Family cruises

A cruise ship, yesterday

Have you ever been on a cruise with your family? I haven’t, but I quite fancy giving it a try. While cruises can have their downsides such as lack of independence (although that seems to be changing these days), the idea of having everything done for me, kids’ activities on tap and waking up somewhere different every morning is pretty appealing. Plus a lot of them have amazing facilities for families now, such as the cruises offered by Royal Caribbean, Carnival Cruises and of course by the kings of family friendly cruises, Disney. I wrote a whole article about family friendly cruises for The Express last year, but the one that appeared in today’s is about cruising in the Caribbean. A lot of the info is relevant to families too though, so I thought I’d include it here. Also Linda Jones over on Have a Lovely Time has some excellent family cruising tips, so good, in fact, that I included them in my book.

I’m in BMI Baby’s Top Ten!

Very excited that BMI Baby have included me in their top ten family blogs today. Hooray!

Family-friendly skiing

Livi in Andorra

Yes, I know I’ve said it a million times before but skiing really is a brilliant family holiday. I originally wrote this piece for The Express last year – it’s only just gone in so I had to recheck all the prices. One had stayed the same as last year – the rest had all gone down. So there are some real bargains to be had. What are you waiting for?

Skiing on a budget

Toby and Livi in Andorra

Yes, it’s that time of year again when I start banging on about skiing. It’s still weirdly warm here in the south of France (in fact we just had lunch outside) so I don’t hold out high hopes for this year’s Pyrenean season, but we’ll see.

Skiing is usually considered an expensive holiday, and while it can be pretty pricey, it doesn’t have to break the bank if you choose your destiation carefully. My other top tip, if you can bear to take your children of school (or they are still pre-schoolers) is to go in the first two weeks of January. The slopes will be virtually empty, snow is likely to be good and there are some real bargains too be had.

Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Review

My son Toby is obsessed with record breakers. Apropos of absolutely nothing, he will often ask “Do you know how small the smallest bird is?” or “Guess how tall the tallest man in the world is.” So when we were invited to try out Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! London, I knew he’d be desperate to go.

Junior Chef Package, Royal Garden Hotel

The thing about five-star hotels is, that lovely as they often are, if I am entirely honest, they’re often easier to enjoy without your kids. However, the Royal Garden Hotel is working hard to change this so when we were offered the chance to try out their Junior Chef Package, I jumped at the chance.

Bonnes Vacances

Journalist Rosie Millard decided to take her family including four young children on a 14-week trip to discover the French DOM-TOMs (ie the bits of France that aren’t actually in France, like Polynesia and Martinique.) Why?

“Any aspect of French life interested me, but this more than most. Something about their wildly distant positions on the globe, alongside a clear determination to remain French, rather touched me,” Rosie said.

She added that she also wanted to prove to her children that it is possible to survive for 14 weeks without Hannah Montana and 24/7 internet access.