Adventures with kids and gadgets
Names like “Budget” and “Thrifty” are misnomers. They are there to catch you out and believe that they will in fact be budget or thrifty. They are not.
12 of the Best Free European Attractions | BootsnAll Travel Articles.
Does being free make them good or over-rated? Enquiring minds want to know…
AND how many of them have you seen? We’ve only seen two so far, hoping to add more this trip!
Tintin Shop in London: Travel Savvy Mom.
Now here is a very interesting dilema. I can’t decide if this is a really, really, good idea or a really, really bad one. I suspect my kids would happily spend their life savings in this shop. It’s the same kind of feeling that I have about Hamley’s toy store. Although I could probably be persuaded to buy more Tintin stuff than plastic fantastic.
If you can’t make it to London, you can check here to find yourself a piece of Tintin love.
Tintin Shops Directory by Tintinologists
Tots to Italy – Child friendly holiday accommodation in Italy.
This is another fantastic site found by my SIL (mwha, mwha). I am put to shame by her ability to find these fab sites. This is exactly the site I needed when I was having a big panic about where we were going to stay in Tuscany. Of course, when I booked in Tuscany, I didn’t realise we were going to be sharing the accommodation with them. So it will be a little bit smaller than ideal. However, I have found some great places for our NEXT combined trip to Italy!!!
Ok, I have shamelessly borrowed this picture of a divine green kitchen. Look at this! How awesome is this!!!! I confess now to a weakness for very vibrant kitchens and this is delicious!!! I’ve added a link in case, like me, you urgently need to go and stay there now.
Italiakids.com : Italy with Kids – Home.
Here’s a great site with family friendly hotels in Florence, Rome and Milan. Loads of other useful activities like the usual Museums and restaurants but also kid specific things like playgrounds and party planning! Now that is cooking with gas! One of our kids will be celebrating his birthday while we are overseas. It’s bad enough trying to plan a birthday at home let alone in a completely new city.
This site is called “Theme Park Insider”. As well as general information about the Park, it has reader tips, hotel reviews and ride ratings. It’s a great resource for planning a trip to a theme park.
Sadly, other parks in Paris are not covered or any of the other parks in France 
They do have a few other European parks – including the all important Legoland Windsor!!! YAY.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUEkrwYs_M0
It’s safe to come back, I’m as happy as Chicken Little with a crate of Red Bull – iWork 09 and iLife 09 arrived!!!!
[amtap amazon:asin=B001AMGSNK]
[amtap amazon:asin=B0014X4O7C]
The first thing I launched was iPhoto 09… holy map-making-photo-software Batman!!! After installing it asked me if I wanted to add locations for my photo library. The next thing I know I’m looking at a map of our corner of Australia with pins in all the places I’ve taken photos with my iphone. Clicking on the pin showed the photos taken at that location.
I haven’t even had a chance to look at the new photo books but apparently there are now travel ones that include maps or locations. This is going to be fabulous for any traveller who wants to document their adventures.
I also had a quick delve into the face recognition aspect. I was fascinated by who the program thought looked most like each other – might settle a few family debates!
While we are not aiming to try and see every major landmark in Europe, or frankly, the majority of them, the Eiffel Tower is one icon that has totally captivated our kids imaginations. It’s on our “MUST SEE” list.
I was pleasantly surprised when visiting the official site for the Eiffel Tower today to see how much information they have for kids.
There is games mini site, Hector at the Eiffel Tower.
There is an activity book that you can preview before collecting in situ.
There are copious notes for Teachers with loads of information. Very nicely presented I might add. We could do a whole unit study on the Eiffel Tower!
You can take virtual tours of the Eiffel tower and should you be lucky enough to be in Paris for Christmas and the New Year, you can see wonderful ice sculptures on the first level.
Merry Christmas 2008 from Isabella Moricciani on Vimeo.
We haven’t even stayed here yet and we got this gorgeous Christmas email and video. I am so excited, it looks so fabulous! I should say, we are actually booked into the Tuscan hill town rather than the farm but I believe we get to go out to the farm for a pasta making class!
In “The Island of Lost Maps” [amtap amazon:asin=0767908260] Miles Harvey documents both the history of maps and the ever increasing value of cartographic collections today. I’m sure the publishers of Atlases have taken this to heart and consider their books as collectors items. Unlike our favourite book of road maps, an Atlas isn’t something you want to upgrade every year. When I was growing up my parents had a beautiful Reader’s Digest Atlas complete with illustrations of space and amazing pictures of the sea floor. Naturally the first place I went to look for an Atlas was Reader’s Digest . Well, it turns out you can’t view the pages online. I weighed up receiving junk mail from Reader’s Digest for the next 50 years and decided surely somebody else must produce a decent Atlas?
It was at this point my obsession with Atlases became almost like the characters in Harvey’s novel. I scoured bookshops and map shops trying to find the perfect Atlas. I used the South Island of New Zealand as my test case to measure the level of detail in each Atlas. Nothing under $200 seemed to match what I had in mind. Do not even get me started on the whole which “Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World” edition is best debate.[amtap amazon:asin=0007157207]
While we were looking at atlases in a map shop, I suddenly realised that what we wanted was not a World Atlas but simply a road atlas for Europe. For a fraction of the price we could get the required level of detail for route planning, including travel times! In the end we went with the Insight Travel Atlas, which is very similar to both the Michelin and Frommer’s versions. [amtap amazon:asin=2067129953][amtap amazon:asin=0764557823]
A short time after buying the road atlas, I came across a beautiful 1982 edition of the Reader’s Digest Atlas of the World in an Op shop for $5. It has a fairly good close up of the South Island in NZ and the pictures of space and the ocean floor. Admittedly it still has West and East Germany, but that in itself is a fascinating historical detail. If you want to see just how far we have come with maps and Atlases, another fascinating book is [amtap amazon:asin=1582974640]
Travelling with Kids
Third Culture Kids R Mine
Jumped the Ditch
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