Month: May 2017

We love Paradores

The experience that shall not be missed when travelling in Spain is to spend a night in a parador. I am such a fan of paradores that the kids for a long time thought that it is a generic name for any hotel. My friends, when I said that I will be writing a blog, asked if it be only about paradores or also something else.

So what are those paradores and why we love them? They are state-run hotels usually located in adapted historic buildings such as castles, palaces or monasteries and usually having 4 starts. There are some luxury paradores with 5 stars and there are also some paradores which are located in modern buildings. They aim at promoting heritage tourism and thus are rarely located in bigger cities and their restaurants feature local cuisine. Paradores allow us to discover hidden gems of Spain and I often choose weekend destination by parador. For us sleeping in parador is experiencing history first hand and for a very reasonable price! The rooms in paradores are usually very spacious, kids until 12 years old stay for free and get an additional small bed (the only downside for our family is that the online reservation allows booking a room only for three persons in total, but so far we managed by booking a room for two adults and one kid and then writing in the comments that there will be another child who will share the parents’ bed).

Paradores also run ‘Amigos de paradores’ loyalty program which is actually one of the best loyalty programs that I have ever participated. First you get discounted rates for your stay, sometimes the room being only 60 euros/night! Then, once checking in you get a voucher for a welcome drink at the bar. Finally, every euro you spend in parador, whether for the room or for the dinner, is converted into points that you may use to pay your next stay. And the points given are rather generous allowing you to profit from a ‘free’ night rather quickly.

This gives me an idea – I go and plan right now our next parador weekend!

Photo: in front of an impressive entrance to the parador of Leon

Santa Pola mola

It is usual that people (and we are no exception) travel thousands of miles for holidays but never visit a village round the corner. So once in a while we try to fix this and during the weekends we get out to check what surrounds as.

This time it was a day in Santa Pola (a village some 20km away from Alicante). First stop is Santa Pola aquarium. It is not a big and flashy aquarium boasting the biggest fish tank or the largest whale. It is quite small municipal aquarium featuring marine life from a local coast, but it is still entertaining for kids and the price is good (3 euros adult ticket and 1.5 euros for kids). After spending an hour or so in the aquarium you may visit the castle and its maritime museum. It seems to be another interesting stop in Santa Pola, but we have missed it as it closed for lunch (we left the home in the morning too late).

On the way to the Salt museum you shall stop at McDonalds. Not so much because the kids love it and you can’t do a lot about it, but because they offer discount coupons for Pola Park. After lunch we visited Salt museum, which has a free entrance and is located in the former salt factory. It has (obviously) lots of salt in big and small pieces and kids loved to touch it and to check out various factory equipment. There are also several binoculars to look at flamingos fishing in surrounding salt pools and some of them can be seen up close in the pond outside the museum’s entrance.

Finally we reached the highlight of the day – Pola Park. It is an amusement park which is big enough to be entertaining even for adults, but not that big and expensive as ‘proper’ theme parks. With McDonalds coupon you will get a bracelet that differs depending on the age of the kid (2-4 or 5-7 or 8-17 or adult) and they are allowed (or not) on the ride depending on the category of the bracelet. Thus it may make sense to round up the age to a higher category to avoid disappointment that your ‘almost 8 year old’ is not allowed to go on, e.g. go carts. It may also allow you to escape the necessity to accompany the kids on the rides as on some rides the younger ones need to be accompanied by an adult. While the park has a lot of different rides, including huge slides, a rollercoaster, trampolines, horror room, etc, it is mostly amusing for the boys since they can go on quads, go carts and spend hours on electric bumper cars (our boys were always on the move making it impossible to make a photo:).

By the way – ‘mola’ is Spanish for defining something cool, something that ‘rocks’.

Kids’ paradise is called Dubai

I think that the only other place in the world that could compete with Emirates for the kids’ paradise award is Orlando. But the latter would fail on the sea and dunes criteria. There are so many attractions for kids in Dubai and beyond (Abu Dhabi and other Emirates are doing a great job too) that one could be visiting them for a month without going to the same place twice (but needs sheikh’s budget for that). Therefore it was a tough choice to decide what places we will be visiting and even more tough to resist not visiting the rest.

Already before the trip we have agreed with the kids that we will visit two amusement parks, one being Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi, and one water park. After comparing the prices, the height restrictions and the reviews we chose to go to Legoland water park. With the online ticket we got to visit two parks of ‘Dubai Parks and Resorts’ in a day. So we went to a Lego water park for the morning heat and to Motiongate for the afternoon. These parks are very new and are located quite outside Dubai, plus we went on Monday, so they were almost empty. There were no queues at all! Thus doing two parks in a day was perfectly manageable.

Lego water park is excellent for the kids like Tilius and Elin as the maximum height limit for the rides was 107cm so Elin could join us on all the rides and they were neither too childish nor too thrilling. Just perfect!

Then it was time for Motiongate. It is an amusement park with the same concept as Disneyland just based on different cartoon characters – Smurfs, Hotel Transylvania, Kung-fu panda, Madagascar, Shrek, just to name few. The park is great with one problem – it is only partly open because its construction has not finished yet. We knew of this before going from various reviews so it was not a surprise, but still rather upsetting, because even some finished rides were not open. The good side is that there were almost no people so we did not have to queue for any of the rides (that were open) and could go round and round. The shows were also nice and we met some characters. So overall it was an exciting day and the number of rides open still made it worth the visit.

We did not plan to go to any other water park but looking to buy tickets to Ferrari world I’ve noticed that the price difference for going just to Ferrari and to go to it together with its sister waterpark is only 5 euros so of course we bought a combined ticket for both. The number of people we met in Yas Waterworld is incomparable to Lego park. There were long queues for every slide, but the slides, admittedly, were much more fun. Well, it is a big water park for the whole family with older kids. Elin was upset as she was not allowed to go on most of the slides.

What can be said about Ferrari world? It is a park for the Ferrari and for thrill lovers. While our boys (especially the big one) were very excited to go there, Tilius finally concluded that he needs to come back after few years, once he will reach the required height limit (which is either 130cm or 150cm). But there were still some rides that our explorers could join, mostly 3D or 5D motion rides, and overall they loved the place.

Besides these amusement parks we also spent a very nice morning in Sharjah (city neighbouring Dubai) Discovery centre. It is a big educational playground divided in several thematic areas, such as construction site with cranes and soft bricks, human body with optical and sound experiments, sport zone to play football or try wheelchair basketball, driving school, etc. It was a great fun for our little explorers! And unlike other parks, it was really very cheap. Plus it was quite empty – there were no more than other three more families besides us.

The list of the places that we did not go but would have loved to is much longer than the text above. So we do not exclude visiting UAE again, even if we try to go every time to a different country because there so many new places to discover. But there are still many places to discover in Dubai too.

Fitting the world in a suitcase

Before the pleasure of every trip I have to suffer the torture of packing. I believe that every mother knows how difficult it is to fit half of the house in a suitcase so that the inner ‘what if?’ is calm and the overweight charges are avoided.  On the other hand, I guess everyone would like to travel ‘light’, avoid endless packing and unpacking when changing hotels or being obliged to hire a bigger car as the economy one has too little trunk for all the stuff.

I wonder what your packing ‘habits’ are? As for me, over the time I have learned to pack into two suitcases, one small and one medium, all the family and it is regardless of how far and for how long we go (keeping in mind that normally we go warm places). But travelling light needs thorough preparation and reflection. My trick is to put everything I intend to take on the floor or on the bed, so that I can have an overview of how many things I plan to bring along. This usually makes me realise that there are a lot, too many, things on the bed. Then I start counting: five t-shirts, four dresses, two blouses… This is enough to change clothes every day for 11 days! But frankly, do I need to change my outfit every day (and I will not be walking the red carpet in Cannes)? Therefore, I think it is enough to pack one outfit for two days with some extra for emergencies. Basically for a trip of one week it is enough to take five combinations of clothes and for any longer trip 7-8 outfits will do. For the longer trips instead of more clothes I take detergent tablets (buying detergent at the place results in getting huge box for just one washing).

Another important trick is to be realistic about what you will be doing during the trip. If the holidays bring you to Bali you will not, believe it, you will not need two pairs of jeans and three sweaters. And there is no ‘what if’! It is also highly unlikely that you will need an evening dress and stilettos, especially if you do not even wear them at home. Better leave some space in your luggage and profit from an occasion to do a little shopping if it finally appears that you are invited to a king’s palace.

Finally, when travelling with kids do not forget to bring along a small piece of ‘home’. Our hand luggage always includes two small cushions and kids’ bed toys. This way they feel a little bit like at home when sleeping in the plain or in a hotel. We also bring for kids one or two of their favourite books to read before the bed and some pencils with paper for them to draw. They can also pack some toys they want to have but the rule is that all these things shall fit into one backpack and shall not contain the things they would really hate losing.

At the end of the day, the only three things you shall not forget are the passports, the credit card and the curiosity to explore. Soon you will realise you don’t need anything else.

Dunes beyond skyscrapers

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A typical reaction to the fact that we went to Emirates for holidays was “Is there anything worth seeing or doing?” Well, it depends on what you are looking for.

I do not argue that Dubai indeed has many skyscrapers, many shopping malls and many Russians. But it does not stop there. All these skyscrapers and shopping malls were not there 50 years ago, but people lived there, they had traditions, culture, food and dunes with the sea. Leave the city and you will be faced with the infinity of the sand on the one side and with the endless sea on the other. Just too many visitors never leave their hotel’s beach club. On the other hand Emirates (and not only Dubai) are packed with the attractions for kids that could keep you busy for weeks. It is true kids’ paradise (but I will write about this next time).

A good place to learn about the country and its past is Al Ain (an oasis city that shall be on everyone’s ‘must see’ list!). A trip to a different country starts the moment you leave Dubai’s or Abu Dhabi’s high-rises behind. All you can see around is sand – yellow, orange, red, and an occasional roaming camel. If not the modern highway you could imagine yourself to be an explorer on the back of the camel crossing the Empty Quarter. The trip from any of the two megalopolises is only a bit more than an hour so could be done as a day tour, but I think that there are a lot of things to see making it worth to spend in Al Ain at least few days. One shall also consider that the place is inland that makes it very hot (our car showed 43 degrees).

During our two day visit we saw Al Ain palace museum – the home of Sheikh Zayed, the founder of UAE; Al Jahili fort – the most historic building in UAE, Al Ain national museum that holds artefacts from surrounding archaeological sites and shows a very interesting short movie about the history of the oasis. The big attraction for kids was a visit to camel market where we saw hundreds of different camels, small and big, old and babies. We just forgot to ask how much they costJ. When entering Al Ain oasis you understand why this place was of such an importance as the shades of the palms make a nice retreat from the midday heat. Finally we drove all the way up to Jabel Hafeet, but frankly, did not find it somehow extraordinary. Maybe because the views were not clear as the air was hazy. But there is a nice playground for kids at the top so they did not complain about the drive.

As the trip was too short and the days were too hot we had no time to visit Al Ain zoo which is apparently very nice and the attempt to explore Hili archaeological park failed as it was closed without any apparent reason. But maybe even better – now we have a reason to come back.