Osaka is the easiest of Japan’s big three cities to get wrong, because it looks like one city and behaves like two. Get the area right and you have the best-value base in Japan, with…
The short version Top 3 Family Hotels on the Costa del Sol Where we’d stay with two kids, ranked by what kind of family you are. Most to do Holiday World Resort, Benalmádena Pools, organised…
Osaka Food with Kids: How to Actually Order, and What It Costs Osaka is the best city in Japan to eat in with children, and the one where a European family is most likely to…
Rupit has 280 residents, sits on a rock in the mountains of inland Catalonia, and you can walk the whole village in an hour. We took three hours, because we had three children and there…
One weekend every October, more than 250 buildings across Barcelona open their doors for free — including a great many you cannot get into on any other day of the year. The 48h Open House…
In Tokyo, you are not choosing a neighbourhood. You are choosing a train line. That sounds like a technicality and it isn’t. Tokyo is too big to walk across, so where you sleep decides how…
I’m not going to tell you I’ve slept in every family hotel in Kyoto. I’ve stayed in one, and I’ll tell you exactly what it cost and what it was like. What I can do…
Three Chicago institutions, and people argue about them as if they’re the same question. They aren’t. Giordano’s and Lou Malnati’s are the deep dish argument — two pizzas that look similar in a photograph and…
We spent 19 days in Japan as a family of four in July 2023 — Tokyo, Nikko, Osaka, Nara, Uji, Kyoto and Kurashiki. This is what we actually paid. It’s also, unintentionally, a before-and-after. We…
Quick answer MNAC is the enormous domed palace at the top of the steps above Plaça d’Espanya that everyone photographs and almost nobody goes into. But during pandemics, with everything closed, once we were allowed…
Quick answer I went with our kids twice, once on the first Sunday of the month during pandemics, and the second time with kids and my parents who came to Barcelona. Both times we went…
Quick answer We visited this place during pandemics, when it was possible to move around Barcelona city. Here to mention, that the price was different then for us. On the other hand, this was our…
Quick answer The two tickets, and which one you want Ticket Over 120 cm 90–120 cm Over 60 Entrance (whole park) €39.00 €15.50 €11.70 Panoramic (emblematic rides + views) €21.50 €11.80 €9.10 Single ride, one…
Quick answer Where to stay in Barcelona — our three picks Budget · GràciaGenerator Barcelona – private family rooms at hostel prices, five minutes from Passeig de Gràcia and metro Diagonal (L3/L5). Rooms are small…
Quick answer Where to stay in Barcelona — our three picks Budget · GràciaGenerator Barcelona – private family rooms at hostel prices, five minutes from Passeig de Gràcia and metro Diagonal (L3/L5). Rooms are small…
Every winter we watch tourists walk down Passeig de Gràcia in t-shirts, and every winter I want to stop them. Barcelona in winter is mild compared to London, Oslo or Paris — it rarely drops…
La Molina is where Barcelona families go when the children want snow. It’s about 145 km and two hours from the city, it has a sledding area as well as 71 km of pistes, and…
Barcelona is one of the only major European cities where you can be on a beach in the morning and in real snow the same afternoon. La Molina, the closest proper ski resort, is about…
Barcelona has five Christmas markets and most guides cover two of them. That’s how people end up queuing at the Cathedral on a Saturday afternoon in December when the market they actually wanted was twenty…
If you’re in Barcelona on 5 January with children, cancel whatever else you had planned. The Cavalcada de Reis is the biggest children’s event of the year here — bigger than Christmas Day, which in…
