Get your typing fingers ready, ladies! Women’s travel writing contest from @wanderlustmag http://ow.ly/6TVlB
Are you in DC? Do you write about family travel?
We’re looking for DC area family travel bloggers and tweeters. @familyitrips @theculturedkid@kaztx – anyone else?
Filed under All Over the Map - DC, DC, Writing
Kids Euro Festival coming to DC in mid-October
Kids Euro Fest coming to DC in mid-October! http://ow.ly/6HH4E
Filed under All Over the Map - DC, DC, Writing
Family Famping: Family camping for the tent adverse
This post is reprinted from my September 13th column on Mount Vernon Patch.
If the thought of cramming yourself, your significant other, and your children into a three-foot-tall fabric shelter and wiping yourself with a leaf doesn’t sound like “fun!” to you, you’re not alone. As much as I love hiking and being in nature, when it comes to getting some shut-eye, I like to be off the ground, with walls and preferably some kind of plumbing nearby.
According to the Urban Dictionary, “famping” is defined as fake camping; renting a cabin or cottage in the wilderness or “up north”. It’s not roughing it enough to be camping but also not nice enough to be considered “vacation”. In other words, it’s my kind of camping—the kind with beds and bathrooms and some relative distance between you and the elements.
You don’t have to travel far to find some great family famping options:
Cacapon State Park is part of the West Virginia State Park system. My family and I have been renting a cabin there every fall for the past ten years. Built in the height of the Great Depression as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps program, the log cabins are set deep in the woods and feature huge stone fireplaces, small kitchens, and bathrooms. The park has a small fishing and swimming lake, miles of hiking trails up the Cacapon Mountain, horse-back riding, and a great family nature program. Just make sure you make your reservation far in advance. The old mountain town of Berkeley Springs is fifteen minutes away and has great restaurants (our favorite is Tari’s Cafe), shopping, and spa services.
If tree houses are more your style, you’ll love the Maple Tree Camp Ground, near Harpers Ferry. The tree cottages are built on stilts, eight to ten feet off the ground with small porches. They all have beds with mattresses, a table, chairs, and a wood stove. We stayed in one of the more primitive tree houses, enclosed wooden structures seven feet off the ground, which are available in spring, summer and fall. These do not have mattresses or linens so you’ll have to bring sleeping bags. They have shared bathrooms and a firepit for the all-important marshmallow roast.
Cunningham Fallsis located near Frederick, MD, and offers hiking, swimming, fishing, and boating.
The hike to the waterfall is perfect for kids. The park has 9 four-person camper cabins and 4 six-person camper cabins. Each cabin site has a picnic table, fire ring, and lantern post. Campers must provide their own linens. If cooking over your log fire isn’t your speed, check out the nearby Cozy Inn, site of many a presidential meal (perhaps because of its proximity to Camp David).
Happy famping!
-Veronique
Filed under All Over the Map - DC, DC, Family Travel Tips, Lodging, USA, Writing
Chocolate for Breakfast
When Mr. T and I lived in the Netherlands for a year, we were determined to live and eat (and drink) like the Dutch. Fresh bread and cheese daily. (Any kind of cheese you want, as long as it’s Gouda.) Coffee all day and all night, but always in the little bitty cups. Indonesian food for any special occasion. Frites and krokets from the FEBO automats after a night of drinking, with curry sauce, peanut sauce, any kind of sauce. And speaking of drinking… lovely fresh crisp Heineken and Amstel everywhere, of course, but this was where we first learned about Belgian trappist beers and cheeses at our favorite pub, Gollem, conveniently located only blocks from our tiny apartment over the Kinderboekwinkel. And boy did we study this subject in depth!
One thing I did not develop a taste for was the Dutch breakfast treat pictured above: chocolate sprinkles, or as they are gutturally known in dutch, “hagelslag”. I mean, I love chocolate, but I just could not wrap my mind around the concept of chocolate for breakfast. As a kid in a family that embraced all kinds of sugar cereals, I did enjoy my Cocoa Puffs, my Count Chocula, and Cocoa Krispies, but even then I knew they were more like dessert than actual food. As an adult (though I didn’t really characterize myself that way at the time, I was over 18), I went for toast, eggs, grown-up cereal like Wheaties or Raisin Bran, but mostly just coffee. Chocolate sprinkles on toast just seemed so wrong. And even the Dutch admit that, aside from the cheese, their food kind of stinks. Ask an Amsterdammer where to go for a typical Dutch meal, and they’ll probably point you to an Indonesian rijstaffel.
But. Last year, wading through the crowd at the breakfast buffet at an airport hotel near Amsterdam, where Delta so kindly put us up when we missed our flight, I spotted a tiny box of De Ruijter milk chocolate sprinkles next to the toaster. As I slipped them into my purse, I thought, “The kids will love these!”
Well, the kids declared them weird, which I thought was weird, since every trip to the ice cream store requires an extra dose of jimmies. In any case, they could not be convinced to try them. So I had to. I HAD to! And, well, 9 months later (wait, doesn’t that phrase usually end with a funny surprise baby story? not here!) I couldn’t get them out of my mind and I asked for some for my birthday. So now, thanks to the magical internets and my sweet husband’s skills at searching same, I have TWO GIANT BOXES of chocolate sprinkles! And I have discovered they are not only delicious with bread and butter, but with a peanut butter and banana sandwich, on cupcakes, and in fruit salad. Where else? I still have roughly a pound of them, so please send your ideas!
Find some hagelslag, (in milk, dark, and fruity varieties) for yourself at any of these Dutch wonderlands:
or of course, Hagelslag
Eet smakelijk!
