Cool Hotels Family & Kids is a gorgeous paperback travel guide jam-packed with vivid color photos. The author has picked all the hippest spots around the globe to travel with family in tow. The book targets "cutting-edge parents" who "don't want to slow down or sacrifice style for practicality." My globetrotting friends will adore the shots of the Vienna Dream Castle Hotel to the Chedi Phuket in Thailand all the way to the Voyages Dunk Island in Australia. If high-style and adventure are your thing this book is for you! From $18.91 and up on Amazon.
If you need more help planning your next jaunt consider TravelMuse. TravelMuse is the online travel destination for inspiring, planning and booking vacations—giving useful tips and insights to make traveling with children the best it can be. I asked TM's Director of Marketing, Fiona Ashley
to share three tips for planning a vacation when bring children aged 0-6:1. Aside from cleanliness—which is a universal requirement, regardless of the traveler’s age—make sure the hotel you select has three things:
• A kitchen or kitchenette. Being able to make your own food, or to at least store snacks, medicine, breast milk, formula, etc., saves time, money and helps with peace of mind.
• Access to a yard or nearby park. Having a park on site or nearby gives young kids a place to run around, as well as potentially meet other young temporary playmates.
• A swimming pool shallow enough for the littlest kids. A pool? Well, what kid doesn’t like to splash around in water? Kids clubs and babysitting services are nice extras, but not every kids club is necessarily a good club, and not every parent wants to leave their kids with strangers.
2) If you waited to take your kids on trips until they were 2 or 3 or older, ease them into travel by selecting destinations that are closer to home. Four or five hours in a car or plane for the first time can be frustratingly restrictive for young kids, especially if they’re used to being active.
3) Make sure you select activities that the entire family can enjoy. If visiting an amusement park and you have both young children (under 6) and older kids, check the height requirements for the rides to make sure there are enough attractions available for the littlest ones to enjoy their day too.
BONUS: Find out ahead of time where the nearest “in-network” urgent-care facility is located, as well as where you can run out in the middle of the night for diapers, formula or medicine, should you and the hotel run out of emergency supplies.
Excellent ideas Fiona. Now we want to know your plans:
Where are you going this summer? I just got back from a five-day mountain biking and hiking trip to Mammoth and Yosemite, Calif., over the Fourth of July weekend and had brought our 2-year-old daughter. We hired a babysitter for three hours on a couple of mornings while my husband and I headed up the gondola and down the trails on our own—it was amazing! We hiked Lambert Dome at Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite on the way back home, and our daughter did great at sitting in our Macpac backpack and trotting down the trails.
Dream vacation:Trekking in Torres del Paine, Patagonia, and exploring the South Island, New Zealand, are high on my list of places to visit.
Item you won't leave home without: Crayons. Yes, throw out the moisturizer and the lip gloss; I’d rather have an amused 2-year-old. So in any one of my purses you could currently find a half dozen multi-colored crayons in a small Ziploc bag. Whether we’re at a restaurant or the hair salon peace reigns—well at least for a little while…
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