Trip Ideas By Activity
There are so many ways to vacation with your children.
City explorations, museum sleepovers, condo-style rentals, road trips, mountain and lake cabins, beaches, cruises, and all-inclusive vacations stretch budgets. Resorts run the gamut from moderate to pricey. Staying midweek or during shoulder season saves money.
Dream trips—African safaris, Galapagos treks, polar bear watches—deliver the thrill of wildlife encounters but at a hefty price. Farmstays, state and national parks, and hikes through Costa Rican rain forests let you enjoy animal encounters at a fraction of the cost.
Time travel fascinates kids. At living history parks, march with the militia and meet pioneers. In Europe, tour centuries-old castles, climb atop medieval walls, and stroll streets laced with 18th-century buildings. Go back millions of years to the dinosaur era. Satisfy your kids’ curiosity by going on a dinosaur dig, walking in dinosaur footprints, and ogling fossils of these fierce critters in museums.
Build sandcastles at the beach, canoe and fish at a lake, get tossed, twirled, and dropped on rollercoasters at an amusement, ski downhill, or snowshoe through snowy woods.
Stay overnight, for a few days, or a week. Plan carefully, allow for spontaneity, know that things will go awry, and maintain your sense of humor. Have fun.
Hiking China’s Dragon Spine Rice Terraces
Great Family Vacations||by Candyce H. StapenCategories: Adventures, Asia Destinations, City and Cultural Vacations, Cruises & Resorts, Family, Historic, Nature Vacations, Trip IdeasWhile Beijing mixes modern skyscrapers with ancient icons such as the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, the Chinese countryside in the Longji region delivers natural scenes of legendary beauty as well as a chance to see how traditional people live.
For hundreds of years the Zhuang and Yao people have built mud banks into the side of the steep mountains to create the Longji rice fields known as the Dragon Spine Rice Terraces. The tiered gardens follow the shape of the slopes, creating a dramatic landscape of undulating curves, suggestive of the pointy ridges on the mythic beast’s back.
To reach the Li-An Lodge in the village of Ping An, where we are staying, we must walk 30-minutes uphill.
There are no roads. Sherpas—tiny women with large woven baskets on their backs—meet us at the bottom of the mountain and insist on carrying our luggage uphill.
In the morning we hike the slopes. The mist forms a band of low clouds hanging over the peaks and butterflies follow us uphill. Walking here makes us feel as if we have entered an ever-changing, three-dimensional sculpture of outsized proportions and beauty.
Along the slopes we encounter farmers tilling the soil with water buffalos and carefully planting seedlings by hand. Another day we meet Yao women from a nearby village. Known for their beautiful, long hair, they smilingly agree to unwind their tight braids to reveal their Rapunzel length locks.
Higher up the mountain, the soft gurgling sound becomes louder as we near the spot where water floods each terrace, spilling onto the plots beneath. From the ridgetops, the fields float below us. In early June they appear as a quilt of soft brown mud and new green shoots. By October, the mountains blaze with yellow as the rice is ready to harvest. Li An Lodge is a four-level, traditional style cedar wood building like the Zhuang houses that hug the mountainside. The owner, Keren Su, a photographer in Seattle, WA, who grew up in China, also operates China Span, a tour company. He designed the property to blend with the local homes.
“Before the Cultural Revolution,“ says Keren Su, “I had an ambition to be an architect, but the Cultural Revolution destroyed my dream. I was sent to northeast China to a labor camp to cut down trees to make more fields to plant. All stupid things.”
In designing the lodge, both the exterior and the interior, Keren Su fulfilled his goal to create a dwelling as well as to preserve the style of the farmers’ houses that were being torn down. Inside Keren Su mixes western creature comforts such as private bathrooms, queen-size beds and contemporary furnishings with Chinese antiques, local items and his photographs of the region.
Each guest room has a different theme. In the Harvest room, a grind stone serves as part of a desk, a sculpture of a pumpkin sits atop a bureau and a pole employed once employed by farmers to carry baskets of goods hangs from a wall. In the Melody room ancient bronze bells and an Imperial musical score hang on the wall and the Celadon room, which has one of the best views of the terraced fields, displays a collection of celadon vases.
Although the food is average, the staff is friendly and the views, magical. Longji’s Dragon Spine Rice Terraces are one of the most memorable places we visit in China and the Li An Lodge serves as a welcome spot from which to enjoy this dramatic setting.
Asia Transpacific Journeys, the company that booked our custom tour of China, suggested the Li An Lodge and the Dragon Spine Rice Terraces, when we told them that we wanted to experience the countryside. The agency offers group departures as well.
A Rainy Day in Tangier, Morocco
Great Family Vacations||by Candyce H. StapenCategories: Africa & Middle East Destinations, City and Cultural Vacations, Cruises & Resorts, Destinations, Historic, More Lodging, Museums, RestaurantsOn a rainy morning in Tangier, the only people in the medina, the old walled city, in addition to us, are two girls wearing pink Disney princess’ backpacks who scurry in front of the ancient kasbah and a man trying to sell us umbrellas. “Very cheap,” he insists, thrusting a bouquet of black stemmed ones in front of us.
The rain, just a drizzle now, feels good and the view from the hilltop kasbah of the Straits of Gibraltar, even on an overcast day, is memorable. Spain, currently shrouded in clouds, can be reached in two hours by ferry.
Tangier’s proximity to “the Continent” makes it a popular tourist spot for Europeans plus a centuries-old target for invaders.
Rain in Tangier
Since just an olive shop is open, we wander into the American Legation Museum, the only U.S. historic landmark located abroad. Site of the U.S. diplomatic mission to Morocco from 1821 until 1956, the facility, a series of interconnected buildings some dating to the 18th century, features a collection of art detailing Moroccan culture and history. Eugene Delacroix’s memorable portrait of “Zorah,” a lovely, 13-year-old girl dressed in a purple caftan and white head scarf hangs in the dining room.
The Paul Bowles room displays photographs of the American writer who, along with William Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and others lived large in Tangier after World War II when the city sported a laissez-faire attitude to drugs, illicit sex, cheap thrills and other vices.
Outside, the downpour morphs into a storm. Thoroughly soaked, we head to the Café Central, in the Petit Socco or “Little Square” for a warming cup of coffee. Legend has it that William Burroughs hung out here, probably people-watching and sobering up.Zacarias, the shop-keeper at the nearby Bazar Daoudioate, tells me how much he wants Obama to be president then quotes a high price on a necklace with amber colored stones. “If you have good taste, “ he says, “it’s not my problem.” Be prepared to bargain for the antique and new jewelry, pottery, lamps, mirrors and other items.
Lunch at the Saveur de Mediterranee, just around the corner from the El Minzah Hotel, is a find. The aroma of the house specialty, a fish soup of shrimp, baby shark, calamari and barley, cooked in an earthenware pot over a wood fire, draws us in. After this course, the owner serves us a savory dish of sautéed shrimp and bits of baby shark seasoned with cumin, ginger and garlic. We eat family style, using wooden spoons and forks to help ourselves from the central platter. Next, come delicious grilled sea bass followed by a dessert of pine nuts, almonds and barley mixed with honey. The tasty four-course feast costs 150 dirhams, or about $20.
Tangier, Morocco
What else to do for legal indulgence on a wet afternoon? We book a hammam at the El Minzah Hotel. During this luxury version of the typical public bath, Bouchra, a plump and smiling woman from Meknes, washes us with traditional black soap made from olives, then hoses us off, gesturing for us to relax on the heated marble slab while she readies the next round, a significant scrubbing and rinsing.
Bouchra, cutting quite the figure in her leopard spotted bathing suit, applies the ghassoul, a paste of Moroccan clay infused with orange blossoms, rose water and other ingredients. We sleep on the warm marble in the steamy, tiled oasis until Bouchra gently wakes us for the final dousing. For more pampering, we follow the hammam with an aromatherapy massage.
Relaxed, smiling and ready for a nap, we realize that even rainy days in Tangier have their own charms.
Pet Lion Cubs and Giraffe, Johannesburg Adventures
Great Family Vacations||by Candyce H. StapenCategories: Africa & Middle East Destinations, Cruises & Resorts, More Lodging, Wildlife and Safari VacationsA lion cub tugs at the edge of my sweater while another grabs my daughter’s pant leg. Gambit, the giraffe, swings his crane-like neck toward us, unfurls his nearly foot-long, purple tongue to grab the food pellets from our hands. Standing on the raised platform, we’re head to head with him, near enough to admire his big eyes rimmed with the longest lashes we’ve ever seen.
Not yet on safari, we take advantage of our overnight in Johannesburg, South Africa, for some close encounters with the animals at Lion Park. The wildlife facility is located in the outskirts of Johannesburg, about 45-minutes from the Westcliff, our hotel.
About 40% of lion cubs in the wild, our guide informs us, do not survive the first six months of life because of rejection by their mothers or starvation.
Lion Park rescues the cubs from the wild, bottle-feeds them, then habituates them to Cub World, where at selected times, visitors interact with them. When older, the cats move to nature reserves. Now, these curious, fat cats, playful as kittens, pull on our shoelaces and swat at our camera bags when not lolling in the grass or climbing the rocks in their enclosure.
Lions and giraffes aren’t the only critters. On the guided game drive through the property’s bush land, we see zebras, antelopes, hyenas and cheetahs as well as travel through four lion enclosures, one of which houses a pride of white lions.
The facility is the biggest breeder of rare, white–not albino—lions in South Africa. They are beautiful. As we approach their compound, the male, Letsatsi, meaning “Sun” in the local Sotho language, leaves his five females and saunters over to the fence to check us out. Visitors can also go on evening game drives when the animals are more active, as well as fall asleep to the sound of roaring lions by staying overnight in one of the park’s inexpensive platform tents. These basic accommodations come with beds and electricity plus nearby communal bath facilities. Often reserved by groups, these facilities need to be booked well in advance.
For plush lodging, stay at the Westcliff, an Orient-Express property terraced into a hillside in a Johannesburg suburb. A popular hotel for pre and post safari layovers, the Westcliff features plush rooms, most with balconies. The property also offers a gym, a restaurant and a pool plus massages, a welcome treat after a long flight. The Westcliff can arrange outings to Lion Park as well as to the area’s art galleries.