If London makes you yawn, you’ve been there and done Costa Rica, and Tulum is so last year then check out our top seven countries for an adventurous and international family vacation.   Ecuador
When I first moved to Casablanca with my 8 and 10-year-olds, I had no idea what to do with them or where to go. The city just seemed big with no playgrounds that I could find. Through a lot...
How we left our busy 9 to 5 jobs and saved enough money to take 6 months off with our kids.
Casablanca is not a favorite city for tourists and it’s understandable why. It’s a large city to navigate with crazy traffic and without the charm of places like Marrakech. However, Casablanca has an appeal of its own and part of...
Two weeks of Pura Vida in a country with so much to offer families.
My daughter is a very picky eater and really thin. Would she eat when we traveled through Europe?
Traveling to Nicaragua? Here are the things not to miss with kids!
After four months in Asia, we were ready for our next stop: Italy.
A couple of weeks ago, we visited the cloud forest of Ecuador. We stayed for a couple of days at the tiny town of Mindo, a two-hour drive from Quito, and I felt like staying in this mellow place for at least a year. Seeing the big leaves of the tropical trees, and looking at the numerous butterflies and hummingbirds, reminded me of a comment a friend made while we visited the rainforest exhibit at the Academy of Science in San Francisco. “This looks like Disney,” he said. I responded, “No, this is like the cloud forest in Ecuador.”
These are the can't-be-missed places around the world to have a great family vacation, including Stockholm, Singapore, Koh Samed, Belize and more.
Intrigued when you hear India? Excited about a trip ahead? Find out about the colors, chaos and everything else that’s India through these books that are as whimsical and exotic as the country itself.
We wanted out of the frenetic pace of American life but we were not sure we could afford a move abroad. Turns out, it was easier than we imagined. All it required was the willingness to challenge ourselves to try something different and to think about our resources in a new way.
If you’ve already exhausted the Babars, Fancy Nancys and Madelines, here are a few more to take your kids to Paris whether you have your tickets booked or not. Even without any travel plans, books are one of the best ways to travel to new cities without spending a cent.
After an hour-long drive up a bumpy, windy road outside of Pokhara, we settled into a charming Japanese style B&B for a few days to prepare for our trek. I hired two porters to help carry our bags and my four-year-old for a three day trek.
When we exited the Kathmandu airport, I was caught off guard by feelings of familiarity, not because I had been here before, but because the air, light and sights all reminded me of when I lived in Dharamsala, North India. Just as I was thinking this, Tara turned to me and said, “Mom, I feel like I’ve been here before.”
Thailand was the first part of our global homeschool adventure that I did alone with my two kids, without my husband. My hope was that it would be an easy transition, filled with long lazy days at the beach, eating tropical fruit and enjoying the ocean. It was that but it was also a big look in the homesick mirror for the kids and we hit our halfway mark while there….Tara had a huge cry in a café, Tejas started asking why this trip was so long and complaining that he wanted to go home. It was here that I first started to doubt myself and also succumb to homesick feelings.
I’m on the verge of traveling from San Francisco, where I reside with my family, to Ecuador where I grew up. Though I have most of my family there and have maintained contact with a lot of childhood friends, every time I am there, I have that feeling of not belonging anywhere anymore—you know how when you grow up in one place but live in another for many years, you stop belonging to a specific place and are never fully at home in either place. I guess you become, as people say, a citizen of the world, whatever that means.
A few weekends ago, we piled into my friends' van and drove eight hours to Bagan, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Pagan, located in the Mandalay region of Myanmar. At its height there were over 10,000 pagodas in the Bagan plains alone. Today there are only 2200 pagodas still standing.
I couldn’t wait to see how my kids would do with their new Spanish when we got to Mexico. 10 days advanced their Spanish way more than I anticipated.
Are you parents who love to travel with a child who doesn't like change as much? These tips are for you.
This fascinating Australian couple are traveling the world for already six years on motorcycles, living on $10,000 per year.
Our next adventure in our global homeschooling adventure with two kids: Myanmar!
A few weeks into our travels in India, my daughter hit her wall after getting a stomach virus. The expected, “I want to go home,” declaration came out and she has begun talking non-stop about all the foods she misses: ice cream, caesar salad, root beer, pasta....
We have been at an Ayurvedic ashram in South India for three weeks now. It’s a small, simple, family-run ashram where Dr. Ashvin and Dr. Shubha, a husband and wife team, provide residential and non-residential treatments for both Westerners and Indians. The delicious cuisine is prepared by Amma, Dr. Ashvin’s mother, while his father, Guruji, helps with treatments and oversees the running of the ashram.
My husband, two children (Tara age 12 and Tejas age four), and I are now settled in at a small Ayurvedic Ashram near Mangalore, South India, where we will spend three weeks receiving Ayurvedic treatments. In preparation for our five months on the road, knowing Tara would need to complete the second half of her seventh grade year, I searched around for online homeschool curricula that would best fit our needs. Here is how we are making it work.
I haven’t been back to India in 17 years when I lived here in my early twenties studying Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan language in Dharamsala, North India. I always thought I would be coming back as I had felt at home in India, more specifically, within the Tibetan culture in India, and loved living abroad. Now that the children are both at suitable ages for longer travel, Scott and I felt it would be a good time for us to return to Asia. Both Scott and I teach yoga. He focuses also on Ayurveda and is licensed in Traditional Chinese Medicine. My work has focused on Buddhist philosophy, practice and translation.
What would you do if you knew you would have just enough money to make sure you and your family would be OK for the next four years. I’m not talking buckets of cash, just enough to allow you to think about what really matters, not so much that you get distracted and take your eye off the ball. I asked myself that a year ago and this is how I found myself, post-divorce, with my two daughters in Southeast Asia, happier than I had been in years.
While traveling with kids definitely involves more preparation and requires more stuff, it doesn’t have to be a burden. I try to limit the amount of stuff needed to the basics.
It hadn’t taken me long upon arrival in Germany from Armenia to figure out that Germans didn’t do small talk.

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