Candyce H. Stapen is an award-winning travel journalist and author. As travel editor/producer at USA TODAY, Stapen launched the company’s digital travel sites. Her work appears in many outlets, including the Washington Post and Frommers.com. Candyce has written thousands of articles and 29 books about family travel, including two for National Geographic. She founded non-profit Henny’s Kids to bring solar-powered laptops and computer training to rural elementary schools in Africa.
Candyce raised her family in Washington, D.C., and currently resides there with her husband and Lily, a Newfoundland.
The best way to minimize holiday travel hassles: plan ahead. Even after you’ve locked down the cheapest airfares, plotted the easiest driving routes and lightened your load by mailing the presents, sweeten the festivities by following these stress-busters. Whether you’re driving or flying, these tips will help you avoid stress. Getting There Allow extra travel… Read More
Air travel with your family during the holidays can be stressful and challenging. Here are tips to ease the pain. If the best thing about the holidays is celebrating with friends and family, then the most difficult tasks may be making your way through the crunch of airport passengers and the maze of carrier fees… Read More
During the holidays, family travel usually involves visiting friends and relatives or that much-anticipated vacation destination. But the holidays are also high season. That means top hotel rates, restaurants serving expensive meals, and stages hosting sparkling ballets, plays and rock concerts at premium prices. Here are some tips on how to stretch your holiday budget… Read More
Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa — provide families the opportunity to celebrate together, see friends and relatives and even treat themselves to winter vacations. But these getaways, whether to grandma’s or grand resorts, take extra planning. A key to ensuring that crowded roads, airports and hotels plus other potential travel glitches don’t squelch your family’s joy is… Read More
Think of road trips with your children as rare opportunities. When else do you have a long stretch of time with your kids uninterrupted by television, homework, phone calls, their friends or other distractions? Especially with kids along, getting there can be half the fun. To make sure, plan ahead and follow the cardinal rule… Read More
Enjoy fun in the sun from the Dominican Republic to Mexico There’s something special about teaching your seven year-old to snorkel and then sharing the underwater wonders of rainbow-colored fish and delicate coral with her. In the Caribbean and the Bahamas, depending on the resort you choose, you and your children can snorkel and dive,… Read More
As our instructor Juan –slim hips, tight black pants, perfect posture–steps forward and right, then forward and left to the pulsing beat, we do the same. It doesn’t matter that some of us don’t understand Spanish. All we need do is copy Juan’s fluid moves. That’s easy because our group of eight women hasn’t stopped… Read More
We took it as a good omen that just as we headed out of Quito for Imbabura Province in the north the sky cleared to reveal the slopes of Cotopaxi, at 19,348 feet, the world’s highest active volcano. Looming to Quito’s south, Cotopaxi, backed by a blue sky, hung like a clear promise, contrasting sharply… Read More
Eco-adventures abound in Mexico’s Riviera Maya. At Hidden Worlds, not far from Tulum, we snorkel underground rivers, pedal a SkyCycle at tree-top height, and fly along a zipline. What we especially like about Hidden Worlds are the choices and the small group experience. In addition to its fine sand beaches, the Riviera Maya along Mexico’s… Read More
One Los Cabos eatery introduces cuisine made from local ingredients. Indulge – Eat When I walk through the shimmering, amber-lit glass entranceway and see the racks of wine bottles stored neatly in vaults, and the open kitchen, I think I could be at a slick eatery in Manhattan or Chicago. But Market (Km 7.5 Carretera… Read More
Even in the Caribbean, known for its turquoise waters and sugar soft sands, secluded oases are becoming increasingly rare. But off the eastern shore of Puerto Rico, less than a 30-minute flight from bustling San Juan, we discovered two treasures: Vieques, population 10,000 and Culebra, with barely 2,000 people. Both deliver the Caribbean of long-ago–a… Read More
The U.S. Virgin Islands comes with white-sand beaches and translucent turquoise waters, hillsides blooming with bougainvillea, and reefs alive with multi-colored fish. Bustling St. Thomas is a shopper’s haven, St. John an eco-paradise, and St. Croix a memorial to its Danish heritage. Water Island—the most recent USVI addition—offers a quiet getaway. Destination highlights Snorkeling the… Read More
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