1 Great Travel Site For Families: Ciao Bambino

A recent Facebook post from my friend T read, “Anyone have any good hotel recommendations for Paris?” It is a testament to how much I like T that I didn’t delete her from my friends’ list right then and there.

Clearly, there are some people -- like my friend T -- who lead the kind of lives where “making Parisian hotel reservation” really is an item on their “to do” list.

I am not this sort of person these days. My weekly “to do” list is a good deal less glamorous. In fact, each week it’s usually headlined by this item: “scrape dog droppings off bottom of child’s shoe”. Because each week I conveniently never get to this item so it transfers from one “to do” list to the next. In the meantime, I just keep buying new shoes for the Dynamic Duo. It is not a good practice.

But here’s what is a good practice: planning vacations (the getaways that, duh, get us away from tedious chores like dog sh*%  shoe scraping).  And here’s just the site to help you do it: Ciao Bambino.(Click this link to visit ciaobambino.com.)

If you’ve got kids and you’re planning a future vacation, you’ve got to visit this site. It’s chock full of tremendously helpful information, the kind that talking with a tour operator on the phone for half an hour won’t get you.

For instance, my family friendly Africa tour planner didn’t tell me to look only for fenced-in camps in Africa. She didn’t remind me that Botswana is malaria-country so that means malaria pills and the joys of having a 7 year old swallow a pill for the first time.

But the writers of Ciao Bambino did. They know the kinds of questions that even Type A moms don’t know to ask. For instance, they know the fence in a fenced in camp will keep the larger, deadlier animals away from your tent window at night, making midnight bathroom excursions so much less suspenseful.

They know that going on safari with a child younger than 8 years old will make you so crazy you might just throw yourself to the hippos outside your tent window (at the fenceless camp) on purpose.

This is a great site. It offers tips and advice for destinations across the United States and the globe. I’m pondering an African safari some time in our future. The trip is in the “fantasy but could become reality” stages now. Ciao Bambino is helping me get closer to making this trip a reality (and dozens of others too).

Even if I don’t get to go for a few more years, I’m already reaping the rewards. Experts say the anticipation of a vacation is as good for us mentally as the actual vacation days are. That’s great news because I’m already anticipating away. My mental state is going to be so endorphin-steeped by the time I actually go to Africa that they can bring on those fenceless camps and malaria pills. I shall laugh in the face of danger (and large hippos too).

In the meantime, happy traveling guru girls and guys. Have a great time in Paris, T! Don’t forget to send guru girl a postcard.