Topping and tailing

One of the things that we have found helpful when travelling with our kids is to top and tail our kids in their bed: one with their head up one end, the other with their head up the other. It does require a little bit of rearrangement of the bedclothes, but it does mean that they sleep better.

Of course, we'd prefer for them to have their own separate single beds, because sleep comes much more easily that way, but sometimes there's only a double bed for them.

We find that separating their heads and legs means that they are less likely to bump into each other in the night. Because neither of them is particularly tall, it means that much less of them "overlap" in the same section of bed.

And of course if they sleep better, they're much less grumpy the next day. Great when you're wanting to enjoy travelling with kids, rather than just tolerating it!

Farmstay fun!

Late last week we went on our farmstay trip out to Bathurst, NSW. We stayed at Barcoo's Barn, just south of Bathurst, and it was great!

Our host was Ken and he was only too happy to have us there and show us around. His wife, Elaine, was away horseriding, so normally she would be there to be hospitable (and by all accounts in their guest book, she certainly is!) too.

We came in late in the afternoon, and didn't get the chance to look around. But there was a good spot right outside our room for John to set up the telescope and have a good look up into the sky. It was a lovely clear night, and was certainly darker than Sydney, as we could get a good view of the Milky Way. After he got rather freezing, John eventually came in.

The accommodation was warm, and the beds were good. (There was space for 11 people, plus two futons... Got a LARGE family?) There was heaps available self serve for breakfast - all we had to do was open the cupboards and find it!

After breakfast and packing up our stuff, we went out and met one of the other guests up in a paddock, who introduced us to the Clydesdale horses, Clancy and Barcoo. They're both about 15 years old, and each weigh a tonne. Wouldn't like to have one of them step on our toes.

Ken had gone off over the hill in the truck, and when he came back, he let us into the chook pen to feed the chooks. The Bookworm got right into it immediately, though Bendy was a bit scared of the chickens. Eventually she thawed out and was happily feeding them also.

After that, Ken took us around to the sheep paddock (where we had met Clancy and Barcoo earlier), and The Bookworm helped him feed the sheep, the Clydesdales, two very unfriendly alpacas, and another horse called Prince. She wasn't real sure about patting the horses, but she did it anyway. I used it as a teaching moment (!) and said that if she didn't brush her hair each day, it would end up feeling that rough too! :-)

Bendy was absolutely terrified of the sheep. She was screaming, and Ken was rolling his eyes... She insisted on being picked up and carried around, in the hope that that would keep her out of their reach. She really only relaxed when we closed the gate behind us.

Ken showed us all the bits of equipment lying around the paddock, each with their specific purpose for farm work. Some were for making bales of hay, others for wrapping them in plastic, others for moving them about the place etc.

Then Ken showed us the shearing shed. He weighed the girls on the big old scales where they weigh the bales of wool. It was a bit meaningless for them because it was only in imperial weight, which they don't understand (well, actually, neither do I!), but they enjoyed it all the same.

Then we had a bit more of a chat with Ken outside, before he went off for his morning tea, and we went off on our way home. If we'd had longer, I've no doubt he would have been happy to take The Bookworm off in the tractor with him on his rounds.

Ken was in no hurry to get rid of us, and you can see that he loves having people to show over the farm. If Elaine had been there, Ken said she would have been pleased to hook up the sled behind Barcoo so that the girls could have a ride.

So we highly recommend staying at Barcoo's Barn if you're looking for a farmstay, or even if you're just in the Bathurst area.

Pictures coming soon...

Worst travel experiences: Dining out in London

It's about time we owned up to some of the really bad travel experiences as well as waxing lyrical over the really good ones. Once you start travelling, it is amazing just how many of both extremes of experience come your way. The bad experiences stick in your memory, and are just as much a part of the retelling long after the holiday - often to be laughed off, even if it wasn't at all funny at the time.

One of the most prominent bad experiences in my mind relates to dining out at a certain Chinese restaurant along Brompton Road, Kensington (London) between the V&A and Harrods. I googled it prior to writing this post and was amazed to find it still operating (we visited in 2002). It got excellent reviews, and by any standards has an outstanding menu. 

We visited at lunchtime, and not for dinner, so the restaurant was quite empty apart from a table occupied by staff from the diplomatic missions nearby. 

Well, I believe that the food we ate that day was excellent. I can't remember, of course, because such a highlight of this dining experience was completely overshadowed by the service - and in particular the attitude - of the staff. I cannot begin to relate how appalling the service was. It appears that the source of this poor service was none other than the fact that brought with us one of those nasty, filthy objects known as "children".

We only had one child at this stage, and she is a well-seasoned diner in fine restaurants. The Bookworm has good table manners, is polite, eats practically anything put in front of her and I don't think she'd ever had a tantrum in a restaurant. She's not perfect by any stretch, but you could take her anywhere - even when she was a tiny baby. You still can.

Well, didn't we suffer because of her presence! The disdain was palpable. The staff couldn't get rid of us quickly enough. We were made to feel as if we were most unwelcome, and we'd better leave ASAP. I'm just sorry that I put up with the attitude and paid the bill. Next time - if there is a next time - I won't be doing either.

Favourite places we’ve visited: The World’s Largest Virtual Solar System Drive

As mentioned previously, we did at least two of the drives which incorporate the World's Largest Virtual Solar System Drive. We joined one of the drives on the Mitchell Highway at Narrabri. Just south of the town, there is a truck-stop/picnic area with a 3D model of Neptune to which it was attached. We were on the outskirts of the giant Solar System – but Pluto was hundreds of kilometres back up the highway towards Moree. Driving towards Coonabarabran, we were nearing the centre: the Sun.

The drive works something like this. Imagine that the dome of the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Siding Spring, Coonabarabran is a scale model of the sun. Someone, in their impressive imagination, created scale models of all of the planets (even Pluto) at the scale distances along the roads leading away from Siding Spring. A three-dimensional scale model of each planet is mounted on a gigantic billboard containing information about that planet on it. So, Mercury was just down the driveway road from the observatory, and Venus further along than that. Earth was almost at the main road and Mars just beyond the intersection. The model of Jupiter was simply enormous, and located just before the road entered Coonabarabran.

At this point, there are five versions of the model – each spread out along one of the five main roads leading away from Coonabarabran so that, for example, Pluto is located to the north between Narrabri and Moree, to the east near Merriwa, and to the south in Dubbo. There are several Saturns – hugely spectacular with the rings, of course – located a few kilometres away from town along each of the main roads. Neptune and Uranus much further away down the highway. Pluto, hundreds of kilometres away in Dubbo, was a tiny hemisphere of grey attached to a gigantic board in the carpark of the Tourist Information Centre. The Bookworm, who loves space, loved the drive. So did the rest of us. Tracking down each planet and trying to guess how long it would take to reach the next one was a fun way to pass the time with the kids in the car.

The Solar System Drive has to be one of the more unusual sights we have seen on holidays, but it was terrific fun! The kids loved it as we stopped at each planet to read the brief information and marvel over the relative sizes and distances represented. And it was an interesting way to pass the time on some very long driving. I’m glad that they stopped with Pluto. It was hard enough trying to comprehend the enormity and emptiness of the Solar System without having to stretch my brain around distances across the Universe! It wouldn’t have fit, anyway.

Space: the final frontier

No, not those ultra-expensive trips being offered by the Russian Space Agency to the super-rich, but a two-day (one night) trip to the central western NSW town of Bathurst next week. It would have been a longer stay, but we have another commitment on the weekend that can’t be missed. We’re staying the night on a farmstay, so there will probably be a later blog post about that – especially the reaction of the kids when they actually get there. At the moment they’re really looking forward to it. But, given their usual response to live animals the farm experience might well be a disaster…!

Anyway, we got a call today from Yvette’s dad. He’s seen a telescope for sale at a garage sale, and he’s going to make an offer on it for us (it is unpriced at the moment). I love space, and the idea of owning a telescope is one that I’ve had since I was quite young, though I’ve always put it of as a bit of an indulgence. To be honest, I think many of them simply become unloved white elephants. However, if we successfully acquire this telescope we shall use it with gusto.

Yvette suggested taking it with us to Bathurst. I can’t think why that sounded so remarkable – what a great suggestion! A telescope is an ideal holiday instrument to have with kids around. Despite the fact that we know so much, the mystique of space has still a powerful hold over human imaginations. On a clear night, with very dark country night skies, it is an interesting way to pass the time with your kids – thoughtful as well as relaxing (if a teensy bit cold…). So if we get it, it will make the trip with us to Bathurst because the sky will be much clearer (weather permitting) than the light-polluted skies of Sydney. I shall have to see if we can find something really special like Jupiter or Saturn: but even the moon is fascinating with a closer view.

One of The Bookworm’s abiding interests is planets and space. When she was in kindergarten she (with some help) constructed a model of the solar system out of painted polystyrene balls and we suspended it from an old curtain rod slung across her room. So, as part of an earlier holiday to western NSW, we did a number of “space” themed activities. We visited the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Siding Spring, Coonabarabran, and the Radio Telescope dishes at Narrabri. And we did the drives out of Coonabarabran following the World’s Largest Virtual Solar System Drive(see tomorrow's post for details).

So I’m hoping we’ve acquired a telescope rather cheaply, and am looking forward to spending part of one night next week gazing up at the splendour of the Milky Way – weather permitting, of course. And I know the kids will be fighting each other for a turn at looking through it. We miss out on so much of the night sky in the city that it is a real treat to see it in full darkness.

Some of our kids' favourite travel memories

The other day we were talking about eating icecreams. Bendy piped up about visiting an icecream factory. We were surprised, as we visited the Ben and Jerry's icecream factory in Waterbury, Vermont in 2006, when Bendy was just 2 and a bit. Bendy still remembers it. The other strong memory that Bendy has from our America holiday is eating a SpongeBob icecream in Central Park in New York. Bendy actually has no idea who SpongeBob is, as we have no TV, and therefore the only thing she knows about SpongeBob is that he's an icecream character. However, she liked the goofy look of him and obviously its highly memorable for her.

The Bookworm remembers the same day, but not so much in the context of eating icecreams (although she does remember eating the rest of the SpongeBob, because even though it was obviously so exciting and memorable for Bendy, she didn't want to actually finish it!). For her, it was more about learning a bit about the Beatles and John Lennon, in the Strawberry Fields part of Central Park. When they were there, there was a jazz band busking, and the kids really enjoyed listening to it. It took them quite some to get up enough courage to go and put some money in their collection. The Bookworm really didn't want to, but eventually did.

Of course, their other favourite travel memories would have to be from our visit to Hong Kong Disneyland. That will be burned onto their brains and they will never forget it. Indeed, Bendy's new life quest is to visit ALL the Disneylands around the world. Aim high! Just what the Disney corporate executives would want...

When The Bookworm was 20 months old, we visited the UK, Ireland, and Singapore. For a long time afterwards (until the memories eventually faded) her strong memories of that holiday were of the Jacobite steam train on the West Highland Railway in Scotland (also famous as the Hogwarts Express), men on horses in London (the Horse Guards) and a piece of troublesome rubbish that was stuck to the play equipment in Singapore airport. At the time she found this piece of rubbish extremely distressing, and we think that is why the memory stuck with her for so long.

Interesting that all of these memories have strong emotions attached to them. Most were obviously of extreme happiness and even ecstasy, but the distressing ones were equally emotive.

Sometimes people wonder why we take our kids with us on holidays when they are so young. We know that not all the memories that our kids have of their holidays - especially from when they were extremely young - will stay with them forever, but each has a part in shaping who they are. Of course they won't remember things from when they are tiny, but that doesn't make the experiences any less important.

Travel nannies

I'm sorry, but I'm probably not going to be positive towards this concept - and the associated parenting messages it sends - so consider yourself warned.

When Yvette first alerted me to the idea of travel nannies, I thought she was joking. Apparently not. For the uninitiated, they are employees of resorts and hotels assigned to guest families to look after the kids. To remove their inconvenient little presences from the mummies and daddies who brought them into this world. Yup.

Firstly, if you are going to employ the services of a travel nanny, why bother taking the kids in the first place? Why not prevail on the long-suffering grandparents to take the nasty little brutes off your hands? I could, of course, launch into a completely off-topic tirade about parents who have children as some sort of trophy of achievement, or as a fashion accessory (one step above mummy's little poochy in her D&G handbag), or simply as the living organism whose only raison d'etre is to inherit all the stuff you have accumulated in the quest to show off how successful you are... but I won't.

Secondly, since when is it a grand idea to leave your progeny with some unknown individual to take care of their every need? To be completely alarmist, are the employers of travel nannies obliged to undertake police checks etc. of applicants in order to weed out those who might have untoward intentions? Do you really know whether, while you are sipping Pina Coladas on some idyllic stretch of beach in the Bahamas, your little darling is being scarred for life in some way?

Thirdly, why not have some fun together? What a novel idea that might be for some parents, but you know... it CAN be done. Actually, it can be enjoyable. Sure, go to the resort, lie on the beach, do the things you want to do - but does that really require you to abrogate your responsibility as a parent? I think not. Indeed, take advantage of kids programs that might be on offer - events where loads of kids might be involved in something (usually in a very public space), but I really, really cannot see how anyone could need a travel nanny.

Here's the bottom line. My children are part of my family and looking after them is my responsibility. If we go on holidays as a family, we do it together. We enjoy it together. We'll even plan it together. If we want time away from the kids, we'll arrange it - but we're fooling ourselves if we call it a family holiday.

Affording that dream holiday

I recently learned of a "vacation calculator" designed to help people see where they can make savings in their spending, so that they can save for their dream vacation. The Yaycations Calculator goes through a series of questions, asking how much you spend on various products and services over certain periods of time, then adds up the amount of money that you will save over a year if you opt to go without those things.

Seems like a great idea. I decided to give it a go. I went through all the questions, and I saved...

...precisely nothing.

Its not that I'm not willing to do without stuff. Its that I'm already doing without, and that's how we can afford our family holidays.

Last night I was looking at the monthly credit card bill that had arrived yesterday. Apart from one or two more unusual expenses, all our money was spent on groceries, petrol for the car, and medical expenses. It was quite amazing. I hadn't realised that we lived quite so simply.

Without trying or wanting to sound "holier than thou", here's how we do it.

We have a car, and a mortgage, but we manage to live without lots of the "added extras" that so many people have. We have no TV, so we don't need cable. Neither of us has a mobile (cell) phone. We make sandwiches to take to work and school. We don't buy a daily coffee when out. Instead of buying CDs, we mostly listen to the radio - and purchase music infrequently. We borrow books from libraries - only buying the rare 'must-haves'. We don't need DVDs because we don't have a TV to watch them on. We only purchase clothing when we absolutely need to, rather than just because we want to and minimise the purchase of "label" clothing. I even sew some of our own clothing sometimes. We don't go out to clubs or the local pub.

We still have hobbies, (I do lots of embroidery), we are in the process of renovating our house (we're very much DIYers so we save heaps there), we occasionally will have a meal out or takeaway (about once every one or two months), we have a lawn mower man (John is allergic to grass). We give money to carefully chosen causes on a regular basis. Our kids do extracurricular activities like music and sport.

But far from having a terribly boring and sad existence, we enjoy our lives. We enjoy each others' company, and we enjoy going on holidays together, as a family. We can usually manage a big overseas holiday about once every 2-3 years.

So if your wish list includes a vacation, and you don't think you can afford it, how about firstly trying the "Yaycations calculator" to see what you can save. Then why not take a careful look at your expenses to see what you can do without? As you'll see from the calculator, even small weekly expenses can add to a lot over a year.

For us, holidays with our kids are a priority. We learn heaps about the world around us from our travels. Our family vacations also create shared memories that help to bind our family together. So for us, putting aside money to pay for our family holidays is also a priority. It means that in some ways we "do without", but we can only see great big benefits from doing so.

Encouraging your kids to enjoy the travel moment

Often when reading blogs about traveling with kids, you see suggestions for using DVD players and such like to entertain your kids while your doing "boring" things like moving from one place to another.

I have a suggestion: how about encouraging your children to enjoy looking at what they see around them? How about encouraging them to actually engage in their surroundings, to observe, to comment, and to experience? What is the problem with looking out the car/train/etc. window at endless stretches of countryside?

Apparently children HAVE to be kept entertained for every moment of their waking lives. Why? Why must we cosset our kids by keeping them in an entertainment bubble that means they basically take their home environment with them? Why even take them on a vacation, when you could all happily stay at home and keep watching your TV? If you want a travel experience, watch a travel show...

Or, how about actually TALKING with your kids? How about talking about what it is that you are seeing? How about getting them to comment on their travel experiences?

• What did you like best today?
• What did you like least today?
• Why did you like/dislike those things?
• What was the most surprising thing today?
• Do you have any questions about what we've seen so far today?

I know that kids can get grumpy and "bored" when you're travelling, and at those times its important just to maintain the peace. However, how about encouraging them to experience rather than just passively sit back and be entertained?

$1 kid fares with CountryLink trains

From 8th April until 27th April 2009, CountryLink (NSW country trains) are offering a wonderful promotional fare of $1 for children travelling with adult family members, to CountryLink destinations.

Train travel with kids is a lovely way to go somewhere. For kids that are used to going everywhere in cars, try a train for once! Its a very relaxing way to travel - especially for the usual drivers!

Check out the terms and conditions at CountryLink.

Sleeping with a washing machine

We've mentioned before that sometimes it is unfortunately unavoidable that you have to share a bed with your children. I know that some people do this out of personal preference, but we are not included among that number.

Wherever possible we try to arrange it so that we can have a double/queen bed for the adults and the children have either a double to share or a single bed each. When the kids have to share a bed, we have topped and tailed them so that they are each using a different part of the bed (and get in each other's way less). This seems to work better than having them both with their heads up one end, because one of our children is a washing machine when it comes to sleeping...

Once, in Portugal it happened that we could only get two separate non-connecting rooms, with a double/queen size bed in each. That meant that we had to have a parent and a child sharing each bed (we didn't feel safe leaving our kids in a room without us). One of us therefore had to draw a short straw and share with The Washing Machine.

It wasn't me...

[...and here John butts in for a minute: I had just driven for six hours and was extremely tired so I didn't need what was coming next...]

John was woken in the middle of the night by Bendy who was sitting up, trying to pull the pillow out from under his head. She said she wanted her pillow back. John pointed out to her that it was his pillow, and hers was where she had left it. She doesn't always bother with sleeping parallel to the sides of the bed, with her head helpfully resting on the pillow. On this occasion as for many others, she was actually sleeping across the bed, and had therefore lost track of her pillow. John had been pushed, kicked and pummelled for much of the night by her feet, as she lay across the bed. Needless to say, he didn't get a really satisfying night's sleep.

So, sure, if your children are a little more passive than ours are in bed, by all means co-sleep with them if you are that way inclined. However don't be surprised if we choose not to.

The things kids say!

One of the main points behind overseas travel is to experience places quite different from home. Travel to Europe (and other places) allows a brush with certain significant historical periods simply not available in real life in Australia. Take the Roman Empire, for instance. The largest and most powerful political entity in its heyday - but it completely bypassed Australia.

So when we go to Europe, we sometimes visit ruins (Roman or otherwise). This gives US a connection with a distant history (physically and temporally) and also brings it to life for the kids. On our last trip, we took the opportunity to visit the Roman ruins at Conimbriga, Portugal; the Iron Age settlement of Citania de Briteiros, Portugal; the Moorish city of Medina al-Zahara, Spain and the Roman city of Italica, Spain.

You do have to be careful what you say to your kids, and how you say it, because everywhere we went Bendy would walk around the sites loudly declaiming about just how much the Romans had ruined it (whether or not the Romans had ever been there!). "Roman Ruins" transformed into "The Romans Ruined It"!

5 top items for travelling kids

These are our top 5 suggestions for what to take for your travelling kids. Some are for fun, some are for comfort, some are for safety.

1. A hat. Protect your kid's precious skin from the sun by taking a hat for them to wear. This doesn't just apply to sunny places, as UV rays can make it through clouds.


2. Sunscreen. Hats don't cover everything, so use sunscreen also.


3. A special (small) toy. Travelling can be unsettling for kids. They don't have their usual routine, they don't have their usual surroundings, and sometimes apart from their family, they don't even have their usual language. By taking a small special toy, the child will be able to take with them something that is special and familiar. (You'll need to keep a good watch on it though, because it would be disastrous to lose their favourite toy.)


4. A small bag for them to carry at least some of their own stuff. Even small kids can have a light backpack with a piece of warm clothing, a snack or a small drink. Kids love to be helpers, so why not encourage them to help with carrying a few small things. As they get older, they can carry a bit more. We're not trying to make them packhorses, just to share a little of the load. NB: This is for day tripping, not as their actual luggage.


5. A surprise pack for the journey. This is a parcel of things that the parents put together as a surprise for the child. It could include a couple of reading or picture books that you'll know that they love, a sticker book, a colouring book, some coloured pencils, a small quiet game etc. The idea is to present it to your child at the beginning of the journey (plane, car, train etc) so that they can keep themselves occupied with new and exciting things as you travel. It does not need to be expensive to put together - you can pick up a lot of these sorts of things at discount shops. It could be parcelled up in a special cloth bag, or even just a paper bag with their name written on it in large happy letters!

If the kids are happy, it means that you can all be enjoying travel with kids!

Enjoying your own city with the kids

Assuming you live in a city, of course - but you get the idea. One idea I am wanting to explore with our kids is to take some time during the school holidays and explore our own city as if we were tourists. Obviously I'm not going to the expense of staying in a city hotel - though there's some merit in doing that - but at least to explore the sights and sounds of home.

It is a curious thing that we often take our own city for granted. We go to enormous expense and time planning an overseas trip, while largely ignoring the things right under our noses. Sydney is a great city. It is beautiful, reasonably tidy and has much to offer overseas visitors: some of which we don't know anything about! 

So I have occasionally taken matters in my own hands. From time to time we visit the Art Gallery of NSW or the Powerhouse Museum, and we've been to Taronga Zoo. And obviously we've been to the Opera House (what must be one of the most photographed buildings in existence). I took The Bookworm on a walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and my mum and I took the kids on a ferry ride to Watson's Bay for fish and chips by the harbour. We have explored Katoomba in the Blue Mountains with the kids - a freezing good time in winter.

But there's so much more than that. I'd actually like to do the hop-on hop-off bus tour around Sydney to see and hear about my own city. Also, we've never been to the Australian Museum (natural history) or Fort Denison (on an island in Sydney Harbour). It would also be nice to do some of the walks in the National Parks around the Harbour, or the beaches, or Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (about 10 minutes from home...!).

The city is only the epicentre - the surrounding areas are also possible options as well. We're surrounded by magnificent National Parks, wineries about an hour away, and the national capital - Canberra - only 2.5 to 3 hours away.

If you can't do the large scale overseas trips - and you may not want to, particularly with kids - then there's still a lot to be gained from considering a holiday closer to home. You might be surprised at just what hidden treasures are right on your doorstep.

How to be the best Dad in the world...

One word: Disneyland.

Ordinarily, I am not really fond of spending either my time or my money on things which are blatantly commercial and tastelessly trashy. However, I did it, and I don't regret it one little bit. Our kids have grown up sadly bereft of most forms of advertising that children are subjected to simply because we have chosen - quelle horreur! - to live without a television.

But you know, those crusty executives at the Disney conglomerate have their ways and means, so our two little girls were quite familiar with every Disney Princess in their repertoire.

On our most recent trip to Europe, we had the opportunity to stop over in Hong Kong on the way home. We usually do this to break up the ultra-marathon distances Australians have to travel to see much of the planet anyway, but Hong Kong afforded us the possibility of satisfying every little kids' dream (except Yvette's, apparently) of going to Disneyland. Yvette was a bit skeptical about the idea at first, but my repressed inner child was fully in favour of it. And to add icing to the cake, we eventually opted to stay in one of the full-on Disneyland hotels.

Well, it is hard to summarise what the kids' response was. We kept it a secret from them for a long time, and eventually we let on to this surprise. Their excitement was palpable. Watching them enjoy themselves was one of Yvette's and my lasting and most satisfying travel experiences (life experiences). Once we arrived they looked as if they were going to burst, such was the excitement they displayed. Bendy has, since then, found a new aim in life: to visit every Disneyland park on the planet.

A few good things about Hong Kong Disneyland, which we thoroughly recommend:

• It is small. Or should I say, It's a small world. Unlike the behemoth versions in America, HK Disneyland is on a geographically manageable scale.
  
• It is designed with small children in mind. This is not a park for teenagers, though some would undoubtedly still enjoy it. There is a distinct lack of adrenalin-pumping rides - but there are some. Bendy LOVED the thrill of Space Mountain. The Bookworm screamed in terror and thought her end had come.
• It was crowded, but not oppressively. Sure, we waited in lines, but no more than 20 minutes for any ride. Most were only about 5-10 minute waits.
• The photos with the Disney characters are a really fun way to capture the memories - and they even let you use your own camera. They'll even get a team member to use your camera to take your family photo so you can all be in the shot. I did feel for the team members in the character costumes in the ridiculous heat and humidity.
• Disney's Hollywood Hotel (where we stayed) was a great place to stay. There were shuttle buses to the park, a breakfast spread that has to be seen to be believed (including Mickey Mouse-shaped waffles), and unbelievable decor.
• There is a long waterfront promenade between the two Disney hotels from which you can see Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. It's a pleasant way to fill in some time.
• HK Disneyland is very close to the airport. And if you have a long break between flights it would be possible to fit in a visit to the park. If you stay at the park, there's the added benefit of not having to struggle with the kids and your luggage through the streets of Hong Kong itself.
• It is very well connected to the rest of Hong Kong by public transport. HK Disneyland has its own railway station on a spur line between the airport and Kowloon, so access is fast and easy. But taxis would suffice just as easily.
• We were able to get a deal through our travel agent where we got a 2-day Disney pass for the price of one day. Part of the deal was that we had to stay in one of the Disneyland hotels. It was convenient, and added to the whole experience. And we could go in to the park twice - which we did.

So, do your kids a favour, and satisfy that inner urge to go to Disneyland which formed long ago while you were watching episodes of "The Mickey Mouse Club" on TV. I know we shouldn't do anything so crass as to "buy" the admiration of our children, but in retrospect I know it was a really, really positive experience the kids will never forget. And I came away with a smug inner glow knowing that - for a while, at least - I was the best Dad in the world.

Enjoy the "being", not just the "seeing"

If you've read the previous posts, you'll know I'm a meticulous planner. From destinations to routes, from timetables to opening hours: I will research it all. I'll even have a checklist in my head for each museum, gallery or sight to ensure that I get to everything I want to.

One of the hardest things is to combat the temptation to simply "tick the box" once I'm there, and miss the enjoyment of the moment. I had a wake-up call on an early overseas trip (with Yvette, but pre-kids). In St. Peter's at the Vatican I stood in front of Michelangelo's beautiful sculpture, Pieta. I'd seen it before in books, of course, but here I was in front of the real thing. The sculpture astounded me, but what really grabbed my attention were the significant number of other visitors who simply walked up towards the sculpture, clicked their cameras, and walked away. They didn't even bother to look at it for a minute or two. I knew I'd spent a small fortune to travel half way around the world to be there, and even if they'd spent less by travelling from elsewhere in Europe or the US it did seem a bit pointless. I wondered if those visitors would spend more time looking at their photo than actually remembering being there.

Ever since, I have tried as much as possible to experience the moment of "being" rather than just "seeing". To hang around for a few minutes. To stand still and look - really look, and not just glance. To talk about what we're seeing with Yvette and the kids. To just sit and take it all in.

This isn't confined to museums and galleries - but it works perfectly for them. When we were in Quebec City, Bendy needed an afternoon nap, so Yvette offered to stay at the hotel while I took The Bookworm out to keep noise at a minimum. We went to the parklands around the fort at the top of the city, where she could run around and enjoy the sunshine. We also wandered along the boardwalk overlooking the St. Lawrence River, just whiling away the hour or so before we headed back. We didn't "see" or "do" anything from our well-planned checklist. We just enjoyed "being" together. Later on the same trip, it was ice-creams in Central Park, New York with both kids while watching a great little jazz trio (and I took a long time to convince our eldest to put $1 into their busking hat).

There are so many possibilities:

• you can sit and watch the world go by in a park, from a cafe, on the steps of the village church - somewhere with a good vantage point (and some aesthetic value)
  


• sit and watch your kids in the new environment - and watch the reactions of others to them. You might be surprised at the pleasure they bring to others. At the Orangerie in Paris, The Bookworm had a camera which she used to take endless photos of her sister pulling silly faces in front of Monet's Waterlilies paintings. Watching it was very amusing for us, and we got a few positive comments from complete strangers about their antics. Even the museum attendants - while watching them closely - were entertained by the kids


• stop. Take a breather in the midst of the rush. Sometimes I consciously remind myself to notice where I am and what is going on around me. When seeing something significant, I like to remember that this is what I have come all that way to see - so I should actually to the seeing!

The times of just being together, between must-see sights, or even at those sights are part of the pleasure of travelling. Sharing the "being" as well as the "seeing" with your kids helps them to get the point of what travelling is all about.

Self-catering: Why do we do it?

There are five basic reasons why we self-cater when travelling with kids. 

1. It is affordable. Restaurants are not usually cheap, and this is compounded when you have to rely on them for most meals. Breakfasts in hotels - even budget, chain hotels - can be quite expensive, though admittedly the convenience they offer is sometimes unbeatable.


2. It gives your kids a sense of the "familiar", and it can keep fussy eaters happy. If you ever hear “But I don’t like any of this stuff”, you'll know what we mean. In a new country where the food is different, you’re bound to get this with most kids. Give them something they know, and they’ll be much easier to keep happy. That said, we do like to make the effort to eat the local cuisine wherever possible.
   
   Recently we kept the kids happy by choosing an Italian/Portuguese restaurant in Portugal. The kids enjoyed a pizza, and we got to try the delicious local Portuguese food. We also figure that when the kids are older (or when we are older and travelling without them), that will be a better time to sample local delicacies.


3. It is great when the kids are tired. Dining out with tired, grumpy kids is not fun. In any way, or for anyone. Preparing your own food in you hotel room, at a time convenient to you, takes effort but is actually quite liberating. You can feed them and get them into bed quickly, and not share their little meltdown with the rest of the known world.


4. It makes dining out less of a chore and more of a treat. We have had many wonderful experiences dining out with our kids. They have (almost) always been made to feel welcome in restaurants. Indeed, some have gone out of their way to make them welcome - provided activities, waiters playing silly games with them, modifying menu items etc. But this is partly because they are not having to endure that environment every night. They can't always be "on show" or "on their best behaviour". But sometimes they can be. We do eat out when travelling - about every third night, or maybe a big lunch.
   
   Almost every restaurant we have dined in has welcomed our kids - and we have to thank self-catering for that, because it becomes a treat, not a chore. I would like to (but won't) name-and-shame a certain restaurant along Brompton Road, South Kensington (between the V&A Museum and Harrod's) for the appalling way we were treated simply because we had a child in tow (and only one extremely well-behaved child, too, not both of them). But in the main, self-catering gives dining out a better chance of being a pleasure.


5. Self-catering allows you to monitor your kids' diets a bit more. Before we took up self-catering, our eldest once lived off hot chips for three weeks. We shouldn't have let her. Self-catering means we don't give them that option every meal.
   

I don't know whether hotels really approve of self-catering, but I don't really care either. We make sure never to leave a mess, though there's usually a tell-tale food smell. We could just have easily brought a pizza back to our room, so how are they to know the difference - apart from the stuff that's in the bin... 

We do it to make life a bit easier all round: easier on the kids, on our sanity, and on our pockets.

More happiness gained from experiences

I heard on the radio the other day that a study has been done that shows that more happiness is gained from experiences than from things.

Say you were to receive an unexpected windfall. Don't rush out and buy that new plasma screen TV (there's nothing to watch on TV anyway!) Apparently it will make you happier if you spend your money on experiences, such as a meal with friends or family, a holiday, or seeing a movie.

We have made the conscious decision not to send our kids to private schools (with all their associated fees) so that we can instead take big family holidays. For us, we would much prefer to enjoy travelling with our kids and utilising the education that living life provides. We don't have a TV, we don't have mobile/cell phones. We figure that we would prefer to spend our money on creating fun family memories with our kids.

If you think about it, it does seem to make sense. When we buy something new, like a new computer, a new car, a new item of clothing, it usually only holds our interest for a period of time before it becomes outdated or obsolete, or just doesn't "do" it for us anymore.

Shared experiences, on the other hand, provide special memories. Memories last a lifetime (except when we forget them...!)

Its nice to see that perhaps we are on the right track - indulging in experiences is likely to provide our family with much more happiness.

Driving and kids

So here in Australia we drive on the left. Sensibly, they do so in the UK and Ireland - so it isn't that challenging to make that transition. 

Much of the rest of the world drive on the right, with the car steering wheel on the left, and the gearstick on the right of the driver, and the windscreen wiper and indicator levers switched over. This takes some getting used to. Driving straight ahead is fine, but turning corners (at intersections) is a major intellectual challenge to prevent turning onto the wrong side of the road. Learning to drive a car in "mirror image" is enough of a challenge without having to deal with kids as well.

On our trip to the USA and Canada, I drove from Albany in New York State to Quebec City, Canada through Vermont - and back. I picked up the car at Albany airport and it was pouring with rain. We also pretty quickly faced the horrific "spaghetti" of the freeways on the fringe of the city. Not a great start for basically a jet-lagged learner driver with two kids in the back. So how do we manage it?

1. The driver makes the rules, and all the passengers follow. The first rule (for the first day at least) is: no talking until I say so. That way I can concentrate on reading signs, taking directions from the navigator (a person that is, not a piece of electronic equipment) and generally finding my way. If travelling through the countryside, I tend to relax this rule after a little while - once I'm a bit more relaxed. But even then, talking must be quiet - and definitely no bickering or whingeing!

2. Have something for them to do. We pack a small bag of activities for them to do for the aeroplane, and this doubles as in-car activities. Books to read (though be wary of car-sickness), colouring-in, puzzle books, soft toys for imagination games etc. all make great diversions.

3. Towns and cities need concentration, especially when searching for accommodation or trying not to get tangled in the maze of streets that make up every medieval walled city in Europe! Kids need to understand that they are being helpful if they are quiet at this time, and that things will go much more smoothly if they co-operate. Our kids were extremely helpful in this regard when I got entangled in the streets of Seville and took ages to find my way out. They knew I needed to concentrate, and were extremely helpful in keeping the noise down in the back seat so I could get out of the maze.

4. Take breaks. This is as good for you as it is for the kids. Driving is tiring - Australians know this because we are accustomed to driving long distances. Get out of the car. Get some food. Find some grass or a park and let the kids run around. Kids cope with long drives so much better if they can have time to run around, rather than being cooped up in a car for hours and hours. If you are getting at all frustrated (whether because of the kids or some other reason), you need to take a break for your own sanity and driving safety.

5. If they're old enough, have the kids follow the trip on a map. They might like to work out how far there is to go, and be able to identify the towns along the way. They might be able to work out where you need to turn off the freeway in order to enter a town. Have them look out for parking spaces too - these can sometimes be difficult to find.

6. Try to never drive in really horrendous cities. That's why we picked up the car in Albany, and not New York City. Nor did we drive in Paris. We've driven out of Rome once, and into London (to drop off the car) on another occasion and learned from both experiences: just don't do it. It is not worth the stress. If you do, try arriving on a weekend. We serendipitously found ourselves driving into London on a Saturday and found the traffic - though bad - was better than it would have been during the week.

7. Learn to drive before you go. I drive a car with an automatic transmission at home. In Rome, we hired one with a manual transmission (to save money). In retrospect, I should have spent the extra and saved myself a huge amount of angst. I bunny-hopped that car out of Rome (with the police behind me laughing at my driving), and took 17 changes of lights to get it moving through one set of traffic lights in Tuscany. And I got it stalled under the toll barrier on the autostrada. Memorable experiences, but highly stressful.

8. Hire the smallest car you can for the number of passengers and luggage you have. It will be easier to find parking spots for it, and will most likely be more fuel efficient. A big 4WD or SUV is completely inappropriate in Europe: you will get stuck in the towns.

And if you're still not game, book organised tours - or get yourself a chauffeur!

Why take the kids: the expanded version

We choose to travel with our kids for all sorts of reasons. We've done three long-haul overseas trips from Australia since the eldest was 20 months old, and we're not about to give up now. So why do it?

1. To see the world. Yeah, I know the world is full of pretty grim news. There are major crises, wars, disease, social ills of every kind, but the world is also a beautiful place. The natural world is awesome, the cultural world rich beyond description, and people everywhere are worthy of appreciation and respect. We have been shown tremendous kindness as visitors to other places by complete strangers, and this inspires hope in us that the world is not yet ready to blow itself to bits. The world is inherently interesting: socially, culturally, artistically, naturally.

2. To build our family. Travelling with our kids forges strong shared memories, and shared memories are one of the building blocks of family stability. Even long after our return from overseas, one of us will come across a picture of a place we have visited, thus setting off the "We've been there..." and "Do you remember when..?" reminiscences.

3. To show our kids that not everyone is like us, nor is everywhere like Australia. We have to face the fact that our little corner of the world is pretty good. Socially, economically and politically stable, with more than its fair share of affluence. We want our kids to grow up knowing that it is a privilege, and not a right, to grow up in our society. We want them to understand that not everyone has what we have, nor do they think the way we think. In fact, they might hopefully learn that less economically fortunate places have advantages that our kids will never have at home.

4. To help them appreciate differences in culture. Language, food, customs, beliefs, artistic and musical traditions, history, geography, climate, ecology. You name it, it's going to be different despite the best efforts of a certain superpower to create a global monoculture.

5. To challenge ourselves. In the first instance, we wanted to see if we could do it and survive. Now we do it partly to challenge ourselves to make the next trip a little better than the previous one - for us and the kids.

6. To introduce our kids to the iconic places and milestones in our own cultural heritage. Western culture comes in for a bit of a hiding from the media, but whether we like it or not it is the cultural heritage tradition to which our family is connected. This gives a not-very-politically-correct Eurocentricity to our heritage, despite living across the globe from Europe. But the roots of our culture, our laws, religion, art, music, language and history come from thousands of miles away in places we have - mostly - never seen. We are newcomers to Australia - arriving here a little over 200 years ago. Being proudly Australian I still want our kids to know our roots since it is patently false to claim that our roots are "from here".

7. Because there is so much to learn - and experience is a great teacher. Sure, we could stay at home and pore over glossy art books to get a sense of art history, or go to Virtual Pompeii on the internet, but there's nothing like reality to inspire and teach. I own dozens of books, on all sorts of subjects, but there's nothing like standing in a place and thinking, "Now I know what this is really like". Books, TV and the internet are great tools, but real life experiences can't be beaten to teach a kid (or an adult!) something.

8. Because our kids are part of our family, and are therefore our responsibility. Just because we're going overseas doesn't give us the right to abrogate our responsibilities for looking after them completely or farm them out to relatives. We have an obligation to include them in our family experiences, and that includes the big travelling trips. They are not our "optional extras" or "accessories".

9. Because sometimes they are useful to take! Everything from skipping queues in customs because of a screaming child to the fact that our then 7-year-old read important information on a sign in Hong Kong airport about baggage security that neither of us adults saw!

So, if you can manage it take your kids with you. Travelling with them IS different to travelling just with adults, but there is a lot to be gained by doing so.