It's getting hot in here!

No one is shocked that the Middle East is hot, right?  And so any post on the weather is going to be trite by definition, but humor me anyway, okay?  Just this once!  And then I promise I won't spend another whole post on the weather ever again.  Done!

While we were off enjoying the cool German spring, the weather here in Qatar changed dramatically. Our spring of balmy days and cool nights was chased away by a thick, unforgiving, often impenetrable HEAT that appears to be here to stay, at least until next winter.  And by until winter, I mean through next November or so. Which means we in nuestra casa nueva are doing a fair bit of readjusting.

• Our first day back, J ended up dizzy and lightheaded at school, followed by "pins and needles" all over his body.  Umm, I may be able to recognize the signs of dehydration but he certainly wasn't.  So now we spend our days discussing water intake, reminding ourselves to drink, counting the number of water bottles or cups we've had, etc.   When the outdoor temperature doesn't dip much below 95 during the day, all the water in your system evaporates much more quickly than we are used to, particularly when any previous temperatures that high were always accompanied by equally high humidity, in our experience.  Humidity levels here have flatlined at zero, and it's actually possible to feel the moisture leaving your body when you step outside in the middle of the day...
• so we don't step outside much.  Before we left for spring break, the boys had been enjoying playing and riding bikes outside every afternoon and evening.  Now that is pretty much impossible.  It's just too hot for any strenuous activity at all and the sun is too punishing to spend any time out of the shade.  Our only options are going to the pool (which, finally, is the right temperature for the climate, thankfully), waiting until sunset to go outside (which happens only a half hour or so before bedtime most nights), or visiting one of the innumerable and yet expensive indoor play areas (neon and noise-filled caverns of manufactured fun)...
• which has led me to sign the boys up for swim lessons yet again.  One of these days (most likely after we get back from our summer hiatus), I am going to have to spring for private, intensive, frequent lessons so I can feel more comfortable living next to the largest pool in Doha but for the time being, weekly group lessons at our company's rec center will have to do, though J had a complete freak out at his first lesson and will probably rebel and not go again.  E loved his, so at least one of them will be safe.  We did find out that J can stand on his feet with his head above water for almost two-thirds of the pool, so there's that...
• and speaking of our hiatus, I have recently learned that school will be starting two weeks later in the fall than we had expected (don't even get me started on the...fluidity of the academic year calendars here--that's a whole other post!), so now we will be spending longer in the US of A than we had originally planned, all in the hopes of avoiding as much of the endless summer heat here as possible.

And ohmygoodnessgracious, is the summer heat going to be...HOT.  Already, in April, it's been up to 106 and 108 degrees Fahrenheit (which is 42 degrees and more Celsius, I have trouble converting).  I remember a long time ago, during one of the wars in Iraq, the news that the soldiers were tromping around in 135 degree weather seemed completely unreal, like something out of a really bad fairy tale.  And yet...here I am, and it suddenly feels oh so real!  And kind of scary!  I see long hours of air-conditioning in our future.  Don't worry, I have already contributed to more than my fare share of environmental decline and global warming by being employed by an oil economy and driving an SUV and having all my food imported from a gazillion miles away, so continual air-conditioning is just the icing on that cake.

Sigh.  We are going to have to change our lives a bit more it seems, just when we were starting to feel a teeny, tiny bit settled.  Water bottles for all, charts to encourage fluids, lots and lots of cool meals (there will be many salads in our futures, I believe), and spending much time indoors and at the pool in the evenings.  We have gone several times just after dinner (or during, we have had pizza at the pool!) and it's been so very nice once the shadows cover the pool and the sun subsides a bit.  Life in the desert; full of surprises and changes!

Thoughts on packing

Because we are planning on doing more of these trips, as well as more adventuresome getaways, I was packing this time around with an eye on how little we could actually bring and still get away with it.  My goal is to get us all down to one carry-on each for these trips, and we are fairly close right now, even taking into account that we packed for cold weather and a week's worth of clothes with no washing machine availability, though most likely neither of those criteria will apply for many of our trips.  I got both the boys together into two packing cubes, one large and one medium (I am using these packing cubes as my measuring stick for packing and for buying travel backpacks for all of us).  The husband and I were each in one large and one medium packing cube, but, as I say, I could do just one large if we weren't traveling into colder weather and were able to wash our clothes.  Either way, I'm carry-on ready.  The husband and I are going to get relatively small 40-45 liter travel backpacks, and the boys are going to get 25 liter packs, which will never be all the way full until they are quite a bit older.  Which means that if we each had to carry one of the boys' packs for some reason, we would still be at 65ish liters, the capacity of a smaller but serious trekking/backpacking pack.  We want to be extremely mobile.  Less stuff to carry, less stuff to keep track of, more fun!

This trip has made me consider bringing a few new essentials with us on our next trip and reinforced my thoughts about some of the items I did bring.  Because we were not planning on doing laundry, I didn't bring any laundry detergent.  Big mistake; HUGE!  I brought an extra pair of pajamas for E in case of accident, which we did use, but I should have brought many more t-shirts for him OR some detergent.  That kid just seems to run into dirt wherever he goes!  As it was, I ended up doing laundry at our last stop and had to buy some detergent for ONE load.  Blah!  Never again.

I also thought about bringing at least one light-blocking curtain panel (I have a gazillion knocking around our house since our last place had so many windows and this place already has blocking curtains hung), but I decided not to in the end.  Another big mistake!  Just one panel would have been helpful in every hotel, particularly given the fact that sunset didn't happen until 8:30pm, so we were always putting the boys to bed while it was still light out since we were trying to maintain a somewhat normal schedule given that Germany has only a one hour time difference from Doha.

I brought my usual lightweight bag that doubles as a purse, but I should also have brought a collapsible shopping bag.  How did I forget that bags cost extra in Europe?  So silly; I used to shop at Germany-based Aldi in Cleveland, for crying out loud.  I know the drill!  Just one capacious shopping bag would have been so useful in so many different circumstances, not least when we were buying groceries for breakfasts in our hotel rooms or carting our laundry around.

This trip I brought along a new "travel" purse I impulse-bought last month, but now I don't think I will leave home without it, especially if I can find a slash-proof strap to pair with it.  It's a small pouch with a flap-opening that is just wide enough across to fit my iPad in the outside pocket, with a gazillion other inside and outside pockets, some of them "hidden" and completely inaccessible except by me, some you can access without even opening the bag at all, some for pens, some for a phone, some with zippers...you get the idea!  I used it as a purse and passport holder every day while we traveled but also, most helpfully, as my onboard bag on the plane.  I stuck my few necessities, like head phones, gum, my book, and tissues in this little bag, and it took up almost no space under the seat in front of me and left my much larger carry-on in the overhead bin.  Then the purse fit right back into my carry-on when we disembarked.  Genius!

One thing I am ecstatic we brought was melatonin!  As I said, the light lingered so long every night, we were grateful to be able to keep the kids on a normal schedule despite the (very lovely) light with the help of our little purple pills!

Our battery-operated little clock radio proved so essential this trip for all of us (after years of listening to the kids' sounds on a baby monitor, I sleep better with white noise, too), I am wondering if I should find an actual battery-operated noisemaker that is slightly more robust and uses fewer batteries for the future.  Hmmm...I will look into my options and we shall see.

German Vacation: Part 4

The morning we left Heidelberg, we traveled to Opel Zoo in a little town called Kronberg Im Taunus.  We had heard great things about this zoo, and even though we had already visited the zoo in Frankfurt, my audience members love their animals!  So we went to see another zoo, and we were not disappointed.

This zoo is incredible!  It's built on a hill, so there is a LOT of walking involved which actually comes close to hiking, but the place is so beautifully designed you don't even notice until the end of the day when you realize how tired you are.  The zoo also operates on a mixed habitat principle, so the animals are mixed in together instead of separated by species and surrounded by fences covered in natural plants with often just a few points for the viewer to see the animals clearly, so it feels a lot wilder than most other zoos.  J even got stuck by a thorn trying to squeeze in to get a closer look at the leopards!  They also sell bags of carrots at the entrance and you are encouraged to feed all the animals.  The kids and the animals love it!

I enjoyed the diversity of animals and the chances to get very, very close to them, but the highlight for the kids was definitely the giant playground we discovered in the middle of the zoo.  Somehow the English version of the website never even mentioned this part of the place and yet it turned out to be the kids' favorite part.  The playground was filled with tall slides, giant ropes-course like climbing nets, all sorts of unique merry-go-round-esque rides, a huge ball pit, trampolines, and, best of all, a zip line just the right size for the boys.  Check out the wild pictures below!  It was just as dangerous as it seems; actually, the whole place was on the verge of being on a banned list in the States, but in Germany the kids were whooping it up unsupervised.  There were all kinds of school groups who arrived when we did and swarmed the place like locusts, but they were mostly gone by the time we got there so the boys had the run of the place.  They would have spent the entire day there if we had let them.  (Did I mention that many of these school groups came from a music school and would spontaneously burst into song accompanied by teachers on guitars throughout the day?  Very surreal!)  Conveniently, the playground was also situated in between three food places, so we had a lunch of bratwurst, rindwurst, and bockwurst mit brotchen und pommes, all sorts of sausages with bread and fries, our favorite meal on our unofficial pork tour of Germany.  We passed up the German specialty, a waldmeister flavored slushy, though we did have that at our last zoo in Frankfurt, where we discovered that the uber-sweet "wild flower" flavor is beloved in Germany.  Who knew?  At Opel Zoo, we loved the food, the animals, the rides, the whole day.  I highly, highly recommend that everyone who is in the area go visit Opel Zoo; you will NOT be sorry!

German Vacation: Part 3

The day after my birthday we left Frankfurt and headed to Heidelberg to find a castle.  It took us longer to do than we had hoped (how do you miss a huge castle on a hill?  who knows?!) but when we got there, the castle was impressive and worth the wait.  We began with an hour long tour that was mostly successful, though the guide had a heavy accent and didn't really adjust his patter for kids, but they were troopers until the very end, which was about as good as we could have hoped.  The history of the palace was fascinating, really, so many owners and so many different architectural styles and, in the end, so much destruction and waste that can't be restored.  A shame really, but beautiful to see all the same.  Also at the palace are two other sites: a GIANT wooden drum, or tun as they call it here, built to store and dispense a LOT of wine, because, why not?  And the German pharmacy museum, which we had to visit, of course.  It was very well done and the husband loved describing how all the apparatuses (apparati?) worked to the kids and they loved seeing the stuffed alligators hanging from the ceilings, because who wouldn't?  After all that madness, we took a modern funicular ride up to a wooden funicular which we rod even farther up, up, and UP until we were almost going straight up a vertical slope, or so it seemed.  Fun but a little terrifying.  The view from the top of the mountain was spectacular, though it was MUCH colder up there so we didn't stay long.  Then we took the funicular all the way down for lunch in the pedestrian area of town (the BEST beef goulash with spaetzel I have EVER eaten, by the way) and wandered around for a bit, succumbing and buying the boys wooden swords as souvenirs (because this trip was all about castles, after all).

German Vacation: Part 2

On our second full day in Germany, we took a cruise up the Rhine River from a point on the river just west of Wiesbaden upstream to St. Goar.  After a few false starts at a station that wasn't actually operating for the season yet, we made our way to another station and a different cruise line and got underway.  It was a lovely day, a little chilly in the morning, pleasant in the afternoon, and we all thoroughly enjoyed our relaxing time on the water.  Along the way, we say multiple castles and several monuments, as well as a few historically significant buildings and then we had (and underwhelming) lunch in St. Goar before taking the boat back down stream.  The boat explained the sites we were seeing in 6 languages so we didn't miss a beat.  We all stayed up on the open top deck but we could have eaten downstairs in the fully equipped dining room and there was always someone around offering us drinks if we wanted them.  We brought our own snacks, of course, and the boys had fun running around the deck, searching for the castles, and playing with the faux helm.

The cruise was longish, about 5 hours up and back, plus the drive to the station and back to our hotel, so we arrived back home in the late afternoon.  We had thought about going somewhere else when we got back but the boys were pretty tired and didn't even want to go out to get dinner, so we ate cheese and bread and snacks at the hotel room instead.  Still, it was a great day, as you can see!

The next day was full as well.  We began at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History, which was so much fun!  They have a huge dinosaur fossil collection as well as giant displays of stuffed animals, some of which we had never seen before.  There is also a working volcano display and a really great exhibit on the Grube Messel fossil site in Germany, a UNESCO world natural heritage site which has yielded a ton of interesting information about the past.  The boys were in heaven with the dinosaurs and all the animals, running from one display to the next, yelling out "Look, it's a moa!"  or "Mom, did you see the different kinds of kiwis?"  They had a great time!

German Vacation: Part 1

Our flight to Germany was so uneventful I almost don't have anything to say about it...which is freaking AWESOME!  We have reached a wonderful stage in which the boys are close to self-sufficient in the air, especially since we give them unlimited iPad time while flying....Why yes, we are those parents!  And because we are those parents, I actually saw some movies myself from the past year, we all enjoyed our meals and snacks, and we only spilled one cup of Sprite into one tennis shoe and it was dry by the next day!  Huzzah!  E even ate both his and J's helpings of artichoke salad, because that's just the kind of eater he is!

Upon landing and after getting our rental car (because of a mix-up regarding insurance and what have you, we ended up renting a BMW 3 series, thereby fulfilling one of the items on the husband's bucket list...if he had one of those, which he doesn't, but if he did, driving a BMW in Germany would definitely be on it!), we arrived at our hotel in Frankfurt...and discovered that "hotel" was a generous description!  In fact, it was actually a hostel.  Oops!  But, there were lots of pluses: the kids had bunk beds in our private room, which they loved; the location was perfect, which I loved; there was an Ikea furnished playroom downstairs, which was an added bonus; it was clean and bright and relatively quiet, despite the many youth in the youth hostel; there was free locked parking, which was necessary given the neighborhood...which leads us to the minuses, the biggest of which is that the room was HOT!  Apparently, budget hotels in Germany don't typically have air conditioning, which is fine if the windows (all of which open, unexpectedly) catch breezes, which they did in two of our hotels...but not in this one!  So we were a little warm for the first two nights until we found out they had fans available and we took two of the three they had available and slept much better and all was good in the room after that!

I'm sure we ate dinner somewhere that night...oh yes, we went to the shopping district of Frankfurt and ate at the Bull and Bear, sausages and huge salads and E had sushi from across the street because he really, really wanted it and what better to follow up artichokes than a California roll?  We also visited the Lego store and I had to seriously restrain myself from buying a huge bucket of loose Legos because they had some amazing pieces I have never seen before but I was able to resist!  Instead, the boys each got a key chain (E got a Superman mini figure; J got a penguin.  Not The Penguin, a cute little penguin made out of Legos.  These choices typify their personalities exactly, by the way!) and we picked up some breakfast groceries and played in a park by our car and then came back to our hotel and slept (a little fitfully, given the heat).

The next day, we started our fun vacation in earnest with a visit to the Frankfurt Zoo.  I have decided that the secret to vacation success is lowering expectations and knowing your audience.  My audience likes animals and misses the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo desperately, and they were in heaven!  They got up close (very, very close) to some animals, including a huge tiger and a very interested gorilla and were so excited I couldn't get any shots of them when they weren't moving, so forgive the blurriness!

After they zoo, we went on a ride on the Ebbelwei Express, an electric train that gives you apple wine or apple juice and pretzels as it winds through Frankfurt.  It was warm and picturesque and fun and great.  E and J passed out on the ride back because they were just worn out, but I'm pretty sure it was a happy sleep!

Dr. Suess week

A little later than the rest of the world, the boys celebrated Dr. Suess week before we left for Germany.  And for once I remembered to take pictures!  Well, at least I remembered for most of the week.  Sunday was red shirt/Thing 1 and Thing 2 day and I forgot to get a shot of them in their red shirts, but that wasn't all that exciting anyway, right?  Behold, the rest of the week!

Monday was silly sock day.  We purged all their "silly" socks before we left in favor of matching pairs in sensible brown, navy, grey, and white, so these I picked up from my new favorite department store, Ansar Gallery, a bizarre place sourced from Asia that happens to be on the way to school, where they stock a totally random assortment of clothes, accessories, and appliances, most of which is actually pretty cheap considering prices here.  I got a five pack of socks for 11 riyals, which is a little over $3.  Score!

Tuesday was backwards, forwards, mismatched, inside out day.  J's clothes are inside out and backwards, and the socks are doing double duty here.  E was clearly loving having his picture taken, as usual!  One of these tie dye shirts is courtesy of Aunt Melissa, sent to us a million years ago when she and her kids made some, and the other is courtesy of Auntie Lane, who dyed shirts with the boys while we were visiting Qatar last summer.

Wednesday was wear a wacky hat day.  E chose not to participate, but J is happily modeling one of my striped beach hats.

Thursday was the grand finale, come as your favorite book character, Dr. Suess or otherwise.  J wanted to be the Lorax (after choosing from a carefully curated set of Pinterest images of characters I thought I could swing given our limited resources here) and E wanted to be Superman, of course, even though I think we have exactly one Superman book.  Fortunately, E had Superman pajamas complete with a cape velcroed on back, but J's costume was more of a challenge.  I ended up painting a white cap orange using my trusty stash of poster paint brought from the States and then I found yellow feathers at the office supply store.  Because of course that's where they are sold.  Lucky thing I noted that they sold feathers there a month ago when I popped in to check the place out, huh?  E isn't smiling in any of these pictures, either, but that's because he was too busy humming the Superman theme just as loudly as he could!

I actually think these dress as your favorite character days are some sort of insidious plot to drive parents crazy.  Look, you have to come up with yet another costume and it's not even Halloween!  Bwahahahaha!  But the fact that it's vaguely (oh soo vaguely) related to reading means the guilt factor is high if you don't participate.  What, don't you support literature, reading in the schools, the ARTS??  Why yes, yes I do, I just don't support continuing art projects for me.  I graduated from elementary school, thank you, and I don't want to do another diorama, either!  My only consolation is knowing my own mother had to do this many more times than I ever will (her efforts turning my little brother into a sunflower for my sister's oral report on Kansas are legendary in my family lore, for instance), and this, too, shall pass!

On Vacation

Happy Birthday to me!

We're in Frankfurt right now, cavorting in Deutschland, so posts will be brief and/or intermittent until we get back, when I will regale you with tales of our travel adventures and the true story of my birthday abroad--I'm guessing sausage will be involved!

(One of the bonuses of living in the Middle East is that we have guards in our compound, so I don't have to be worried about broadcasting our whereabouts on the Internets!  Hooray!  Hopefully they will also water our plants while we're gone.)

The packing before the storm

I've written before, though probably not on this particular blog, about how much I like to make lists.  As my mother says, we are a list-making people!  Lists, lists, and more lists, and packing lists are my absolute favorite.  (I know, can I be any more of a geek?)  A few years ago, when J was still a baby, I finally started typing out my packing lists for trips and then opening up the list for the previous trip and editing and saving it again for the upcoming trip.  Doing this has made my packing so very much easier, I can't imagine why I didn't do it earlier!  I'm a very obsessive methodical packer, so having all the lists in one place makes me very happy!

Frankfurt's list was the first one in a long time that did not include any specifically baby or infant or toddler items.  Gone are the diapers and binkies, even the training pants, and I love how little we need to travel now.  We still bring sippy cups but only because I would rather use a cup with a lid on the plane than end up with a lap full of ice cold 7-Up (not that I have any personal experience with that).  We could just as easily use their water bottles if I could find all the lids for those.  And I'm a stickler for bringing children's Tylenol because my children have a sad habit of getting sick on vacations and Tylenol helps with a world of ills (including, ahem, drugging them on a plane if worst comes to worse, not that I have any personal experience with that, either).  And each child has a stuffed animal they sleep with, Moose and Baby Fox respectively, but that's about it as far as little kid items go.

NOW we bring lots of supplies for drawing, some little toys that would have been choking hazards not too long ago, card games, quite a few books as usual, and our electronics that double as toys in a pinch.  And our preparations are completely different now, too.  A few nights before we left, the husband and I attempted (and were finally marginally successful) downloading a few movies and cartoons onto our iPads as a back up for a faulty airplane entertainment system (I've heard too many horror stories not to do this now).  The husband also played a certain video game involving sharks that the boys love long enough to get the elusive Great White Shark, which will ensure that they stay entertained for as long as we let them play.

Under normal circumstances, our snack list would still be basically the same, but Qatari snack availability has changed our basic template.  We can still do carrot sticks and apples, but this time we are also including pretzels (because Goldfish are no longer a snack food but a premium indulgence), some strange but good crackers, gummy things (what, pray tell, is the world's love affair with all things gummy all about?  Here you have two choices only: gummy or chocolate.  Oh, and Mentos!), tic tacs, and Juicy Fruit, both of which E loves, these bizarre breadsticks you dip in chocolate that J loves, and perhaps Qatar's version of granola bars, which are basically gussied up rice krispy treats dipped in chocolate.  Healthy?  No.  Yummy?  The kids say so.  I am splurging on individually waxed cheeses because they are so good for traveling even though I had to grit my teeth while buying them. I bring many, MANY snacks, one could argue an excessive amount, but the key to happiness in flights is occupying the kids and food with many pieces and some sugar can be very helpful!

And because all quote-unquote travel bloggers with a capital T include lists of the favorite things they love to pack always and forever, I'll post mine here:

• Mead Five Star two pocket folder with stay put tabs.  These are strong, sturdy, poly-laminate folders in bright colors (mine current folder is green, of course).  I use to keep all travel docs organized and protected in my carry-on or purse.  Yes, I could keep all this info on my phone, but I'm very old school.
• Lightweight fabric bag.  I use this as a purse, a tote bag, a grocery bag, whatever I need it for while we travel.  It weighs nothing and isn't valuable or sentimental so if it gets ruined or lost I'm not put out and it expands to hold all my kids' ever-increasing stuff that seems to accumulate during a day of travel.
• Extra outfit in my carry-on.  EVERY time I forget to do this for both myself and the boys, I regret it.  This is a rule I introduced my husband to, and he now follows it religiously as well.  Whenever I start to think I might not do this, I remember my father's move to London a few years back when his clothes didn't arrive for a week!  
• A noise maker and extra batteries.  When I travel back to the States, we have one we leave there that we love.  But we also have a very small, battery-operated clock radio that we tune to static when we need it.  My kids now only sleep with the sound of the air-conditioning, but we all sleep so much better when there is some sort of white noise around, and hotels are inevitably loud when we stay in them.
• Headlamp or book light.  We have not graduated into staying in more than one room, which means we either all go to bed when the boys do, or we have something available to help us stay up a little longer.  Kindles or iPads or the like can illuminate themselves but aren't a lot of help when you want to read a good, old fashioned book or find your way through unfamiliar surroundings without waking up with little boys.
• Pass the Pigs Pig Party game.  This game requires no board and no set-up, makes no noise when you play it, and is easy enough that E could play it before he turned 3.  This particular version comes in its own zipper pouch and you can even fit another similar game in there if you want.  This trip I am including Greed in my Pass the Pigs pouch for double the fun!  Always, always carry something to while away waiting time in case the electronics fail!

There's more, but those are the tried and trues that come to mind today.  Back to packing!  I'll let you know how it all went on this little jaunt very soon!

Traveling the web

In getting ready for our trip to Frankfurt, I have been amazed anew at how many travel blogs there are out there and yet how rarely is any one of them comprehensive, even in the specific areas they are targeting, such as flying with infants or family tours of Europe or what have you.  In addition, I feel as if there is so very much repetition on these sites, particularly when it comes to family travel tricks of the trade.  Is what I want to see so hard to do?  I want a site with comprehensive coverage of a significant number of destinations, with an emphasis on family friendly locations, particularly those off the beaten path, along with the basics in family travel (gear recommendations, tips and tricks, packing lists, etc.) augmented by unique, out-of-the-ordinary discoveries for family travel.  Is that really so hard??

Apparently so, since no such site appeared during my endless and obsessive research, UNTIL the heavens opened and I stumbled upon Travel for Kids.

This site has it all: location guides covering destinations on six continents, recommendations for family hotels in many major cities, loads of travel tips concerning every phase of your potential trip, links to reputable family tour companies if you want someone else to do all the planning for you, reviews of helpful travel apps, and even information on passports and visas and a currency converter!  It's one stop shopping (especially if your destination is one of the ones for which they have a guide--and yes, there is a guide for Frankfurt--hooray!).  Best of all, they include picture and chapter book recommendations for every location they review!  GENIUS!  I love that idea!  (I would love it even more if I were in a place where I had libraries from which I could check out these books, but that's my problem, not theirs!)  We will definitely be visiting some of the places they have pointed us to on our German escapade and I will report back on how it all went, of course, but I feel that we are much better off for having been armed with all the resources available from Travel for Kids!

I did, finally, come across some other new (to me) travel ideas while I was doing my research.  For instance, one site recommended that I let my kids watch a DVD series called Travel With Kids (not the same) and while I found that the destinations with this series available were a bit limited, my search revealed that there are many travel DVD titles available to stream for free with Amazon Prime.  So I am going to watch those that visit Frankfurt and environs and get all sorts great ideas for our trip!

While looking for Frankfurt sites, I have also been thinking about gear for our future adventure trips, and one question that I have returned to is why haven't there been any major advancements in the area of money/passport concealment?  How can it be that one is still basically limited to the same uncomfortable and not particularly user-friendly money belts and neck pouches I used when I was backpacking in Europe many...ahem...some years ago?  Turns out, there HAVE been a few new ideas out there, but you really have to look hard to find some of them.  P-cubed Pick-Pocket Proof Pants seem very promising and have been getting all sorts of positive reviews like this one from my very favorite travel gear review site ever, Practical Travel Gear.  But my favorite new product is the Sholdit, a patent-pending infinity scarf with a secret zipper pocket inside to stow your money or your passport or both (though I really hate the name!).  SUCH a good idea!  It's available directly from the Sholdit site or through Travelsmith or Amazon but shhhhhh, I wonder if I could make one of these myself...and by I, I mean my mother, of course, because she is much better at that sort of thing, i.e. sewing, than I am!