The Best Western Atrea Manatee Hotel is a sparkling, new property in Bradenton, Fl., only an hour south of Tampa and just minutes north of Sarasota. It's a great place to bed down if you want to stay outside of the busy city. Our room was spacious and comfortable and came with a flat-screen TV. My kids especially liked the swimming pool in a tropical setting with palm trees.
After looking for shells on Sanibel Island, we drove two hours north to Bradenton. This sprawling suburban town sits right on the Gulf of Mexico, an hour south of Tampa. It's best known for its sparkling white beaches, celebrity residents (Sean Connery!) and orange juice. Tropicana is headquartered here.
If you find a junonia shell on Sanibel Island you make the front page of the local newspaper. You'll also become headline news if you get your hands on a prized lion paw.
The Best Western Plus Beach Resort sits right on the beach, steps from southern Florida's pretty pale green waters. It's the sort of place where you could easily spend a week, walking the sugary white sand beach in the morning, playing a game of shuffle board in the afternoon, and falling asleep every night to the sound of the crashing waves.
Florida's Best Western Naples Inn & Suites sits amidst a tropic paradise.
From the Everglades, we drove to Naples, Fl. This luxurious beach resort, two hours west of Miami, sits on the Gulf of Mexico. It's ritzy and glitzy and known as a vacation spot for wealthy Midwesterners. The waterfront is lined with over-the-top mansions and beach-goers wear fine linen cover ups and flip-flops studded with gems.
It's easy to disregard the Everglades. If you drive quickly through this marshy swath of land that stretches across Florida's most southern tip, you'll only see expansive fields of long, wispy grass. After awhile, your children are likely to tell you the scenery outside is boring.
In a modest suburban Miami neighborhood with palm-lined streets, Havana Miami dishes up down-home, traditional Cuban food. It's an old-school sort of place with white tablecloths and waiters wearing collared shirts and teal green cumberbunds and bow ties, looking as if they were dressed for an 80s high school prom. Colorful oil paintings depicting the Cuban revolution hang on the walls, and a giant tank filled with tropical fish sits in the center of the dining room.
The stylish Best Western Miami International Airport is just minutes from the airport and 20 minutes from the city. It's one of the hotel group's premier properties with modern decor, plush bedding, and 42-inch screens in all rooms. A hot breakfast, wi-fi, and rides to and from the airport are all complimentary.
My kids especially liked the pretty outdoor pool where guests can soak up the Florida sun in comfortable lounge chairs. My husband appreciated the well-equipped fitness center where he got in a quick work-out. And I was just so happy to fall into a comfy bed piled high with soft bedding and get a good night's sleep in a thick-walled hotel with quiet rooms.
Our trip to Miami was anything but smooth. I knew from the moment that we went through airport security and the TSA agent alerted me that my driver's license was expiring in three days that we faced a difficult day. But I never expected the emergency landing.
American kids lag in science. A 2009 report put out by the National Center for Education Statistics found that U.S. students trailed behind children in industrialized Asian and European countries such as Canada, Japan and the Czech Republic.
Is Spain too cold in the summer? Is Hawaii more expensive in the winter? When are the rains in Southeast Asia? Travelers often have questions around when's the best time to visit particular destinations.
Europe is home to a whopping 2300 plus breweries. These range from long established, internationally known majors to smaller regional producers of specialist brews. Undoubtedly, Europe will have a beer to suit every taste, and not surprisingly, it boasts 9 of the world’s 10 countries with the highest beer consumption per capita.
Over spring break, our family is traveling across the country to Florida in search of sun. Our plan is to fly into Miami and then trace the edge of the Gulf Coast, finishing our trip in Fort Walton.
My kids' spring break is just around the corner. We're planning a road trip through Florida, starting in Miami and tracing the Gulf Coast to Fort Walton. We hope to get in lots of beach time and see a manatee in the wild.
Unlike traditional paper maps that can be awkward to deal with, the Crumpled City Map can be easily crammed into your pocket, backpack, purse without having to worry about refolding it along the original creases. It takes 2 seconds to open and close this map.The collection includes six cities: New York, London, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg. Each map provides details about a large part of the city, including streets, monuments, museums, art galleries and much more.
$24, palomarweb.com
Read the full storyA couple of weeks ago, an editor over at CafeMom.com asked me for a “male’s opinion” of Valentine’s Day: “a little insider info about what men really think.” She added, “Are you willing? It can be as short or long as you want and we’ll link to your site, your twitter page, and anything else you’ve got going on!”
That sold me, as it would any desperate blogger, so I wrote up this lengthy, schmaltzy, sentimental post and sent it over, and then the site only quoted a single graf of it. Oh well. That means you now get to read it here, and you get to laugh at its utter emotional nakedness. Ha! That Gross, what a wuss. Well, whatever! It’s fucking Valentine’s Day. Anyway, here it is:
Once upon a time, more than a decade ago, I cooked a Valentine’s Day dinner at home in my small studio apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The menu consisted of seared duck breast, sauteed green beans with pink peppercorns, and potatoes cooked in the rendered duck fat with garlic and rosemary. Everything came off perfectly, the duck pink in the middle, the green beans still snappy, the potatoes crusty and rich. My date, Jean, was pleased—or, at least, I assume she was. In any case, she wound up marrying me several years later, and today we have a daughter, Sasha.
I remember the first time I traveled alone on a plane with both of my kids. My daughter was a toddler and my son a baby—and somehow I lugged a stroller, two car seats, a portable crib, a backpack carry-on and two rolling suitcases from the departures curb, where a taxi had dropped us off, to the ticket counter.
Until recently the Isles of Scilly were unknown to the average person. But now thanks to some royal wedding buzz this collection of British islands just 28 miles off the coast of Cornwall are suddenly in the spotlight. Rumor has it that Prince William and Kate Middleton might be honeymooning here, and now the destination's tourism Web site is busier than ever, according to USA Today.
