travel dates: July, 2024 After a tour of all the biggest cities in Ontario and Quebec, we were ready to start heading home. Which started with a border crossing. I had dutifully made sure we didn’t have any meat or produce to complicate things for our return to the US (some meat and produce is […]
Things to Do in Québec City with Kids and Teens
travel dates: July, 2024 “Our city looks old because we built it to look old,” revealed our tour guide as we wandered the ridiculously picturesque streets of Old Québec with him. Which doesn’t mean that the buildings aren’t actually old–they are, with many dating to the 19th century and others as far back as the […]
New England Fall Break (aka Boston with Kids)
Back in the old days, Dave taught in a different school district and had a week long break in September, and we went to Disney every single year for a long time. Our kids were young, the parks were uncrowded, and it was (relatively) cheap. Then he changed schools, to pretty much the only county […]
Three Days in Montreal with Kids and Teens
Sometimes there’s a stop on a trip where nothing seems to go quite right, and Montreal was that place for us. And, yet, Montreal is still probably the single city from our Canadian Cities itinerary that I’d be quickest to return to, which I think is a testament to what a very cool city it […]
Revisiting Old Favorites in St. Louis
travel dates: June, 2025 What with it being the gateway to the west and all, we find ourselves planning routes that take us through St. Louis pretty frequently. And we never mind, because St. Louis is a pretty great city. So when we needed to drive right through St. Louis yet again on our summer […]
Things to Do in (and around) Ottawa with Kids and Teens
travel dates: July 2024 A fun thing about spending a summer exploring Canada is that sometimes you find yourself touring Canada’s historic Parliament building with one other couple from New Jersey, and you both have a lot of questions about Canadian politics. After this aforementioned tour and a lot of time on Wikipedia, though, I […]
Upper Canada Village and Upper Canada Campground
travel dates: June/July, 2024 Dragging my family to living history sites is something of a hobby for me, so of course Upper Canada Village was on our itinerary. Upper Canada Village bills itself as one of the largest living history sites in Canada and says it aims to “depict life in a rural English Canadian setting during […]
Visiting Boldt Castle: A Brief Return to the US and the Gilded Age
travel dates: June, 2024 I’ve been to a lot of house museums in my time. Like…so many. Every house has a story to tell. But, really, every house has lots of stories it could tell (this is true of most things in the world. The world is a bit of a sprawling mess, and people are the […]
Visiting Kingston, Ontario + a Quick Rideau Acres Campground Review
travel dates: June, 2025 Ah, Kingston! Birthplace of famed Canadian rock band, The Tragically Hip. Here, unnecessarily, are my three favorite Tragically Hip songs: Wheat Kings, Bobcaygeon, Poets. These are actually perhaps the only Tragically Hip songs I can even name. I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to get more into the band, […]
Two Days in Toronto with Kids and Teens
travel dates: June, 2024 By the end of our first day in Toronto, I’d had an epiphany: the second “t” in Toronto is silent. “Just like Atlanta!” I thought. Also like Atlanta, Toronto can feel sort of…generic big city-esque. There are tall buildings, and people hurrying around doing business things, and they’re not always as […]