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,…
Quick verdict Tamariu is where you go when Calella de Palafrugell has too many people in it. It is the third village of Palafrugell, tucked into a bay north of Llafranc, and it is the…
Quick verdict Llafranc, on the Costa Brava, is the village most people find by accident — they come for Calella de Palafrugell, walk round the headland because somebody told them to, and end up staying…
Key takeaways Where we stayedMontanyà Hotel & Lodge – Montseny, a nature base with kids, about an hour from Barcelona. Check prices & availability We didn’t book this hotel for a holiday. We booked it…
Key takeaways Two training sessions a day, a pool block between them, and competitions that finish at quarter past eleven at night. That’s the rhythm of this camp, and if your child isn’t genuinely into…
One of the things that surprised us most about Ibiza was how incredibly photogenic the island is. Every day seemed to reveal another picture-perfect beach, dramatic viewpoint, or charming village. Some of our favourite photos…
When people hear the word Ibiza, they usually think about beach clubs and nightlife. As parents of a 13-year-old basketball-loving teenager and a 10-year-old, we weren’t sure if Ibiza would offer enough to keep both…
When we started planning our Ibiza trip, one of the first questions we had was where should we actually stay? Ibiza isn’t a huge island, but the different areas can feel surprisingly different. The south…
