Adventure Starts Here.
Every journey brings you closer to new places, to people you love, to family, and to yourself. Let’s make your next escape unforgettable.
So what if it rains a lot in Seattle. As long as you’ve got good rain gear, you won’t care, especially when there’s so much to do and see. Where else can you take the kids to see guys throwing raw fish, introduce them to ferries (yes, parents commute to work via ferry) take a turn on a sailboat, learn all about rock music, science fiction and the creatures who inhabit the sea in this part of the world.
Mick Fleming approached in a dugout canoe. “But there was something about the place,” he recalls more than 30 years later.
His wife Lucy, who arrived on horseback the day after he saw the overgrown farm, agrees. “This place always had a certain amount of magic — a pull. I felt it. We were young and crazy — no money and decided to be pioneers.”
Right after breakfast, we head out with our guide, Wilbert Moh, to the Mayan site of Xunantunich, about 15 minutes from the Ka’Ana resort. It means Stone Maiden — so named, Moh explains, because a hunter in the late 1800s claimed he spotted the apparition of a beautiful Mayan woman here. The structures — including one that is the second highest in Belize – rise up to 525 feet.
The 36-acre resort, which is growing popular with families, also has a terrific pool and a young chef who is said to be among the best in Belize. Most of the vegetables and herbs are provided from the organic garden — everything from zucchini and peppers to cilantro, dill and parsley. (How about tipsy tequila shrimp or beef carpaccio, homemade pasta or tenderloin? Did I mention the wine cellar? The spa?
Whether your gang love coasters or hate them, love water slides or refuse to wait in line for them, (yes that was us skipping the famous water slides at the Atlantis in the Bahamas), you’ll find plenty of new attractions to amuse everyone at this country’s more than 400 theme parks (and scores more water parks) this spring and summer. Here’s just a sampling of what’s out there:
The small (1200 people) town of Placencia is about a four mile cab ride from The Inn at Robert’s Grove. This isn’t a typical resort town — not yet anyway. We don’t see many souvenir shops or much of any shopping. Some friends we’ve made at the resort lead us to De Tatch, a thatched-roof no-wall restaurant down a tiny meandering street, past one-room houses on stilts.
This is no Disney Jungle Cruise! For one thing, our guide, Doyle Garbutt is driving the boat way too fast. Jungle Cruise on steroids, my husband jokes. The two little boys on the boat love it. For another, the animals don’t pop out on cue.
Where are all the nature lovers? According to a new family travel poll conducted by Travelocity, parents with kids are visiting national parks and other nature sites a lot less often than their parents and grandparents did. The poll suggests: more than twice as many families focus on activities like shopping! Instead of camping, families are touring cities and going to theme parks.
It’s just me and the two Pelicans. I’m watching them from my chair on a tiny island — less than an acre around — named Robert’s Cay that’s about 20 miles — and more than an hour’s boat ride in a choppy sea with waves up to five feet — from the Inn at Robert’s Grove where we’re staying.
We arrived yesterday evening after typically frustrating flights. First, we had to get our flights changed because of the American Airlines MD-80 inspection mess. That took hours on the phone. We thought we were home free when we were able to rebook our flights on Delta but no such luck. At the airport in New York, we encountered incredibly long lines for check-in and security.
A cottage in the English countryside or a flat in Paris, a deluxe Caribbean villa or a house with a pool in Orlando, San Diego, Canada, Colorado, New York City or San Francisco. Take your pick for summer vacation. Price is no concern. It won’t cost you a penny — really. There’s just one tiny hitch
Cheap hotels, every kind of food you can imagine. Plenty of sizzle, spectacle, first-rate theatrical productions, giant red rocks for climbing and water playgrounds.
All along the block in the middle-class Lakeview neighborhood where the Strauss family lives, less than a mile from the 17th Street Canal levee break, are houses in various stages of construction. Some are still boarded up; others are brand new, with flowers planted outside. Fewer than half the houses in the neighborhood are occupied.
They are Imagineers. That means they spend their workdays (and probably a lot of work nights) dreaming up and ultimately implementing new attractions for Disney parks and resorts around the world. There are about 1,000 Imagineers, 750 of whom work in Glendale, Calif., in an office building (once a cosmetics factory) that has tighter security than many government buildings.
If you are embarking on a volunteer project with your kids in New Orleans or elsewhere, Vincent Ilustre, who is the executive director of Tulane…
Eleven year old Izzie Alley, who is from suburban New York, is looking around the converted garage where the Strauss Family is living while their…
Whether you are splitting your time between a volunteer project, there is lot for a family to see and do in and around New Orleans
I think New Orleans is a great city to encourage kids to sample food they might not have tried before (Turtle Soup, or fried alligator anyone?) Every restaurant has its own version of gumbo, the rich seafood stew. But there are also plenty of places to get a burger, pasta or chicken fingers. Here’s just a sampling of the good eats I enjoyed in my few days in New Orleans recently. And I certainly left my diet at home (unfortunately).
This is a tale of two cities — literally. Walk the narrow streets of the French Quarter, where I was staying in the historic Hotel Monteleone with its Carousel Bar that turns (once a haven for writers) and the city that was devastated by hurricane Katrina in Aug 2005 seems back to normal. But go just a few miles, and it’s clear to see that all is not yet well in New Orleans.
There are all the other kids onboard (more than a million children cruise every year, reports the Cruise Lines International Association, more than 1,000 on each Disney ship) and organized kids’ and teen activities from morning until night. “You’ll find a friend on the first day,” promises Brooke Abzug, 10, who likes the shipboard scavenger hunts staged by the kids’ clubs.