Tips for your Nice, France Family Holiday

Michelle CunninghamJune 28, 2016BloggingFAMILY HOLIDAY IN NICE FRANCE, FRANCE, TRAVEL WITH KIDS, TRAVEL WITH KIDSFAMILY HOLIDAY IN NICE FRANCE, VACATION WITH A BABY IN NICE FRANCE

How to travel around Nice with a baby during a Family Holiday Before traveling to Nice for my birthday, I did a bit of research to see just what I could expect while traveling with a baby. Not every city is easy to get around with a stroller and I…

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3 Cool Fireplaces in Amsterdam

My latest video for Amsterdam Calling is perfect for anyone in Amsterdam this winter. I explore three very interesting hangouts with pretty cool looking fireplaces.

Mr. Porter
Located in the W Amsterdam Hotel, Mr. Porter is very beautifully decorated in gold. The view over Dam Square is breathtaking. You can even relax in a rooftop pool! Food and drinks your thing? They have some amazing cocktails and are also known for having top notch steaks.

Pressroom
You’ll find Pressroom in the INK hotel. Relax in a cosy living type space in what was once a place where newspapers were made. Offers great drinks in a chill atmosphere.

5 & 33
Very hip decor with sculptures you won’t find anywhere else. 5 & 33 offers a spacious bar with a variety of cocktails and delicious popcorn to go with them.

Michelle Cunningham February 16, 2017 Bloggingamsterdam, VIDEO Read more >

Anniversary Gifts Ideas

February is the month for love and romance. This is especially true for Lee and I as it’s the month of our wedding anniversary. Having a young baby at home makes it difficult for me to shop in person. So, I do a lot of my shopping online. And while…

Michelle Cunningham February 11, 2017 Blogging Read more >

A Better Alternative to Standard Postcards

One of the best things about traveling is being able to share those memories with the people that you care about. Most people just upload and share their photos without doing anything special to them. This can result in some pretty crap quality pictures. But what if I told you that I found a website that helps turn those boring snapshots into something personalized and really cool?

My Postcard

Recently I came across the website My Postcard . On this website you can design your own photo postcards to share online or by snail mail. With other 10,000 templates to choose from you can rest assured that your end result is going to be something unique. Say goodbye to boring photos and hello to your next viral picture.

Personally I’m a fan of doing things the old fashioned way. There is something personal and special about doing things by hand. Lee and I send our parents postcards from our travel destinations around the world. Now I’ve come across an even cooler way to do that with My Postcard. Here instead of buying some generic postcard from a corner store, I can upload a picture of myself with the baby and my husband and send this to our parents. They love being able to see us on our foreign travels rather than the standard touristy postcards that they would otherwise receive.

There’s an app for that

If you’re like me, then you probably leave your laptop in the hotel room. But I bet you always have your smart phone handy, right? My Postcard is available in the App Store and Google Play as a free app. It’s even already had an amazing one million downloads!

Easy to set up and use

Some websites are not very user friendly and can make trying to use them for the first time super complicated. I did not find this to be the case with My Postcard. They make it very intuitive and simple. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Step 1. Select a Product. This can be a postcard, greeting card, or photo prints.

Step 2. Choose your style and customize. During this step you can add your pictures, frames, and personal notes.

Step 3. Order and pay. You can choose Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, or American Express as your payment methods. Then you just send your finished masterpiece anywhere you would like worldwide.

Final Thoughts

It’s not often that I get so excited about a new product or service but I just love My Postcard. They have allowed me to create extraordinary postcards to send to our friends and family of special moments in our lives. Has anyone else used them? I’d love to hear about your experience!

Michelle Cunningham February 11, 2017 BloggingSPONSORED Read more >

Family Weekend Getaway to Winterberg Germany

So after the snowboarding disaster that was our trip to ŠPINDLERŮV MLÝN when we got invited by friends to go snowboarding in Winterberg, we jumped at the chance. It ended up being a fantastic family weekend getaway. Winterberg is a fantastic destination for anyone looking for somewhere to snowboard or ski with the family that isn’t far from Amsterdam.

Why Winterberg?

It’s close to Amsterdam

Winterberg is only about a 4 hour drive from Amsterdam. While there are also options to take the train or a bus, we chose to rent a car and drive. This way we didn’t have to haul all of our luggage and a baby. Plus, the little one travels better in a car seat then she does on a bus or train. Plus this meant that we could arrive and leave when we wanted and we were able to arrive directly at our hotel rather than having to get there from a bus stop or train station. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, now that we are traveling with a child I tend to prioritize convenience over cost and I don’t regret that decision at all.

Winterberg offers babysitting

While there are no babysitting agencies in Winterberg, there are babysitters available. In order to get the list of babysitters, you’ll need to email the Winterberg Tourism Office at info@winterberg.de and they will send you a list of people that are available to babysit. You will have to individually call the sitters to find one that can speak your language if you don’t speak German (not all of the sitters speak English) and that is available during your trip. We found a lovely sitter for our little one so we were able to snowboard worry free.

Winterberg has well connected slopes.

The hotel we stayed at was a ski-in/ shi-out hotel. This was perfect since we could then just walk to the slopes rather than having to drive our rental car and find parking. What I found even better was how interconnected the slopes were. There were plenty of beginner and intermediate slopes and we could take them all around the city. Instead of being stuck in one area or having to drive to get to other slopes, we had a ton of options to explore by just using the ski lifts.

Final Thoughts on Winterberg

Lee and I had a fantastic weekend snowboarding in Winterberg, Germany. It is close enough to Amsterdam that you can do it as a day trip or a weekend getaway. Plus, once you’re in Winterberg, there is plenty of trail for beginners to explore. Winterberg is something I highly recommend for families looking for somewhere easy to get to from Amsterdam for a family winter vacation getaway.

Michelle Cunningham February 2, 2017 BloggingGERMANY Read more >

When the Hotel Ruins your Vacation Plans

So when a hotel offers 24/7 babysitting service, one could reasonably assume that at least one day during our week long stay that we could in fact get a babysitter. Maybe my first clue should have been when we called Hotel Olympie to verify that they would have a sitter for us and they gave us a number to try to arrange it ourselves. Despite the advertisement of English speaking babysitters, the lady on the phone did not speak English. Fail number 1. But since the year before Hotel Olympie had done a wonderful job of finding us a babysitter over the Christmas break, I figured that once we were there in person, we could get this all sorted out. Boy was I wrong.

The plan for the trip was to do a couple of days of snowboarding and a couple of days of things with the baby. This way my husband and I could spend some quality time alone and as a family. So when we arrived at the hotel we inquired in person about the babysitting. The staff at the hotel pointed to this sign with the same number that I had called before. Apparently their 24/7 babysitting did not in fact exist at all during our weeklong stay. The sign was a lie. There was no one to watch our daughter. And this being a ski and snowboarding town meant that our options for things to do with an infant were limited.

Making the most of a ruined holiday

Maybe it sounds dramatic, but when you are looking forward to a family vacation for months in advance, travel very far to get there, and put good money down for it to happen when something this royal gets screwed up it can leave even the best of us bitter.

It was a beautiful scene of a mountain covered in snow. Ideal for Christmas, right? Perfect conditions to snowboard. In fact, from our window overlooking one of Spindleruv Mlyn’s ski trails we were in fact able to watch people do just that. Without a babysitter though, we had to find other things to do during our family holiday.

Outside of our hotel was a small road that I was able to take the baby sledding on. This was one of the few things to do directly in the vicinity of the hotel with a baby. Fun for about half an hour at a time and of course, only during the daylight hours.

A majority of our time was spent in the children’s corner of the hotel. Thank goodness they had this area set up with kids toys for the little one to play with. Without a car and with the hotel not being located in the downtown area of the city, traveling in Spindleruv Mlyn is not the most convenient during the winter. It is possible to walk down the mountain and into town from the hotel. But, there are no sidewalks to do this so you are left to take your chance on the icy, snow covered roadways in traffic.

We did take one afternoon as a family to go to the water park. Here they had a salt cave as well as water slides to enjoy. If you’re looking for things to do with the family in Spindleruv Mlyn that doesn’t involve skiing or snowboarding, then this is something that I can recommend.

Lesson that I learned

Maybe it was a bit of the sunken cost fallacy, or the fact that the year before we had such a good trip that lead me to believe that the hotel would come through for us. But unfortunately our snowboarding trip turned into a family vacation spent mostly at our hotel since there are very few things to do with a baby in Spindleruv Mlyn. While it was not the ideal way to spend our Christmas vacation, it did solidify one thing in my mind. Next year, we will be going somewhere entirely different for our annual family winter vacation.

Michelle Cunningham January 12, 2017 BloggingCZECH REPUBLIC Read more >