Prague With Kids Prague wasn’t on our radar for years. We’d always thought of it as a stag-do destination, all cheap beer and late nights. How wrong we were. This city is absolutely brilliant with children — affordable, gorgeous, easy…
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…
Berlin wasn’t a city we’d thought much about for a family trip. It felt serious. Historical. A bit grown-up. We kept imagining cold war museums and techno clubs, which — fair enough — are both very much part of the…
Iceland wasn’t a place we’d thought about for a family holiday. Not seriously, anyway. It sat in that mental category of “one day” destinations — somewhere between Antarctica and the Galápagos — and we assumed it would be freezing, expensive,…
We’ll be honest with you. The Amalfi Coast is not the easiest place to take children. It’s steep, it’s expensive, the roads are terrifying, and there are stairs — so many stairs — between you and basically everything. But. It…
Venice is one of those places you think might be wasted on children. All that history, the architecture, the slow romance of it. Surely it’s a couples’ destination? We thought so too. Then we took our lot and discovered something…
Florence wasn’t on our original list. We’d done Rome with the kids the year before and assumed the rest of Tuscany could wait until they were old enough to appreciate Renaissance art without asking “can we go yet?” every four…
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…
Greece wasn’t even on our radar for years. We kept gravitating towards Spain and France, the way most British families do, because they felt safe and familiar. Then a friend came back from Crete raving about it — the beaches,…
Dubrovnik wasn’t on our radar for years. We’d seen the photos — terracotta rooftops, impossibly blue water, those famous walls — and assumed it was a couples’ destination. Then we went with the kids, and honestly? We were wrong. Dead…
Copenhagen wasn’t on our radar for ages. We kept gravitating towards the usual suspects — Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam — and somehow Scandinavia felt like something for later. For when the kids were older, maybe. Or when we’d won the lottery.…
Edinburgh is one of those cities that just works with children. We’d visited before kids and loved it — the pubs, the late nights during Festival season, the moody Gothic architecture. But taking the children? Somehow even better. The place…
Lisbon wasn’t on our radar for ages. We kept choosing the obvious ones — Barcelona, Paris, the south of France — and somehow never got round to Portugal. Massive mistake. Because Lisbon turned out to be one of the best…
Amsterdam surprised us. We’d been putting it off for years, assuming it was all coffee shops and stag dos and not much for a family of four. Wrong. Completely wrong. It turned out to be one of the friendliest, most…
Rome wasn’t the obvious choice. We’d always filed it under “romantic city break” — the kind of place you go before kids, not with them. Cobblestones. Crowds. Scooters everywhere. But we took the plunge, and honestly? It’s one of the…
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…
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…
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…
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,…