Not only is my son a picky eater, we’re vegetarian as well. I used to think that if we were travelling and there was nothing else to eat he’d eventually get hungry and say, eat curry. No. I learned that my son can happily go days with eating very little and that his willpower is stronger than mine.

One of the best vacations we took recently was driving a campervan around the southern half of New Zealand because we had our own kitchen with us at all times and didn’t have to worry about finding restaurants or if the restaurant would have a vegi option.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/travel/09carib.html?ref=travel

I also found a great LA Times article for the budget minded traveler this season:

http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-families26-2008oct26?content=t++www.OntheGowithAmy.com+.)%253C%252Fp%253E%253Cp%253E&single_page=y

So far, we have taken our kids (two boys, now 8 and 11) to San Diego, Orlando, Cuba (twice) Ixtapa, Akumal, and several times to our favourite spot, Puerto Escondido (on the far Southern Mexico Pacific Coast)

Puerto is our favorite spot because it is not your usual mexican resort area – it does attract lots of tourists, but they are mostly Mexican. It has the most amazing waves – true pipeline waves – so it is a big surfing destination. There are beaches that are good for swimming, too. There are no resorts there but there are good hotels. We like to rent a house there, and eat some of our meals in, there is a great market in walking distance. Last time we went we spent our mornings going to a wonderful spanish school.

The boys are ready for some more adventurous trips so I just finished booking a tour of Costa Rica this coming April for 8 days. We are particularly excited because we hope to spend several days in El Salvador before going to Costa Rica. We sponsor a little fellow there through Plan International Canada and they encourage you to visit the communities where you sponsor a child. So I’m just getting in touch with them so that we can plan the El Salvador leg of our trip and visit our little friend and his family and community. My youngest son is at a Spanish Bilingual school so I am hoping we can take lots of letters down from his school to the kids in our sponsored child’s school and make a good connection between the two communities.

More and more, we are looking at holidays that teach our kids about environmental and social responsibility. Resort holidays are fun but it’s easy to just hang out at the resort and forget for the most part they are in countries where the culture and the realities of day-to-day living are very different from ours. I am hoping to raise travellers, not tourists!

It’s easy to drive in the Mayan Riviera and gives you a lot more flexibility than relying on the tour buses that go to the all inclusives. (Kids will not enjoy the endless pick up and drop offs of the tour buses any more that grown ups!)

Places worth taking kids in the Mayan Riviera
The water parks – Xel-ha and Xcaret
The underground caves at Atkun Chen
Take a ferry to Cozumel and visit Chankanaab
Ruins and wonderful little beach at Tulum
For your brave ones, pay a few pesos to visit one of the cenotes and let them jump off the cliff into the water (our then 8 year old couldn’t get enough of this)

I was stuck in security for so long, with two children ages 1 and 4, that there was a gate change while in there. If I had taken a second to check, we might have made it but I didn’t and paid the price. They left without us.

We were able to take another flight 4 hours later, going through the East Coast. That adds flight time and it was winter. We landed in D.C. to find out that an earlier San Francisco had cancelled and the one we were going to take was overbooked. They even gave us a hotel voucher, they were so sure we wouldn’t get on but somehow they did manage it. I overheard someone on the radio talking about a mother alone with two kids having flown in from Europe where she had been bumped…

Our daughter is now 4 and we have another baby. I don’t know if I would do it again – esp overseas!