great takes on family travel in the U.S.

Today begins the celebration of Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, and the Year of the Rat. Based on the cycles of the moon, Lunar New Year is traditionally focused on family and remembering ancestors. Famous folks born in the Year of the Rat include Mozart, Marlon Brando and Gwyneth Paltrow. Lunar New Year is celebrated many different ways, and if you decide to go out or stay in, there is something for you!
Check out Min’s blog for her plans for CNY - this year she is cooking the big dinner herself! Shar Scott from Planaganza has some great ideas on how to organize yourself to throw a Chinese New Year’s party of your own. Some of our travel blogger friends have written about their plans from around the world. Globetrotteri wishes us Happy New Year from Hualian, Tiawan; GoVisitHawaii has put together an excellent list of ideas for celebrating in Oahu; Peter from PulauPangkor talks about his plans in Kuala Kurau; and Beth Whitman of the SeattlePI has written about Tet (Vietnamese New Year) festivities planned in Seattle. (psst…I found all these blog posts using our new travel blog search tool!)

In Silicon Valley, my friend Cam Chan describes her plans for celebrating:

My family and I are planning to celebrate Tet (Vietnamese New Year) and Chinese New Year pretty much the same way that we have celebrated it since I moved to the Bay Area 10 years ago. I am Vietnamese and my husband is Chinese, so we try to incorporate a little of each tradition. I will purchase several banh tet (Vietnamese savory rice cakes that are traditionally eaten during Tet) and a tray of sweeten goodies (sugar coated ginger, melons, etc.) which we will graze on next week. We went to my in-laws’ in San Francisco for the traditional Chinese New Year dinner on New Year’s Eve. Grandma Chan cooked a 9 course meal made from scratch (yummy!).

The grandparents handed out red envelopes or lucky money to the kids (including us) and the grandkids (our children). We have officially entered adulthood in both the Chinese and Vietnamese traditions because we are married. Therefore, we will be expected to give out red envelopes to all those who are younger and unmarried. For us, this means that we are obligated to give money to Albert’s sister and our three children, though we do give out additional packets to the children of our friends also. We also plan to take our 3 year old to Grand Century Mall in San Jose to see the Dragon Dance next weekend. Our three month old twins will have to wait until next year to enjoy the festivities as the performance and festivities are usually very loud and crowded.

The San Francisco Bay Area is chock-a-block of celebrations for this festive holiday, check out some of these suggestions:

Vietnamese Spring Festival and Parade, San Jose, February 10
Lunar New Year Celebration at Children’s Discovery Museum, San Jose, February 16-17
Chinatown Community Street Fair, San Francisco, February 23-24

How are you celebrating this Year of the Rat? Did we miss your favorite festival? Let us know!!

Last month, my family of four had the opportunity to travel to New Mexico to help my father-in-law celebrate a significant birthday (I won’t tell you which one, to protect his privacy ;-). Besides meeting up with aunts, uncles and cousins, we also managed to pack in a great weekend getaway on a trip I would recommend…

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Hard to believe it has been a month since we have updated the travel blog search widget! Many great suggestions have been coming in and we have added these blogs to our search database. For the original story on this widget, please see this post. And if you would like to add your blog to the search widget, please comment and leave the URL and the three keywords you would use to describe your blog.

Bloggers that reached out to us to be included are: Radar, A Luxury Travel Blog, My Travel Backpack, Planet Eye, Europe A La Carte, Visit the Coqui, Vinography, Juan Sobejano, TravelPost.com Insider, New York Traveler, BOOT, Delicious Baby, Notes from the Road, Buenos Aires Through My Eyes, Travel News Deals, Exposed Planet, Nerds Eye View, Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet?, Rolf Pott’s Vagabonding, and New York Traveler.net.

The bloggers above recommended additional blogs to be added, including: Booking Blog, Sector Turismo y Marketing Hotelero, Receptivo Costa Brava, Albert Barra, Isaac Vidal, Buenos Tours, Oh Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires Daily, Descubre Madrid, Corrugated City, The Where Blog, and Yearn to Travel.

If your blog has been recommended for our search widget, we would like to know the keywords that you would assign to your blog, which will help us refine the search. And if you have any others that should be added, please let us know.

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Great suggestions have been coming in for additions to the Kango travel blog search. We have updated the database with these travel blogs:

Happy Hotelier
Hoteles 2.0
Pangkor Island Blog
Bicycle Adventures Blog
Yangshuo Travel Guide Blog

If you like the widget, be sure to add it to your own blog. Keep sending your suggestions for travel blogs to add to the search engine!

Last week, I was asked to select my favorite submissions to the weekly Travel Blog Carnival, organized by Darren from Travel Rants. This week, he asked me again! A plethora of new content this week, and lots of interesting ones to boot, I had fun choosing!

Barbara over at Hole in the Donut writes about the dangers of Zimbabwe and her personal trip to this area in 2007. I don’t know if she was a fearless adventurer or just in the right place at the right time, but her experience sounds exciting and diverse. Now that Zimbabwe has been put on the list of dangerous places to visit, Barbara’s account might be the closest we all get to visiting!

Claude from Les Explorers showed us the pitfalls of the current hotel search system, and how he managed to find the lowest rate for his upcoming stay for ITB PhocusWright in Berlin. What a nightmare to go through, there is definitely an opportunity for innovation here.

Over at Yearn To Travel, Medelise talks about the Stowe Derby, the oldest and most unique ski race in North America. While not a skier myself, I was fascinated by her description of the terrain. Definitely sounds like a “crazy” race!

And finally, Brian over at International Listings put together a very detailed list of the top 25 castles in the world. The pictures are outstanding, and based on his descriptions, my favorites would have to be Kolossi Castle in Cyprus and Himeji Castle in Japan. Even our lovely Hearst Castle in California is included!

Wonderful submissions, thank you to all who took the time, I enjoyed reading and getting to know some new bloggers. If you would like to participate in a future carnival, please send your submissions to travelblog.carnival at gmail dot com.

I am a stickler for lists, so when I was asked by Darren of Travel Rants to choose three blogs from this week’s carnival submissions, it seemed easy. Then I read all the blogs! They are all good, and it was great to be transported elsewhere for a moment in my busy schedule, but tricky to choose my favorites. After reading them all, I decided that lists it was and chose these three from the submissions:

Barbara over at Hole In The Donut compiled a great list for the solo traveler. I actually found it to be outstanding for anyone traveling, offering advice on everything from notifying your credit card and bank about your upcoming travels to using your webmail accounts to keep copies of important documents. My favorite tip? While visiting in a country where you don’t speak the language, pick up several business cards from your hotel with the name and address. Just hand it to a local taxi driver when you are ready to return to your hotel and there will be no problem with the language barrier!

Over at Cruise Bug Chatter, I was offered tips for a successful trip to Mexico, whether by land or by sea. Some were the usual reminders, cautioning you to avoid tap water, dressing appropriately when visiting churches, and learning a few words of the local language to ease your trip. Also discussed was the best way to bargain so that everyone feels good. Of course, my last trip to Mexico (on a cruise ship no less!) involved a visit to the local WalMart, which I found to be pretty similar to the one at home. I know, that is like eating at McDonald’s in Paris, but sometimes you get homesick!

Finally, Fox Nomad brought to my attention that Delta Airlines is unveiling a training system for their passengers, claiming that airlines have not properly prepared passengers for what is to be expected aboard a plane. Fox Nomad pulled together a list of basics, including using your manners (Please and Thank you go a long way), limiting the amount of chatter with your seat mate (unless you are related or really getting on well) and avoiding overindulging in the little bottles of love the flight attendants bring around. Drunk in the air is quite different than drunk on the ground. All good advice for anyone who flies!

And even though it did not fit into my theme of lists, I also want to give a shout out to Family Travel at Away.com for the piece on Nordic Skating. I enjoyed this since I had just finished reading The Greatest Skating Race by Louise Borden, to my kids. After reading the book, which describes a long distance ice skate adventure from Belgium to Holland during WWII, I was interested in finding out more about doing that here in North America. Family Travel outlined a couple programs in New England and eastern Canada, and I look forward to making the trek with my family one day.

Thank you to Darren for organizing this carnival, and if you would like to participate, you can submit any travel related posts which you’ve written in the last 7 days to travelblog.carnival(at)gmail.com.

Since we have a bunch of travelers in our family, we all try to find interesting travel accessories to give each other during the holidays. Because I don’t want to reveal my Christmas gift list yet (in case my family is reading this blog!), I give you my wish list of travel gadgets and gear that I would like to receive this holiday season (hint, hint): see more »

Some days, as we sit around the Kango offices, we like to day dream about our next trip. Rather than do it all by ourselves, we invite you to join us! Kango is proudly hosting a Carnival of Cities, and welcomes submissions on the theme of “Where do you want to go today.” For those of you new to Carnivals, they are an opportunity for you to submit your own blog piece on a theme, and the host compiles the best of these posts into a themed blog hosted on their site and linking to yours. For more information about carnivals and participating and hosting, please visit the Carnival of Cities.

Happy writing, we look forward to seeing your submission!

With the holidays approaching, our family has several long car trips ahead of us. Having made these trips before throughout my children’s childhood, I offer these suggestions to help manage car trips this holiday season.

When calculating the time it will take to get there, factor in an additional 25%. For example, from Palo Alto to Santa Barbara, according to Google Maps, is supposed to take about 5 hours - when we travel with our kids, it always takes 6.5 hours. Our trip to San Diego is supposed to take 7.5 hours, I am planning on 10. Why the extra time? Kids, especially toddlers who cannot self-entertain, will need to stop fairly often to run around. And even those who can read or do crafts by themselves, still need to get out of car seats and have a stretch.

Entertainment is probably where I spend the majority of my trip planning. Fortunately, my son is quite happy doing game books, and my daughter is good with projects. However, there was a time when both were too small to participate in either. During that time, we would often try to structure our trips around their nap schedules. For example, on a trip to Santa Barbara, we would leave at 9am, drive for 3 hours and stop in Paso Robles for lunch. There is a great park there, and after our picnic lunch, we would let the kids play on the playground for 30 minutes or so. By then, it was close to nap time, and if we were lucky, they would drift off, exhausted by their playground romp.

Neither of my kids nap anymore, so we need to be more strategic about our entertainment plans. I usually buy a couple new books for my son, and hit the $1 bin at Michaels for little craft projects to keep my daughter happy. We also will visit the library together and pick out some Books on Tape. Both can tolerate longer books now, and on our last car trip, we “read” the first Harry Potter. When they were younger, I would stick with the 30 minute books (ideally with a real book to read-along with) and take 3 or 4 of those along. I also pack my iPod in case one kid wants to listen to music instead.

When I was young, my mom had a box that would come out only for car trips, and I have those boxes for my children as well. They have crayons, paper, little toys, goofy things really, but they are comforting and remembered from trip to trip. I also bring storage clipboards, with space to hold more crayons and paper, which serve as a hard surface to write on. For my daughter, I will bring along tape, glue and scissors for any creations she wants to make. For my son, I will make sure to have a map of where we are going, pencils and a pencil sharpener. We also have a couple silly car games we like to play including the License Plate Game and I Spy. Other suggestions are offered here, here and here.

While packing suitcases, I put together our snack bag, with special snacks for car rides, including pretzels, nuts, fruit and chips (and chocolate for the driver!). I also pack our traveling water bottles, filled with water. These are convenient to fill at rest stops. Another bag will have car trip supplies, including baby wipes (you are never to old for these!), a towel, plastic bags, first aid kit and a bucket. That’s right, my daughter usually gets car sick, so we travel prepared!

Once in the car, we try to drive for at least two hours before stopping. Based on when we will be leaving, we try to anticipate areas of heavy traffic and try to avoid that with a cleverly scheduled stop. And always when we travel by car, we must visit an In-N-Out burger, a tradition we started 3 years ago and something the kids look forward too each trip. Fortunately, In-N-Out has a great map that we keep in the car with all the locations!

How do you manage long car trips with your kids? What has worked well for you? Share them here, I have to return trip to consider!

Related Posts:
Surviving Your Thanksgiving Family Flight
Kango’s Picks: Top 5 blog posts and sites about car games for kids
7 Tips to Entertain Your Kids on a Long Flight