Things To Know

Some movies transport you to a different place for two hours. When you’re done watching, you look up and are surprised to find yourself in a local movie theater —or more likely these days, on your couch. These types of movies are ideal for a staycation, or a spring and …

One of our favorite ways to conjure memories of a favorite vacation is to make some of the foods we discovered away from home, ideally with ingredients we’ve brought back. Tortilla soup reminds us of Mexico City and tofu with ground pork and rice takes us back to Laos. Treacle …

Most of us have a dream vacation on our bucket list. Maybe it’s a European art tour hitting all cities and landmarks, an adventure-sports trip to Australia, or a summer-long road trip to some national parks.  Cost is likely the biggest barrier to turning you family’s dream into a plan. …

In the weekend before New York City schools closed and life in my city ground to a halt, bread flour was one of the first things to disappear from supermarket shelves.  I suppose everyone was planning to do some comfort cooking over these difficult weeks. And for most people warm …

Books have both inspired and informed a lot of my travels. And they’ve taken me places I haven’t been and might never go. I’ve learned as much about a place from a good novel as I have from any travel guide.  Books are an escape from the here and now, …

A good vacation can generate memories that stay with you long after you’ve returned home to your everyday routine. When something goes amiss on vacation that is often memorable, too, but for all the wrong reasons.  We want families who read FamiliesGo! to have the best possible memories from all …

Traveling with kids always has unique challenges. Holiday travel is always extra stressful. It’s no wonder that most parents dread holiday season travel with kids. Whether it’s Thanksgiving, Christmas or Hannukah, and whether you’re driving a few hours or flying across the country, here are our best tips, short-cuts and …

On any city vacation we take, admission fees to museums and other cultural institutions are one of our biggest expenses. For art, history and even children’s museums, admission typically starts at $15 or so for kids and heads higher for the parents. At zoos, aquariums, and science and natural history …

Having a camera on our phones makes it easy to take pictures. So we take a lot of photos these days, especially vacation photos. But then, we have a lot of photos. What do we do with them? Despite my best intention my photos sit on my phone forever, waiting …

We took quite a flew flights with Tiny Traveler when she was a toddler and preschooler and were lucky enough to never have a meltdown. I still have sympathy for parents with crying tots. We did have a lot of badly timed naps, forbidden food, squirming and inappropriate climbing, and …

One of the most fun parts of being on vacation is eating good food. For you that might mean trying all kinds of new things or eating fancier meals than you do at home. But for your kids it might mean getting to eat chicken fingers and ice cream every …

Question: The Holiday-Season Airfare Challenge How can I find cheap airfares for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays? FamiliesGo! Answer: In general you save money on airfare by not traveling when everyone else is. So one of the biggest challenges to traveling with kids is how to travel during those popular …

Short-term vacation rentals are popular with families. You’ve probably rented someone else’s house or apartment for a vacation with your kids somewhere along the way (or thought about it). But have you ever thought about renting out your primary home or second home to offset the cost of your family …

This is Ask FamiliesGo!, where we answer our readers’ questions about family travel. We add new questions as our readers pose them, so keep checking back. You can ask your own question by emailing us. Question: How Do Families With Toddlers Sleep in Hotel Rooms? This is one of these things about family …

Updated March 2020 Your kids are great and you love them. But being confined in a large box with them as it travels down the road? No thanks, right? I totally get that. The truth is though, an RV family vacation isn’t nearly as daunting as it seems. And it …

I love bike riding. From the moment we began teaching Tiny Traveler to ride a two-wheeler I have been dreaming of family cycling trips through Tuscany or Alsace or even just the Hudson Valley, two hours from home. I’ve had to downsize my family biking dreams a bit for the …

Updated May 2020 Few things scare new parents like the thought of *flying for the first time with a baby or toddler. There is the prospect of getting through the airport and onto the plane with ALL THAT STUFF you can’t leave home without. And then there is the fear …

For our first car trip with Tiny Traveler, we packed the car up bright and early, then transferred the 6-month-old baby from her crib to her car seat still in her PJs, more asleep than awake. We handed her her usual wake-up bottle of milk and set off. Everything was …

There are certain New York experiences that native residents happily leave to the tourists. New Years Eve in Times Square is one (really, anything in Times Square) and for me, for a long time, meeting the Macy’s Santa in Herald Square was another. But the Santaland at Macy’s is a …

The Trouble With Kids and Taxis Yes, we know. You don’t need a rental car and either there isn’t public transit or you can’t deal with public transit with the kids and luggage in tow. You just need to get your family from the airport to your hotel and back …

I think about road-trip safety and health far more than I used to. Now that we have a child (and our airfare costs have increased by 50%) travel by road trip far more We drive in snowy winter weather to ski resorts with their rutted, frozen-mud parking lots. We creep along …

If you don’t live where you and your spouse grew up, you probably wind up sharing a house with relatives over the holiday season. Or maybe this is the year you’re all meeting up for that big vacation you’ve been talking about, renting a big beach house for lots of …

Plants are often the detail that gets overlooked in our house in the flurry to plan and get out of the house on vacation. But few things are more discouraging than coming home to a plant that’s brown and dead (or near dead). So here are some tips to help …

It’s probably easy to believe I was not excited about the prospect of flying long haul to Australia from the U.K. with a 10 month old baby. In fact, I was so anxious, I nearly cancelled the trip. But I’m so glad I didn’t. It wasn’t a complete barrel of …

What do moms want in a great family beach resort? That’s the question we asked in September at #MOMtravelchat. The Twitter Party was sponsored by Grand Beach Hotel in Miami Beach, which is known for great family amenities like big rooms with an extra bathroom and even a Kid Zone right …

Updated march 2020 Following two exotic trips over the winter (Guadeloupe and Senegal), plus spring break jaunt to Pittsburgh, we opted to be relatively frugal for the summer and staycation. We wanted it to feel like a real vacation, though, not just a week hanging around the house. One goal …

Updated February 2020 Cruising is an easy way to vacation with children, especially if you live in a city that’s an embarkation point. Whether you were an avid cruise-goer before you became a parent, or you doubted you’d ever go on a cruise in your life (guilty!), there are things …

When was the last time you traveled without your family? I can count the number of times I’ve been away from my family for a night or two on one hand — and have fingers to spare. All these trips have been for business, usually speaking engagements. Each time I …

“Come out little guy. Are you in there?” My son Sam, 10 at the time, poked at a snail shell in Calais, France, glorying in the special mini-fork that came with his order. I was holding my breath, still disbelieving that my picky eater had asked for snails instead of pizza. …

Updated June 2020 Laundry on vacation? I avoid it at all costs. In my carefree younger days I would pack 14 pairs of underwear on a 2-week vacation and not think twice about it. But sometimes you can’t avoid it—you’ll just be gone too long, or you need to pack light, or …