Some beach time, some spa time
While the ship is in Nassau, we take the chance to check out the newly renovated Sheraton Cable Beach Resort. It’s great for kids — a beautiful beach, three pools and rooms that open onto the pool.
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BEYOND THE BEACH IN BELIZE
Mick Fleming arrived in dugout canoe; Lucy Fleming on horseback a day later. There were no roads to the overgrown farm in the Cayo district of Belize that the young couple hoped to run. Their land was a jungle – literally. “But there was something about the place,” Fleming, who was raised in England, recalls more than 30 years later.
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Kid Nirvana on the Disney Cruise
It’s well past their bedtime but they’re not in bed. Instead, they’re dressed to the nines (the girls anyway, in princess get-up, complete with sparkly shoes and Minnie Mouse dresses) waiting in line to get Cinderella and Jack Sparrow’s autograph. They’re at the Oceaneer lab climbing up to the top of the “pirate” ship so they can slide down.
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Two Parks in one day at Universal
We’ve signed on for a VIP Tour at Universal Studios in Orlando, which means our very informed guide Karyn Shelton (who has almost finished a doctorate in music) cannot only answer all of our questions, but structure our visit around five year old Ethan and three year old Hannah, at the same time making sure their parents can ride all the coasters (and Universal has great ones) that they wish.
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Watery Fun at SeaWorld’s new Aquatica Park in Orlando
Open just a month, it’s easy to see why SeaWorld’s latest venture is already a hit with 36 (count em!) water slides, six lazy rivers and lagoons, plenty of man-made sand beach (no one fighting over chairs for once) and two first rate areas for younger park goers complete with gentle slides, climbing nets, water cannons and giant water buckets that dump water on the little guests seemingly on cue.
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Autograph seeking and a guided tour of Disney World
You better plan ahead if you want to dine with a princess. I learn that breakfast or lunch at Cinderella’s castle is such a hot ticket that it‘s booked six months in advance. We see lots of little princesses in glittery, fluffy outfits with their hair done just so at the new boutique…
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A trip to Walt Disney World with two little ones
DAY ONE — It’s 3 p.m. and the pool at Disney’s Boardwalk resort in Orlando is packed with parents and kids, including a lot of little ones. “It takes patience with young ones. They get so overwhelmed and excited but it’s priceless to see their faces,” one mom in the pool told me. All agreed…
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TO SEATTLE
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.
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Chaa Creek — started small before “eco” was a word
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.” -
Seeing Mayan ruins and tubing through a cave
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.
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On to the Cayo District
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?
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WHAT’S NEW AT THEME PARKS THIS SUMMER
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:
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Placencia and Sein Beit
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.
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The Jungle Cruise on steroids
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.
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A tiny island on the reef off Belize
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.
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Beach Vacations | Destinations | Families & Groups | Getting There | Lodging | Parks & Outdoors | Travel Diaries
A Week in Belize (after a nightmare in the airports)
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.
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TRADING HOUSES FOR YOUR NEXT VACATION
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
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FINDING THE KID-FRIENDLY LAS VEGAS
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.
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Volunteering in New Orleans (where they still need a lot of help)
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.
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MEETING THE FOLKS BEHIND THE MOUSE’S MAGIC
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.
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Want to Help Rebuild New Orleans — Here’s How
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 University’s Center for Public Service suggests: DO research before you arrive so that you have arranged a project and the kids have an understanding of exactly what happened after Hurricane…
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Families working to help the Strausses get back into their home
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 house is being rebuilt in New Orleans. “Smaller than your bedroom,” Margie Alley points out. The space contains a bathroom, fridge, computer, clothes, microwave. The Alleys, along with Margie’s parents…
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Backyard Vacations | Destinations | Families & Groups | Food and Dining | Taking the Kids Blogs | Volunteer & Service
Plenty to see while helping rebuild New Orleans
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
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It’s New Orleans — LET’S EAT!
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).
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New Orleans — a Tale of Two Cities
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.
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HEARING WHAT KIDS THINK ABOUT CRUISING
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.
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Backyard Vacations | Beach Vacations | Cruises & All-Inclusive | Destinations | Families & Groups | Food and Dining | Getting There | Lodging | Parks & Outdoors | Snow Vacations | Weekly Column
A LAST-MINUTE SPRING BREAK
What are you waiting for? Spring Break is looming and you haven’t planned a getaway. We’re not talking a Big Trip — a cruise, for example, or an adventure trip to Costa Rica, though, according to Travelzoo.com, there are good last-minute deals to be had in Costa Rica.
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Backyard Vacations | Destinations | Families & Groups | Food and Dining | Travel Diaries | Volunteer & Service
You can have fun and help out in New Orleans
I just got back from New Orleans and it was packed with spring breakers. They were doing their share of drinking on Bourbon Street but they were also doing their share of helping to clear debris and build houses in neighborhoods that still have not rebounded nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina.
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To a favorite Colorado ski town that’s as much fun in summer as winter
A gem of a mountain (no lift lines here!) just minutes on a free, festively painted shuttle bus from the tiny (less than 2,500 people) town of Mt. Crested Butte, so steeped in mining history that most of the downtown area, with its wooden, multicolored, 19th-century buildings, is on the National Register of Historic Places. (Ever see a two-story outhouse?)
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Family Ski Trip Mode
We’re in family ski trip mode. Everyone having a big bacon and eggs breakfast in pajamas. A lot of teasing is afoot. Thirteen year old Eva decides she’ll ski with us rather than go to ski school. We’re all impressed at how well she skis.
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Not many fur coats in this crowd
Mel seems to be rebounding from her fall and disappointment during the Junior Extremes qualifying run down a terrifyingly steep slope. Everyone has been telling her it’s a lot better to give your all than to not try. That she didn’t succeed just goes with the territory. It helps when she learns a lot of other kids fell on the same run.
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A Tumble Down the Mountain
All Mel wants is to qualify, which means skiing in control down what looks to me like a sheer cliff studded with rocks and boulders! Only about half of the teens who are here will actually qualify.
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Snowshoe day — There’s More to Do In CB than Just Ski
It’s a perfect blue sky day. The sun is shining…the snow crisp under our snowshoes. There’s hardly anyone else out on the trail — just a few other snow shoers and Nordic skiers with their dogs, and an occasional snow mobiler. We see the tracks where hardy skiers have come to back country ski, hiking up so they can ski down pristine powder.
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Touring colleges in the heart of college country – Boston
It wasn’t the choice of restaurant that was making me so happy this particular Saturday night. It was that we’d survived a day of college touring in Boston without a melt down, without stalking off a campus, without tears and with everyone still speaking-and even more surprising, smiling.
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Destinations | Families & Groups | Lodging | Parks & Outdoors | Snow Vacations | Taking the Kids Blogs
The Muellers Have Big Plans for Crested Butte
The first phase is the new Lodge at Mountaineer Square and the Mountaineer Conference Center where we’re staying, just steps from the lifts.
The lodge and conference center wrap around a cozy courtyard, in which guests can find visitor services, dining and shopping. Here the Crested Butte Adventure Center serves as the “resort concierge,” a one-stop shopping venue. -
Organized Chaos — Getting the Kids (and Grownups) Ready to Ski
Organized chaos. Three adults, four college kids, two teens, and a five year-old and three year-old getting ready for a ski day. I‘ve got a sinus infection so I opt not to ski today. I take 13-year-old Eva to the “teen” class. Ellen Osterling, who oversees the kids’ programs, says the ski school tries to offer teen classes every day — even if they have to send out a teen with his own instructor.
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Back to Crested Butte — where there’s plenty of snow
We’re heading to Crested Butte Mountain Resort in Colorado to meet up with an assortment of family, all staying at a condo in the spanking new Lodge at Mountaineer Square, which is part of the hundreds of millions of dollars of improvements here.
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TO PARK CITY UTAH FOR SOME FUN IN THE SNOW
Even better, no more soggy hotdogs or lukewarm mac and cheese for lunch and no more putting kids on the chairlift with strangers: the entire class can ride up with their instructor on a six-passenger chairlift and eat together on the mountain. The teens and tweens, of course, will love the parks and pipes and the night skiing this resort is famous for.
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SQUEEZING IN SOME ADULT TIME ON VACATION
Five years is too long between vacations. Just ask Amy and Matt Wilcher. The Ohio couple hasn’t had a vacation since their Caribbean honeymoon five years ago. Now that they’re parents, they’re contemplating an entirely different kind of getaway with their 2-year-old daughter
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Park City in the Summer and Winter
The Utah Olympic Park was the venue for Nordic jumping, bobsled, luge and skeleton events during the 2002 Winter Olympics here. Today, world class athletes train here — you may see them if you visit Tuesday through Saturday. They train in summer as well as winter. Today the Park also continues to serve as a year-round competition site.
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A ski school overview at Park City
Let’s hear it for a place that loves families. “We want to make it easier for them,” says The Canyons Ski School Director Barry Stout. He notes that the “Cat’s “ program for 4-6 year olds not only is one stop shopping but guarantees a 3:1 ratio. There are three terrain parks and six natural half pipes as well as plenty of hike-to terrain for those craving the steeps and the deeps.
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TO BARCELONA
Welcome to Antonin Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia, www.sagradafamilia.org , Barcelona’s most famous site and Spain’s most visited. More than 40 years after the eccentric and revered architect’s death – he was struck by a tram – work still continues on the huge church first begun in 1882. Some 2.5 million people visited last year.
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More about Holly Flanders Women’s Ski Clinic
Holly, a single mom of three, was an Olympian and World Cup champion. She skied on the US Ski team for 10 years. She raced from the time she was eight until her late 20s. But she knows that most of the women who sign up for her clinic aren’t world class athletes.
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It’s not always easy, but ski camp lifts confidence
For me, it’s later in the afternoon at the top of a gnarly, bumpy steep run called Grizzly. I can’t figure out where in the bump to turn. I’m afraid to point my skies downhill. It’s so steep! The bumps are so big! But I square my shoulders and say I’m not going to let the mountain defeat me.
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A Women’s Ski Clinic in Utah
I’m nervous. The rest of the women in the room are excited and upbeat. We’ve gathered from around the country on this very snowy morning at The Canyons resort in Park City Utah to work on our skiing with former Olympian Holly Flanders and her hand-picked crew of women’s coaches.
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A Visit to Park City, Utah
When families told Park City Mountain Resort they didn’t like such big ski school classes for their kids, the resort did something about it — besides suggesting parents pay mega pucks for private lessons.
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TO YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK IN WINTER
By Eileen OgintzTribune Media Services Old Faithful spews thousands of gallons of steaming water right on schedule, but Miguel isn’t the least bit interested. He just lumbers by us searching for lunch. That’s probably because Miguel, so named by my two daughters, is a 1,800-pound bison who sees Old Faithful every day. Yellowstone National Park’s…
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SNARING A WINTER DEAL
You gotta hate that guy. The guy sitting next to you on the plane, at the pool or the chairlift who can’t stop bragging about the fantastic vacation deal he snared that saved his family big bucks.
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TO MONTANA FOR SOME FUN IN THE SNOW
Mary Blilie had been at Big Sky Resort in Montana for just one day but had already snapped more photos of her kids than she had in a long time. That’s because when Blilie, now a Minneapolis engineer, was a kid her family skied here every winter and now, after a 17-year hiatus, she was determined to create some of those same happy memories for her own two children
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DISNEY WORLD 101
Your next-door neighbor insists he has the skinny on finding bargain lodging (you can find rooms, especially in winter for well under $100 a night). One friend says she wouldn’t leave home without “Birnbaum’s Walt Disney World 2007,” the official guide to Walt Disney World, while a co-worker says her bible is the “Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World.”
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A visit to Yellowstone at Christmastime
Did you know Yellowstone has more thermal feature than anywhere in the world? And I’d rather visit in winter anytime. The last time we were here in the summer, there were so many people, the kids could barely see Old Faithful. Now we’re hiking in snowshoes around the geyser basin and there’s no one but us and Miguel.
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Destinations | Families & Groups | Food and Dining | Lodging | Parks & Outdoors | Snow Vacations | Travel Diaries
A foot of fresh snow — and dinner in a yurt
Mother Nature, my daughter Mel says, delivered the best Christmas present of all — more than a foot of fresh snow. But unlike other ski resorts during a holiday week, there are no lift lines and no crowds. Where is everyone?
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A snow day — lots of powder and a move to Moonlight Basin
The good news is that it’s snowing — dumping snow actually. The bad news is that it’s snowing — so hard that there’s hardly any visibility Even my die hard skiers don’t want to move from the cabin. They’re watching an ER marathon. When do we get to do that at home?
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Beach Vacations | Cruises & All-Inclusive | Destinations | Families & Groups | Lodging | Parks & Outdoors | Weekly Column
STRESS-FREE TRIPS IN 2008
By Eileen Ogintz Tribune Media Services It’s two days before we leave for a trip out West and my husband can’t find his hiking boots. And he’s not worried in the least. But I’m in my pre-trip freak-out mode, searching the closets, the attic, the duffels we used on our last three trips. (I’m hoping…
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Coming back year after year
Other families I meet around the village at the Base of Big Sky are equally enthusiastic about the ski school. The mountain is big but the ski school is small “and that’s important” says Lori Woolbright, who is back for her third holiday here with her husband and eight year old daughter from Myrtle Beach, SC.
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The most skiable terrain in the USA — and it’s not in Colorado!
That’s the thing about Big Sky — it’s at the same time a mountain known for its steeps and deeps with the most with moonlight Basin next door — the most terrain in the country – 5,512 skiable acres and a 4,350 foot vertical drop. There’s enough extreme terrain at the top of the tram to satisfy my kids but also plenty of wide open blue terrain for those like me nursing a bad knee.
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A Holiday vacation in Montana’s Big Sky country
It’s seven in the morning and we’re ensconced in a cozy log cabin with a stone fireplace at Big Sky Ski Resort. I smell bacon and coffee — my husband is cooking us a hearty breakfast before our first day on what is billed as “the biggest skiing in America.” I’m hoping my kids will love here that Big Sky allows access to some of the country’s biggest vertical drops and steepest lift accessed terrain anywhere
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Looking back on a memorable holiday trip to Ecuador
Have you ever gone to a party on the wrong day? When we arrive Christmas afternoon, the hosts and their kids clearly aren’t expecting company. In fact, we catch them snoozing. But we barge in anyway — we have come so far, after all, to see them. Our hosts, the Sea Lion family, live on San Cristobal island in the Galapagos
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SURVIVING THE RELATIVES THIS HOLIDAY SEASON
Let’s hear it for innkeepers who always have a smile for their guests — and everyone else who is struggling to keep smiling when hosting family this holiday season, when the visiting toddler drops Goldfish everywhere and the teen refuses to be roused before noon from the family room sofa bed. Did I mention the uncle who falls asleep on the couch before dessert, snoring loudly?
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SNARING A LAST-MINUTE HOLIDAY DEAL
Honestly, I can’t remember anything I saw that day. I could never find that field again (though I do have a picture of it somewhere.) But I’ll never forget that glorious I-don’t-have-a-schedule feeling. Of course that was long before responsibilities – like children and jobs — curtailed my freewheeling travel style.
