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 The ticket really is chocolate You pay, and you’re handed a bar of chocolate with the museum’s design on it. That’s your entry. Nobody scans it, nobody takes it back, and you can…
Quick answer What’s free at Park Güell and what isn’t This is the part almost nobody explains properly, because the sites explaining it are selling tickets. Needs a ticket (the Monumental Zone, about 12 hectares):…
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…
We moved to Barcelona in 2010 and have raised two boys here. This is the guide I send people when they ask what to do, written from living here rather than visiting. It covers the…
We’ve done Christmas in Barcelona every year since 2010. Some of it is genuinely magical. Some of it is a crowded street with a €6 hot chocolate and a child who wants to go home.…
We bought the C3 pass for our family of four and used it for Skydeck, the Shoreline architecture river cruise and 360 Chicago. It felt like the sensible choice at the time. Then I did…
Chicago With Kids: Everything We Learned We spent two weeks in Chicago and Wisconsin with two boys — three full days in the city, a week at a basketball camp near Milwaukee, and a final…
The Best Time to Visit Chicago With Kids (And What We Learned Going in July) We went in July, which is the month most families can go and the month most guides quietly warn you…
Most travel blogs will tell you Chicago is expensive. Ours cost €6,359.14 for four people over 13 days, and the expensive part wasn’t Chicago at all — it was getting there. Here is every euro,…
We slept in three different hotels on this trip: one in downtown Chicago, one out by O’Hare, and one an hour and a half north in Wisconsin. Only one of them I’d book again —…
July 2024 · 15 nights · two adults, two children · every euro The short answer €8,689. That is what fifteen nights in Los Angeles cost the four of us in July 2024 — flights,…
