Germany – Hotels

So these thoughts don’t have much to do with family travels, but have none-the-less been swirling around my head since a chance encounter at Pike Place Market. I live in Seattle and unlike the throngs of folks who fill the popular Pike Place Market, I actually shop there on a regular basis for groceries and…

The problem: They fight! It is not easy to corral 3 boys, which is frequently necessary when traveling. There are always waits for boardings, check-ins, subways, tables, and much more. And when the boys are corralled, they use tactics like a pinch or prod to annoy one another for entertainment, or for revenge from some…

Please and thank you are the most important foreign language words to learn when traveling; crucial for civil discourse. But there’s one word we did not expect to need to know: Rechnung. In Germany last summer, most service employees at restaurants and cafes helped us with their excellent command of English. But still we practiced…

A bus tour was not included on our London agenda years ago because they are expensive, at least for our tight budget. But we splurged last summer, taking a live-guide bus tour of Munich, and a few days later, a recorded-audio bus tour of Berlin. Now that we’ve experienced those tours in Germany, we will…

My working knowledge of geography is limited — in school I’d memorize enough to get an ‘A’ on the test, then let it go. Having 3 boys who seem to soak up country, city, mountain, and water body names like sponges, though, has increased my interest in the subject. And now, searching for hotel family…

Declared as “the most expensive city in Germany” on wikitravel.org, Munich is not cheap to visit. Affordable Europe leader Rick Steves says you can comfortably eat and sleep there for $100 per person per day, and lonelyplanet.com travelers report spending 50 to 70 Euros per person per day. Based on these figures noted by budget…

We prepared thoroughly for our dream vacation to Germany last summer. Gathered over a period of months: travel books, passports, Google maps, email hotel confirmations, fanny packs, and of course, International Plug Adapters for all the electronics. We knew that nearly every day we’d need to charge the laptop, the digital camera, the second digital…

Notice the logo used for this blog and our website, sleeps5.com. The image is of a family of ducks on their way. Even before Holly and I constructed our website we consistently utilized a duckling analogy to describe the image of traversing busy sidewalks in big cities with 3 children. You know – the mama…