Family Planning: summer vacation

When I plan trips, particularly family vacations, I write notes on scraps of paper, on my computer and  on my iPhone. MiniTime offers a way to plan family vacations and keep track of all the info.

This new website, with smartphone and tablet versions in the works, has both trip tips by family travel writer Suzanne Rowan Kelleher and custom itineraries the vacationing family can use, both as a planning tool and as a vacation diary.

I love the drag and drop feature of the itineraries; if you see attractions you want to visit or restaurants where you want to eat, you just add them to your trip planner.

The site offers personalized recommendations based on ages of your kids. It goes from infant to teen (17), and if you have kids in different categories, it offers the full range of attractions.

You can also book kid-friendly hotels directly from the website, with family-friendly amenities like roll-away beds, cribs, pools and microwaves in rooms noted. You can also sort hotels by amenities that your family wants, like a fridge in the room.

Foursquare provides restaurant suggestions, but you can’t yet sort by things like vegetarian food or availability of high chairs.

I was able to create an itinerary for my upcoming trip to Portland, Oregon, but planning one for Louisville, Kentucky, was incomplete. MiniTime uses crowd sourced info and started with top destinations; as the site grows and more reader feedback is added, planning trips outside major tourist destinations will grow easier.

For now, I am happy to recycle all those scraps of paper.

Vegetarian in Vermont: family friendly dining

The Common Ground Café, in Brattleboro, Vermont, was a Mecca for vegetarians. On any trip to Vermont, whether for skiing or biking, we detoured slightly off I-91 for interesting soups and sandwiches. Sadly, The Common Ground closed, but vegetarians can still eat well in the Green State.

For breakfast, The Hatchery, in Ludlow, has a vegan tofu scramble with avocado and salsa, that fuels you for the day’s activities. The Hatchery is only open for breakfast and lunch; lunch vegetarian choices include a grilled vegetable sandwich with spinach, mushrooms and feta, a tofu wrap with cilantro pesto and the ‘asparagui,’ with grilled asparagus, cheddar cheese, arugula and roasted peppers. On our recent family ski trip to Okemo, we had planned to have dinner one night at Harry’s Café, about 5 miles down the road from the resort. Unfortunately, we didn’t make reservations in advance and couldn’t get a table until 8:30. So this vegetarian-friendly restaurant, with a Thai night on Thursdays (and a few Thai items on the regular menu) will have to wait for another trip. Fortunately, Ludlow, a quintessential New England ski town, has other vegetarian and family friendly choices. The Cool Moose Café bills itself as a steakhouse, but t has great veggie burgers. The Bleu Moose & shrooms burger (also available in beef or chicken) has bleu cheese and mushrooms, and the tasty jacked up Philly burger includes jack cheese and cooked peppers and onions. Both are “2 napkin’ meals. There are several fish entrees, a roasted Portobello entrée and a hearty salad with local goat cheese, good greens and cranberries. Kid meals include a smaller burger, pizza and salad. Cool Moose also has a large selection of local craft beers. Coleman Brook Tavern, in the Jackson Gore Inn, is a farm to table restaurant with a few vegetarian choices. The pappardelle was loaded with fennel, roasted peppers and white beans in a wild mushroom broth. There is a filling roasted beet salad with Vermont chevre and pumpkin seeds, a Portobello strudel that works as a light appetizer and a delicious baked cheese stuffed with maple pumpkin butter and ginger-butternut squash. There’s an extensive and quite pricey wine list, great martinis and lots of single malt scotch to sip. Best of all, when you stay at the Inn, you can simply take the elevator to your room.

I Spy: Road Trip Games & Giveaway

If I Spy is one of your favorite road trip games, then you need to book a trip to New York. Discovery Times Square has a new immersive exhibit, SPY: The Secret World of Espionage, that is the antidote to summer boredom.

Or fall or winter – the exhibit is in NYC through March 2013.

This is where you can see both high tech spy gear, like briefcase tricked out with an infrared camera, or low tech, but unique items. Kids may be particularly intrigued by the hollowed out rat that was used in ‘ dead drops’ to exchange information. The rat’s guts were replaced with classified info, and the body was Velcro-ed back together. But cats foiled the info exchange, thinking they’d found dinner.

The exhibit has artifacts like a collapsible WWII motorbike, that parachutists could use once they hit the ground, and a spy sub, used against the Germans, that employed German engineering.

Kids and adults can channel James Bond as they negotiate a laser field. My daughter was more Mr. Magoo, but she and her friend happily tried to avoid the lasers several times.

There is also a station where you can disguise your voice.

Tickets to the exhibit are rather expensive: $27 for adults; $19.40 for kids ages 4-12. But I am giving away 2 tickets to the exhibit. Just leave a comment with your favorite road trip game.