Posts Tagged ‘Family Travel’

Your Family Travel Preparations – Things To Consider

family travel

There are loads of ways you can help prepare your kids for the family travel before you leave. Giving them some information that helps establish some familiarity with your destination can go a long way towards coping when they get there anre it might also get them excited about the prospect in advance. Encourage your children to be involved in planning the trip and where you’ll be going as often as possible.

Books On Family Travel
A month or so before you depart get as much literature as you can on the area you will be visiting. Get tourist brochures, guidebooks, books from the library – anything with pictures. Try to find books of legends or children’s stories from the region. For a young child, even a travel brochure can be made into a story by explaining the pictures. You may be surprised at hom much sticks.

Films On Family Travel
There’s nothing like a good movie to get kids excited about a place and give them a visual image of what it will be like, so hire some videos or DVDs before you go. You can also watch television family travel shows and other TV specials about places you’ll visit.

Restaurants and Outings
Take your kids out to eat in restaurants, go for weekend family trips, take them for walks – in short prepare them for the family travel. You can introduce a few different foods or flavours into your cooking and visit restaurants that offer cuisine that they will be exposed to while travelling. Although most young children will recoil on principle when anything new is offered, they will sometimes try new food in a new country when it is served up in a restaurant.

Maps
Pin up a map of the region you are travelling to and get older children to mark where they’d like to go. As you plan out your family travel you can mark your route on it.

Travel Stories
Invite friends around to share their travel stories of destinations. You might have to choose people carefully so you get stories that will capture the children’s imagination rather than bore them to tears.

Learning The Language
Learning some of the local language can be useful as well as enjoyable. Make it a fun and relevant activity like trying to talk in the language at the dinner table or use foreign words when you’re driving in the car. It will help your children’s confidence if they can converse with a few words, even if it’s just hello, goodbye, please and thank you. Children usually pick up languages well, particularly young children. Whatever efforts they make will be appreciated by local people.

Internet
Check out a variety of family travel websites on the internet and get as much information and advice about where your family travel destination. Tourist office websites are also a good starting point for information about the country you’re visiting.

Here’s hoping that all these travel tips will help you to have an enjoyable family travel.

 

Planning Your Family Travel

family travel

Making Family Travel Fun

The family travel with the kids can start being fun at the planning stage. Planning doesn’t mean having to map out your entire route and book every hotel but with kids in tow you do need to think ahead. If you’ve got the right equipment, have prepared your children as much as possible and done your homework about your destination then you’re well on your way to making your family trip work.

Planning Your Family Travel
Travelling with children of any age can have its own rewards and pitfalls. There is no right age to start travelling with children. Your trip can be just as enjoyable with a newborn as it can with a teenager. However, there are different issues to take into account depending on their age.

Babies: are portable and easy to entertain – a day in a meseum is a possibility with a baby in a backpack or stroller. This is probably the only stage of a child’s life you get to dictate where you go and what you do so make the most of it! Babies are usually of interest wherever you go and provide a great opportunity to interact with local people.
The disadvantage of travelling with babies is that they require a lot of equipment – nappies, change of clothes, carrying devices – and they like some kind of routine for naps, feeding and changing. They may also get you up at night which may cause you anxiety if you’re staying in a hotel.

There is also more anxiety with babies on the move – they can’t tell you if they are too hot, too cold or get a stomach ache. However, if you travel with the right equipment tune in and respond to your baby’s tired, hungry, bored signals and take a good medical kit, you should circuvent most problems.

Toddlers: can be challenging for a family travel. With all that energy they’ve got for trying to do everything and the feelings of frustration when they’re not allowed to do everything. You need to be extremely watchful as they are inclined to pick up unsavoury objects, cuddle the fleabag cat or wander off when their eye is caught by something intriguing. They’re also offten fussy eaters and obstinate in their likes and dislikes. On the plus side toddlers bring a fresh interest to everything and give you the chance to see the world from a different perspective. Your choice of destination is more important for toddlers – it helps to choose destinations where they can run around freely for some of the day without getting into danger. It’s also good to stay in places where you can feel free to childproof the room.

Other Children: From about the age of four, family travel with children becomes a real pleasure. It can still be hard work and children of this age can get bored easily, but it’s also very reqarding as your children how form their own impressions and relationships, and can tell you waht they are experiencing. They will tell you what they enjoy, and planning trips can be more of a group effort with their likes and dislikes being taken into account, within reason.

Teenagers: They are much more able to entertain themselves than younger children. They may enjoy some of the same things that you do and they’ll also remember most of what theyexperience and get great educational value from it. Your evenings will also be less restricted as they are often able to stay up as late or later than you do.

They’re also at an age where you can really involve them in the planning of the family trip and what you do from day to day. They will also be resourceful in providing family travel ideas. They will probably be very clear about where they do and do not want to go and how many ‘temple’ days and ‘ruins’ days are a reasonable exchange for beach days or shopping days!

Accommodation choices may be an issue as teenagers want more privacy and many not appreciate a family room. Taking on of their friends aong, if that’s a possibility, can make everyone’s family travel more enjoyable.

Get The Best Family Travel Deals Through Cheap Flights

family travel

Get The Best Family Travel Deal Through Cheap Flights

Originating in the UK, Cheapflights made its entrance to the online market back in 1996 as the first price comparison site, dedicated to finding its users the cheapest flights. Enjoying great success and profitability in the UK, Cheapflights spread its wings and has launched in the US, Canada, Germany and in 2009, we have travelled across the world to start in Australia and New Zealand.

What We Do For Your Family Travel

Cheapflights is a travel search engine. We introduce you to the best family travel deals from third parties. You tell us where you want to go for your family travel and we recommend the best person to get you there, be that one of the largest airlines around or a small specialist travel agency!

There are two ways of finding family travel deals on our site:

If you know where and when you want to travel, Cheapflights.com.au offers a booking engine where you can search by date and choose the best flights with specific partners. Simply head to the partner’s website and book directly with them.

If you haven’t got a specific destination or date in mind, then our Hot family travel deals is the place to get inspiration. This is a round up of the very best deals available online at the moment, hand-selected by one of our travel experts. Browse through the regions to see the lowest offers around. Again, once you’ve found a deal that looks appealing, just click through to our partner’s website to make your booking.

How we work for you

As well as the best deals and the ability to search specific dates and locations, Cheapflights also provides travel planning tools to make sure your holiday goes with a swing. The site has an ever-growing selection of family travel guides, so you can read up on your destination before you go. These include overviews, maps and photographs, insider info on what to do when you get there and even an in-flight reading section for some of the best books about the location. If you’re looking for a good deal, we tell you when to fly to get the cheapest rates, as well as which time of year is best avoided.

The travel tips section has a range of articles with advice on the best ways to find cheap flights. From travelling in the shoulder season, to booking a last minute flight, we provide all the information you need to find your way to the cheapest deals, time after time.

We always make sure that you will have the best family travel deal at the cheapest price.

Experience A Unique Hideaway In St. George Island

When the icy cold weather sets in and you start noticing handful of ice around you, then it’s time for a visit to a warmer location such as the St George Island.

Located wonderfully in the Florida pan handle area, this area is a splendid hideaway that can offer you the seclusion exactly like your very own house back home. It will likewise give you considerable open area to move around easily while allowing you an incredible look at the gulf.

All you want in an island vacation is found in the very beautiful barrier island. Rent your family vacation rental home and stay there as long as you like.

Live by the opulence of the sea,  in front of the beautiful place you have booked. A St George Island vacation is simply unbeatable!

Many of these rental houses in St George Island do have a screened deck, sundeck, or a private pool, and additionally an enclosed shed and can accommodate over 6 individuals. There are also units for rent that are known as beachfront homes, all complete with a boardwalk from the property or home, a high end kitchen area, outdoor shower and barbecue facilities.

In times when the quiet shores are thought to be a bygone sight nowadays, you’d this place will offer you a luxury that is rare. You can really use the entire beach all by yourself. The white seashore throughout the island is full of pristine sand, a natural powder white in its finest quality. Enjoy the island with a special kind of of beach, that you will not experience anywhere else.

 

Namibia – A Bountiful Harvest Awaits the Adventure Traveler

Namibia is a largely arid country of stark rough-hewn beauty. The most vivid images are those of a haunting technicolor landscape of swirling orange dunes, shimmering mirages and treacherous dust devils. The apparent desolation is deceptive and plant and animal life and even man has adapted to this environment. The country is designed almost specially with the active and adventure seeker in mind. Timeless deserts, thorn bush savanna, desolate wind ravaged coastlines, majestic canyons, and sun-baked saltpans are the bounty that awaits the traveler.

Namibia’s top draw is the Etosha National Park, rated as one of Africa’s finest game sanctuaries. The birding experience in the country is truly superior. The range of activities you can indulge in the unsurpassable physical environment is truly impressive. Ballooning over the desert, skydiving over land and sea, paragliding, whitewater rafting and sand skiing along coastal dunes are good activities for starters. More fun games to pick from include abseiling – that most spectacular of rock sports, coastal and fresh water angling, desert camel riding, scuba diving, 4×4 desert runs, hiking and mountaineering.

Namibia has four distinct geographical regions. In the north is Etosha Pan, a great area for wildlife and heart of Etosha National Park. The slender Caprivi Strip is nested between Zambia and Botswana and is a wet area of woodland blessed with a few rivers. Along the coast is the Namib Desert, which at the age of 80 million years old, is said to be the world’s oldest desert. At the coast, the icy cold Atlantic meets the blazing African desert, resulting in dense fogs. The well-watered central plateau runs north to south, and carries rugged mountains, magnificent canyons, rocky outcrops and expansive plains.

Namibia, one and half times the size of France, is very sparsely inhabited and carries only 1.8 million souls. The people are as unique as the land they live on. The most intriguing are the San, otherwise known as Bushmen. These most hardy of people have a highly advanced knowledge of their environment. It is a marvelous thing how well they are adapted to their difficult habitat. Just pause and think that these are the only people in the world who live with no permanent access to water. In the Kalahari Desert, one of their domiciles, surface water is not to be found. Tubers, melons, and other water bearing plants as well as underground sip wells supply their water requirements.

In Namibia today, Bushmen number about 50,000. Historians estimate that they have lived, mostly as hunters and gatherers, for at least 25,000 years in these parts of the world. Bushmen speak in a peculiar click language and are very gifted in the arts of storytelling, mimicry, and dance. Namibia’s other people, who are indigenous to the continent, are mostly of Bantu origin. They are thought to have arrived from western Africa from about 2,400 years ago. The African groups include the Owambo, Kavango, Caprivians, Herero, Himba, Damara, Nama and Tswana.

The Africans aside, other groups comprise about 15% of the population and have played an important role in the emergence of the modern nation. White Namibians amount to about 120,00 and are mainly of German and Afrikaner heritage. Germans arrived in significant numbers after 1884 when Bismarck declared the country a German Protectorate. Afrikaners, white farmers of Dutch origin, moved north from their Cape settlements, especially after the Dutch Cape Colony was ceded to the British in 1806. This strongly independent people, whose ancestors had lived in the Cape from 1652 resented British control.

Two other distinct groups complete the spectrum of Namibia’s people – Basters and Coloureds. Coloured in Namibia and southern Africa refers to people of mixed racial heritage, black- white for example. They have a separate identity and culture. This makes sense considering that Namibia was run by South Africa after the First World War. Even in pre-Apartheid South Africa, racial classification was a fine art. The Afrikaans-speaking Basters, descended from Hottentot women and Dutch settlers of the Cape. Alienated from both white and black communities, they trekked northwards, finally founding their own town Rehoboth, in 1871. Baster is actually derived from “bastard”, but it is not derogatory, and the Basters are indeed proud of it.

Namibia’s barren and unwelcoming coastlines served as a natural deterrent to the ambitions of European explorers. That was until 1884 when the German merchant Adolf Luderitz established a permanent settlement between the Namib Desert and the Atlantic seaboard that afterwards took his name. Bismarck subsequently declared the territory covered by Namibia a German colony and named it Südwestafrika or South West Africa. As German settlers moved into the interior, conflict was inevitable with the inheritors of the land.

The German occupation was a particularly unhappy experience for the Herero. The Herero resented the German’s harsh and racist rule and the effect of the encroachment on their lands on their livelihood and way of life. On the first day of the year 1904, the Herero led by Chief Samuel Maharero, rose suddenly and unexpectedly in arms against their colonial overlords. The Nama joined the insurrection and the authorities did not regain control even after six months of trying. Over 100 German settlers and soldiers died in the uprising. Historians now consider events that followed to constitute the first genocide of the twentieth century.

Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha was furnished with a contingent of 14,000 soldiers and tasked to put down the rebellion. The governor general of the territory was then Rudolph Goering -the father of Herman Goering, Hitler’s right hand man. Lothar von Trotha was a generation ahead of his time and his kind of thinking was to become government policy under the Third Reich. He argued that the Herero must be destroyed as a people and he did not wince at the murder of women or children. At the end of it all, 100,000 Nama and Herero were killed. The survivors were herded in concentration camps where unspeakable things happened. The Herero fared very badly and 80% of her people perished. The population of the Nama diminished by 35-50%.

Windhoek, the capital of 165,000 people is the only true city in the country. For those traveling to more remote regions, this is where you settle practical matters. The positive aspects of the German period can be seen in the charming style of older buildings in the city. Places of interest in the city include the State Museum, State Archives, and the Namibia Crafts Centre. The Dan Viljoen Game Park lies 24 Km west of Windhoek on the gentle hills of Khoma Hochland. In this resort you find ostriches, baboons, zebras and over 200 species of birds. The Waterburg Plateau Park, located 230 km from Windhoek is popular with weekenders. This extensive mountain wilderness is home to cheetah, leopard, kudu, giraffe, and white rhino.

Etosha National Park is what brings wildlife lovers to Namibia. The park is comparable in size and diversity of species with the best in Africa. The unusual terrain of Etosha holds savanna grassland, dense brush and woodland. But it is the Etosha Pan, a depression that sometimes holds water and covers 5,000 sq km, that is the heart of park. The perennial springs around the pan, attract many birds and land animals in the dry winter months. The effect of this background is magical and some of the best wildlife photographs have been taken here.

There are 144 mammal species in the park and elephants are particularly abundant. Some other interesting wildlife here includes giraffe, leopard, cheetah, jackal, blue wildebeest, gemsbok and black rhino. The birding is great at Etosha and over 300 bird species have been recorded. You will get best value by spending at least three days here. There are excellent accommodation facilities at the three rest camps of Namutoni, Halali and Okaukuejo. The best time to see animals is between May and September, when water draws them in huge numbers to the edge of the pan. Etosha is 400 km to the north of Windhoek by road.

The Fish River Canyon is unrivalled in Africa and only the Grand Canyon in the U.S in larger. The Canyon runs for 160 km and reaches a width of 27 km and depth of 550 m. But size alone does not explain the appeal of the canyon. You experience incredible views at various points along the rim. adventure lovers do not merely come for the views. Hiking through the canyon is the ultimate endurance adventure for hikers. There is an established 90 km hiking trail that will take you 4-5 days to cover.

The trail ends at Ai-Ais hot spring resort where you can unwind. You are allowed to hike between early May and end of September. The hike is quite strenuous and needless to say, you must be physically fit. The authorities disbelieve the capacity of most people to undertake the hike and will actually insist on seeing a medical certificate of fitness before allowing you to start off. Fish River Canyon is 580 km to the south of Windhoek.

The Skeleton Coast has been the graveyard of seafarers and whales and deserves that morbid name. The problem is the dense fogs. And woe to the ship wreck survivor who expects respite onshore! Ahead is the Namib Desert, one of the driest and most unwelcoming places. adventure travelers love trekking along the coastline as they enjoy the stark beauty of the area. To the south at Cape Cross, you find a seal colony carrying tens of thousands of seals. The Skeleton Coast Park covers 16,400 sq km and begins at 355 km northwest of Windhoek.

The Portuguese explorer Diego Cao reached this part of the world in the year 1486. He is probably one of the people whose experiences discouraged Europeans from venturing ashore until the arrival of the Germans 400 years later. Further south is the Namib-Naukluft National Park, a vast wilderness covering 50,000 sq km. The landscape is very diverse and covers mountain outcrops, majestic sand dunes, and deep cut gorges. For really spectacular dunes, the Sossusvlei area is unsurpassed. Here you have dunes rising to 300 m! The orange tint giants extend as far as the horizon and the area has an unreal, unforgettable atmosphere.

To the northeast of the country, the well-watered Kavango and Caprivi Strip region offers an unspoilt wilderness suitable for rugged game viewing and camping. The area also promises a feast for bird lovers. Game reserves in the area include: Kaudom, Caprivi, Mahango, Mudumu and Mamili. Poachers did great damage to wildlife during the years of the civil war in neighbouring Angola. Animal numbers are however building up rapidly. Some of the wildlife in the region includes leopard, elephant, buffalo, cheetah, lion and various antelope species. The Caprivi Reserve falls in an area of swamps and flood plains. Here you have an opportunity to partake fishing, hiking, game viewing safaris and river trips in traditional mokoro boats.

In Namibia you can enjoy up to 300 days of sunshine. The coast is temperate and thermometers run between 5C-25C. Inland, daytime temperatures range from 20C-34C, but can rise to 40C in the north and south of the country. Winter nights can be quite cold and frost occurs over large parts of the country. The rains inland fall in summer (November-April) and are heaviest in the Caprivi region. Rains do not much affect travel, but beware of flash floods in the vicinity of riverbeds. The best time to travel is over the dry months of March to October, when it is easier to see animals at waterholes. It is best to avoid the Namib Desert and Etosha between December and March when it can get unbearably hot. Before you travel to this country, make sure you review our Namibia safari and tour offers.

You can get by wearing light cottons and linens in summer. Over winter nights and mornings, you need heavier cottons, warmer wraps and sweaters. Comfortable walking shoes are essential, as the ground gets very hot. Some useful stuff to pack includes: camera, binoculars, sunglasses, sun hats, sunscreen and mosquito repellant. Be ready for dusty conditions and carry your clothing, equipment and supplies in dust proof bags. Do not be tempted to buy items made of ivory. You may not be allowed to carry them through customs at home. And it also good that you do not encourage the trade in ivory products that keeps poachers busy.

Bali Accommodation Choices

Search
Advertisement
Categories