Veronica Simpson outlines the rules for a perfect weekend away:
Do
- Make a beeline for really outstanding kid-friendly museums and galleries. Every major capital city has a landmark museum that both you and the children will enjoy!
- Make major architectural landmarks part of your plan – kids really do get architecture, and they love seeing places from different vantage points, whether from the water or high in the air.
- Make their obsessions work for you: whether it’s trains, animals, parks or palaces. Indulge them, and you’ll find you reap the benefits (also useful as a negotiating tool – I’ll go to your favourite place if you’ll come to mine!).
- Invest in a travel pack of crayons, pens, stickers, paper and colouring books and whip them out at any point when they need entertainment – a great way to prolong your leisure time in restaurants, cafes or on journeys.
- Intersperse art galleries or exhibitions with park visits, that way they get to run off their boundless reserves of energy and may even manage to sit still for an hour while you enjoy a leisurely lunch!
- Let the train – or the plane - take the strain: one of the great deterrents for family trips is the nightmare of long car journeys.
Don't
- Make the itinerary too highbrow or spiritual. I’ll never forget how much I hated being dragged by my mother round every major church in Rome during one family holiday. Pace yourselves!
- Don’t be greedy to relive the delights of past adult jaunts and force them to stay out late at night – unless you’re in siesta land, in which case go for it. Tired kids are miserable and moany kids.
- Don’t let blood sugar levels plummet while out and about. Frequent stops in cafes are a must. And keep a ready supply of snacks handy – nuts, fruit, raisins, crackers and drinks.
- Gen up on local history, to make the place come to life for them. Kids history books are a fantastically digestible read, for all ages!
Bounty
Bounty
