patience. Make a family day out of the activity and see how many you can find.
- MonteLago Village Resort at Lake Las Vegas – A mere 17 miles from the bustling neon of the Vegas Strip, this incredibly child and family-friendly resort encompasses condo-style accommodations with kitchenettes (great for preparing quick snacks and/or meals for the kids without breaking the bank at restaurants every day) and multiple bedrooms, if desired. There are a plethora of outdoor activities like swimming in the year-round, kid-friendly, shallow pool (adults have one with a hot-tub, as well), boating (paddle, kayak, gondola), golfing, hiking and ice-skating in the winter (there is one casino on the property.) Visit www.montelagovillage.com
- Frommer’s top destinations for 2009 –
- Cartagena, Colombia
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Saqqara, Egypt
- Washington, D.C., United States
- Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada
- Civil Rights Trail from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, United States
- Lassen Volcano National Park, California, United States
- Berlin, Germany
- Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Istanbul, Turkey
- Cambodia (but not Angkor Wat)
- Waiheke Island, New Zealand
Categories
New format has a few glitches
Some of you may have noticed a new, brighter, cleaner layout for Family Travel Logue – it’s a nice look but a lot of the links take you to content on our BootsnAll Business Travel site.
Not to worry, we’ll get it sorted out….and meantime, you may find biz travel content that you like while we’re at it! 🙂
My husband was heading to a teacher’s conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan last July, so I thought we’d check out Offbeat Guides.
The Grand Rapids guidebook selection is pretty thin at our local Barnes & Noble north of Austin, Texas, and Sainted Husband had very little sightseeing time, so there was no sense in shelling out a bunch of money for information. I’ve written an article for Education.com — Must-Sees in Michigan for Family Fun (which included the Grand Rapids Fish Ladder) — but we still wanted a little more depth.
I first heard of Offbeat Guides in a Robert Scoble blog post last summer; Scoble is a tech explorer for Fast Company and I was intrigued by his description of the product.
Guides founder Dave Sifry wrote up his own blog post about why he started the company, and you can follow Offbeat Guides on Twitter.
To order a guide, you go to the Offbeat Guides front page, type in your destination, put in some other info on the next pages — when you’re going, where your hotel is located (if you know,) some of your specific interests — then Offbeat Guides takes a few minutes to generate a custom guidebook based on your input.
Our Grand Rapids guide included an AccuWeather forecast for the teacher conference days, restaurants/bars/pubs near the hotel, Google maps, city history because I’d requested it, sites of cultural interest, music concerts and arts events during the specific conference days in July, local transportation (including local street-naming quirks) and even a discussion of the large amount of Grand Rapids public art and where to find it.
The Guide had lots of details, like the fact that Grand Rapids is a center for Christian publishing, and that the surrounding area of Michigan is known for fruit production (apple, peach and blueberry.) Grand Rapids sister cities include Bielsko-Biala, Poland. I love that kind of obscure stuff in a guide, but others may not care for it.
A nice touch was a list of local radio stations, so that visitors can immediately program their favorite sort of music into a hotel clock radio or rental car radio. Sainted Husband, the actual user of the guide, was less interested in that feature.
There are a few photos, most of which still need proper captioning; Offbeat Guides is still in beta, so not everything is smoothed out yet.
The Events section was packed with all sorts of activities that were scheduled for the days of my husband’s visit. Here’s my favorite:
“Kuhnhenn Beer Dinner — The chefs at Hop Cat are putting on another of their famous beer dinners with the focus on the beers from Kuhnhenn Brewery. The dinner will be a 4 course meal paired with 4 drafts….The whole event will be graced with the presence of the brew crew from Kuhnhenn Brewery.”
That’s the kind of cool, localized information that made my husband a hero with his fellow high school faculty members. He distributed some PDF copies of his guide to the other teachers at the conference, and they were all impressed with how well he’d gotten ready for the trip, and how many things there were to do in the city during their event.
The primary sources of data for the guide were Wikipedia and Wikitravel, so it’s obviously not edited by any travel experts other than a general “hive mind” of wiki contributors. I’m OK with that when a guide is a nice-to-have adjunct to a trip, not my main planning document.
Would I depend on such a guide for planning an entire family vacation? No, but it’s certainly a terrific starting point. Customers need to understand that there’s no editorial vetting of any of the information, but the hard work of collating it and focusing it on your particular days of travel is a worthy endeavor.
A full color printed guide (mailed to you) is US$24.95, a downloadable PDF guide (our option, we printed some of the pages ourselves at home) is US$9.95 and a full color printed guide AND Downloadable PDF together are US$24.95.
Offbeat Guides offers a money-back guarantee if you aren’t happy with their service.
Yes, folks, it is true. You can buy those attractive Crocs shoes for your kids all over the world (I picked up this flyer in Shanghai.)
Then again, I’m not sure that this is a good thing….
The Toy and Miniature Museum of Kansas City is a little misleading; it seems like the perfect place to take the kids, but in many ways it’s better for adults and older children.
It’s not that there aren’t zillions of neat toys, trains, dolls, dollhouses, Teddy bears, marbles and other treasures – there are indeed, but the vast majority are beautiful antiques that are protected behind display cases.
It’s a “look but don’t touch” sort of place, which was fine with me but might be a disappointment for very young people (I’d take the little ones to one of the museum workshops or special events so they can get hands onto crafts and learning projects.)
Spread across two floors of the 1911 Tureman Mansion in Kansas City, Missouri is an incredibly comprehensive collection of every wondrous toy imaginable.
I’ve been a sucker for detailed dollhouses since my own parents took me as a child to see the amazing Queen Mary’s dollhouse in the UK.
The first floor of the Toy and Miniature Museum has all sorts of dollhouses with lovely delicate period furnishings, plus a big section of toy trains, planes, cars and Noah’s Arks.
The Miniatures Gallery has beautifully-lighted tiny art miniatures to inspect, most to 1/12 scale; I loved the tiny dancing skeletons and eensy furniture.
(I am working very hard not to use the word “Lilliputian” in this blog post. I know that “eensy” is not a word; this is a time when it is fun to be an editor-free blogger….)
The highlight of the second floor galleries is probably the Marble Games and Gallery. I don’t even know how to play marbles, but the colors and swirling patterns in the glassware have always appealed to me. These were gorgeous and their lighted displays showed them to perfection.
The gift shop was OK, but the surprising number of generic “Made in China” toys was rather disappointing. I thought, for example, that I’d see a lot more variety of locally-made Moon Marbles.
I recommend a trip to this museum if you’re in Kansas City, even if – or especially if – you are an adult.
Just a note for my client HomeAway vacation rentals, who are currently paying the bills….although I would be remiss not to mention that right here on the BootsnAll Travel Network is a Vacation Rentals Guide.
Anyway, Today, January 7, 2009 at midnight is the last day to send in your blog post, Flickr photo/s or video explaining why you need a $5000 vacation home getaway. We’ll start voting on favorite entries January 8 until January 15.
All the deets are here at the HomeAway Blog.
I’ve written some blog posts on the site as well….
- How to take contest-winning photographs (with lots of help from photos expert Pam Mandel at Nerd’s Eye View and BlogHer Travel)
Hope to see your contest entry today!
The amazon Kindle electronic reading device is not the be-all, end-all of “electronic book” technology, but like the Apple iPhone’s impact on mobile phones, it moves the genre forward considerably.
You can read a lot more than books; owners of the wireless-enabled Kindle
Through one of my content syndication services, Newstex, the content on this BootsnAll Family Travel Logue is now available for subscription on the Kindle (it’s listed under Lifestyle and Culture – Parenting blogs rather than Regional and Travel.)
The subscription costs US 0.99/month – none of that goes to me (although I occasionally accrue syndication money from Newstex, so maybe that’s my reward.) Of course, the blog is free to read on an iPhone or other Web-enabled device, but then you’re paying data rate costs.
If you subscribe to Family Travel on Kindle, please let me know if you ever have any problems with how the content appears on your device.