“Mum, we’re FLYING.” We were not flying. We were in a cable car. But from the perspective of a five-year-old dangling above Barcelona harbour in a glass box, it felt like flying. The city spread out below us — boats,…
We were twenty minutes into the catamaran cruise when my three-year-old fell asleep on the net at the front of the boat. Wind in her hair, sun on her face, Barcelona shrinking behind us. My eight-year-old was hanging over the…
The cog-wheel train tilted upward and my five-year-old grabbed the armrest. “Are we going to space?” Not quite. But Montserrat does feel like another planet. Jagged rock towers rise from the earth like teeth. A thousand-year-old monastery clings to the…
My daughter pressed her face against the glass and a shark swam directly at her. She didn’t flinch. She grinned. “He’s looking at me, Mum.” She was three. That was the moment I realised the Barcelona Aquarium was the best…
My son stood in the Camp Nou tunnel, looked out at 99,000 empty seats, and genuinely couldn’t speak. He’s eight. He talks constantly. But for about thirty seconds he just stood there with his mouth open. That’s what the FC…
I’ll be honest: I resisted the hop-on hop-off bus for years. It felt too touristy. Too easy. Too much like admitting defeat. Then we tried walking Barcelona with a three-year-old in July and I changed my mind within forty minutes.…
The warrior chimneys got them. I’d been worried my kids would be bored by another Gaudi house — we’d done Casa Batllo the day before and I wasn’t sure they had another building in them. But the moment we stepped…
My eight-year-old grabbed my arm in the main salon and whispered, “Mum, we’re inside a dragon.” She’d worked it out before the audioguide told her. The ceiling curves like a ribcage. The walls ripple like scales. The window looks like…
“Mum, it’s a dragon!” My five-year-old spotted El Drac before we’d even reached the entrance steps. The mosaic lizard-dragon at Park Guell is basically a toddler magnet. Every child in the queue wanted to touch it. Every parent was trying…
My three-year-old pointed at the ceiling and said “trees.” She wasn’t wrong. The columns inside Sagrada Familia split and branch exactly like a forest canopy. It’s one of those rare buildings that genuinely stops children in their tracks. We arrived…
Getting Around Tokyo With Kids Tokyo’s transport system is absurdly good. Trains arrive on time — not roughly on time, not within a few minutes, but to the second. Stations are clean. Signage exists. People queue. Coming from a country…
Why Japan Is the Ultimate Teenager Destination Our teenagers did not want to go to Japan. Let me just put that out there. They wanted Ibiza. They wanted “literally anywhere with a pool.” They rolled their eyes so hard I…
Skiing in Japan With Kids Forget everything you think you know about skiing holidays. The overpriced fondue in the Alps. The queues at French lift stations that make you question whether the whole thing was worth it. The eye-watering cost…
Hokkaido With Kids Japan’s northernmost island doesn’t feel like Japan. Or at least, not the Japan most people picture. Forget the narrow alleyways and neon towers and crowds pressing through Shibuya crossing. Hokkaido is wide open. Dairy farms rolling towards…
Japan Souvenirs and Shopping With Kids Let’s be honest. We budgeted carefully for flights, hotels and rail passes — then blew a chunk of it in a Pokémon Center on day two. Shopping in Japan with children is a beautiful,…
Nobody told us about the shoes. We’d packed carefully for our first Japan trip — outfits planned, weather checked, luggage weighed. And then on day one, standing in the entrance of a temple in Kyoto, we watched our daughter struggle…
Snow Monkeys With Kids There’s a moment, about ten minutes into the forest walk, when your five-year-old stops complaining about the cold. The trees are heavy with snow, the path narrows, and somewhere ahead you can hear water. Then you…
Harry Potter Studio Tour Tokyo With Kids We’ve done the London version. Twice, actually. So when Warner Bros. opened a second Studio Tour in Tokyo, the question wasn’t should we go. It was whether it could possibly live up to…
Okinawa With Kids We nearly didn’t go. Okinawa felt like a detour — extra flights, more luggage wrangling, more “but WHY can’t I bring my bucket on the plane.” Adding a beach destination to a Japan trip seemed off-brand. Japan…
Yokohama With Kids Yokohama is barely thirty minutes from central Tokyo by train, and yet it feels like a completely different city. Wider pavements. Fewer crowds. A gorgeous waterfront. And a collection of family attractions that, frankly, rival anything in…
Rainy Days in Tokyo With Kids It rained for three of our five days in Tokyo. Properly rained — not a gentle drizzle, but thick sheets of water bouncing off pavements. The children stood at the hotel window looking devastated.…
Hiroshima With Kids Hiroshima was the stop on our Japan trip that I thought about most carefully in advance. How do you take children somewhere defined by one of the worst things humans have ever done to each other? Would…
Nikko is the day trip from Tokyo that actually lives up to the hype. Two hours north into the mountains and you’re standing in front of the most lavishly decorated shrine in Japan, surrounded by cedar forests and stone lanterns,…
Kamakura With Kids Kamakura is one of those day trips from Tokyo that actually delivers. No complicated transfers, no endless planning — just hop on the JR Yokosuka Line from Tokyo Station and you’re there in about an hour. It’s…
Kanazawa With Kids Kanazawa caught us off guard. We’d planned it as a quick stop between Tokyo and Kyoto — somewhere to break up the journey, tick off a garden, maybe eat some fresh crab. What we got was one…