Oh, the Places You'll Go! Or, this was all your fault.

So! You want to go to Europe. And you want to go because it is/has:

• Amazing sights/museums
• Great food/wine/beer
• Beautiful scenery
• Clean and (mostly) safe
• Comfortable
• Not too far away (sorry, Japan)
• Your heritage (that is, you're Irish)
• Just different enough to be an "adventure"

Wonderful. Book a ticket! Heck, go ahead and fly stand-by, tomorrow. Send me a post card. Vienna waits for you.
Oh, wait, you have kids. Those kids...can you leave them? No? You're sure? Yeah, they got to come along. I know. And they are:

• Expensive
• Easily bored
• Picky eaters

I mean, you can go to Disney and see imitation Europe. I got no problem with that. It's not like Neuschwanstein is a real medieval castle either. And just about all of those wonderful Gothic cathedrals you'll see weren't completed until the late 1800's, if at all. My childhood house was older than that. To paraphrase Troy McClure -- when you're in Vegas, at least you know it's a sham.

You're still going? With the kids? Suit yourself. You probably think exposing them to other cultures is good (even if the difference is fairly slight) and that they'll appreciate the art and culture.
And you're right: They will, but you have to do a lot of work to get them there. You can't just bring a six year old to the Loire Valley and say, "look how beautiful!" Or drop your brat off in front of the David and go, "there's the David." No, you got to use some strategy. That includes:

• Spacing out the culture events with kid events or treats
• Focus on big things -- physically big, that is -- size impresses
• Prepare them, repeatedly, for what they'll see
• Use stories, kids love stories

You're going to have to choose places that have big things to see, that has good literature and tales to give the place life and context, and has clearly defined kid stuff all over the place. You'll have to prepare yourself so that you can talk about what they're going to see in a kid-friendly way when the time comes. And you don't want to pick a space that has grown-up stuff that you want to do, but can't get to with the kids around. A Dublin pub crawl doesn't make a good "what I did on summer break" theme for your third grader.
And that is how I try to grade out my choice for destinations. They should have big stuff to see, with kid friendly food and activities around, have good books and movies to read & show as prep, and not be something I will miss doing because they're in tow. And yeah, I have to want to go there, too. Next post, I'll start to give you my take on the general Euro destinations with that in mind. Stay tuned.

-pag