We have lugged our BabyBjorn Travel Crib Light everywhere: Sintra, Lisbon, Seville, Stockholm and Copenhagen. We do this despite being reassured that many of the hotels and rental apartments where we’ve stayed could supply a crib for my son — usually even for free. But could I trust those cribs to be comfortable and 100% germ-free? No, of course not! Well, I just learned about a place where I (and probably any mom suffering from First Time Mom Syndrome) would let my son use the crib: The Suite Dreams Nursery at Grosvenor House, A JW Marriott Hotel, in London.

I haven’t figured out exactly where we’re going yet, but I’m planning a big family trip this summer. This will be my two-and-half year old son’s third trip to Europe. He went to Spain and Portugal at 11 months and to Sweden and Denmark at 20 months. Both trips went off without a hitch and all three of us had a great time. But can we pull it off again without a hitch — with a two-and-a-half year old who’s cheerfully entrenched in Terrible Twos? Well, we’re going to find out! The trip probably won’t be easy, but it will be wonderful. In a woe-is-me moment, I asked some of the top family bloggers how they think we’ll fare with a two-and-a-half year old and which age is the toughest, in terms of travel?

Nature and art lovers, unite! No need to make the difficult choice between spending time outside or looking at art when it comes to Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, NY, a sprawling sculpture park in the beautiful Hudson Valley. There actually is an indoor museum here, but I was too busy trying to cover as much of the 80 acres of rolling hills as I can, seeing works from Alexander Calder, Sol LeWitt, Maya Lin and more.

With a massive children’s museum, a pedestrian-friendly riverfront, and (free!) electric shuttle buses taking tourists around town, Chattanooga has a lot to offer families with young children. After years of living in London, frequent guest blogger Jill Martin Wrenn loves exploring around her home base of Atlanta. So when she wanted a family-friendly weekend getaway within a two-hour drive from her home in Atlanta, they headed to Chattanooga.

Tivoli, the fairytale amusement park in the center of Copenhagen, certainly isn’t Disney World. It’s not even Disneyland Paris. It’s decidedly old fashioned and Old World. This is the Copenhagen of Hans Christian Andersen, not Arne Jacobsen. And that’s what makes it ooze with charm.

How to break up a six-hour drive from Stockholm to Skane? With a bunch of moose, of course! After three days in Stockholm in July, it was time to throw our luggage (including a travel crib) into the roomy trunk of our Volvo XC70 graciously supplied by Carrentals.co.uk  head south to Skane, where we’d be staying […]

After spending three days in Stockholm in July, it was time to head south to the countryside of Skane to visit our friends who had moved back to Sweden after living in New York City for a year. Normally, they live in Uppsala, which is less than an hour drive from Stockholm. But for most of the summer, […]

I had heard about the Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden for years, but I had always thought that it was something just for kids. Until I had my son (who just turned two), I didn’t get excited about trains unless I was planning a trip to Europe. But now that trains […]

If Lisbon reminded me of San Francisco, then Sintra reminded me of Newport, Rhode Island. When Sintra was in its heyday, the richest of the rich built incredible palaces of sometimes questionable taste but never lacking in detail, opulence or personality. And just like in Newport, these homes/castles are no longer inhabited but are open […]

After raving about Junibacken, the Children’s Museum in Stockholm, it just wouldn’t be right for me not to share my enthusiasm for the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis (CMI). This weekend marked our son’s first trip to Indiana – my husband grew up here and I have been here at least 15 times with him. We […]