Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that our family loves animals.  So it should come as no surprise that we’ve visited a petting zoo or two in our travels.

The Going Places blog at Cookiemag.com has a cool list of their Top 5 Petting Zoos today.

Which got me thinking.

If there’s anything we like better than visiting petting zoos, it’s staying at hotels with actual petting zoos on the premises.  Usually it’s just goats, but frankly we’re pretty easy to please.

Looking for an up-close-with-animals vacation experience?  Consider these five hotels.

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1. Maritim Jolie Ville Luxor Island Resort

Where: Luxor, Egypt overlooking the Nile (so not a day trip, obviously).

Critters: A resident camel named Cleo and baby crocodiles.

TSM says: Um, pet at your own risk.

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2. Rosse Posse Acres

Where: An hour outside of Portland, Oregon.

Critters:An entire herd of elk, turkeys, bunnies, miniature goats, and a baby wallaby.

TSM says: A wallaby? Bring it on!

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3. The Wildflower Inn

Where: Lyndonville, Vermont

Critters: Sheep, miniature horse, a calf, a donkey.

TSM says: Also, the Ben and Jerry’s factory is moments away.

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4. The Pennard Hill Farm Estate

Where: Not far from Bath in Somerset, England.  Sort of near Stonehenge.

Critters: Dogs, cats, lambs, chickens, and ponies.

TSM says: Seriously the perfect parent/child accommodations compromise.

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5. Safari West

Where: Calistoga, California.  Close to Napa Valley.

Critters: Watusi cattle, ostriches, ibex, and many more.

TSM says: Once on a safari jeep tour here, a giraffe licked my husband’s stinky sandals for 10 minutes while the kids and I laughed so hard we almost split our spleens.

A few weeks ago, I received a friendly PR email asking me if I would like to review a lightweight, acrylic travel shawl.  I love free stuff, so naturally I perked right up.  But when I discovered the product was called the “Shoul”,  I just about laughed coffee out my nose.

Some words are just inherently funny, and “Shoul” is obviously one of them.

Well, it turns out the joke’s on me for two reasons:

1. Shoul rhymes with “soul” not “owl”.  Duh.
2. I really like my Shoul.

I wore it last weekend (northern California evenings are notoriously chilly, even during heatwaves), and here are my findings:

1. The Shoul is warm. I was dubious at first, because it is so darned light.  But once I tucked my arms under the front flaps (for lack of a better word), I was nice and toasty.
2. The Shoul is cute. Especially with long, lean jeans and heels.  But then, what doesn’t look better with long, lean jeans and heels?  Except maybe hospital robes.  And swim goggles.
3. The Shoul is portable. I test-jammed it into my purse, drove to San Francisco for dinner, and pulled it out an hour later with absolutely no ill effects.
4. The Shoul stays put. At least it did in some seriously gusty San Francisco fog.

Shouls are available at www.theshoul.com in 5 colors for $39.  Travel Savvy Mom readers can get 15% off during the month of September by entering the coupon code TSMSHO at checkout.

But wait, there’s more!

We’ve got a black Shoul to give away (no, it’s not the one I jammed in purse).  To win, send an email to jamie@travelsavvymom.com with the word “Shoul” as the subject by midnight Sunday.  We’ll choose a winner at random.  U.S. only please.

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Need a family friendly place to lay your head in San Francisco?  Sure you do.  And a warm one too.  Try these:

Argonaut Hotel
Columbus Motor Inn
Best Western Hotel Tomo

We’ve been absolutely itching to post about the Happiest Place on Earth, but were waiting for exactly the right writer to come along.  And now she has.

Debbie Abrams Kaplan is a journalist, mom of two, and founder Frisco Kids—an online guide to kid-friendly events and trips around the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

She’s new to Travel Savvy Mom, and boy does she ever fit right in.   Here are a few lessons she learned the hard way at Disneyland.

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1. During the fireworks, some idiot dad will stand in front of you the entire time, blocking the view of everyone sitting behind him. What an ass.

2. In Astroblasters (the Buzz Lightyear ride), if you continue to shoot a lit-up target, you get 1,000 points instead of 100. This is how you can beat your husband three times and almost get the high score of the day. Not that I’m bragging. (I knocked out my husband twice in Wii boxing twice too).

3. If you are prone to motion sickness, one time on Star Tours is plenty.

4. If you try to take your daughter on Indiana Jones because you think she’ll love it, be warned. Family therapy awaits.

5. If your daughter uses a FastPass on Indiana Jones and ultimately sits the ride out (waiting for you in the loading area next to a garbage can), you do NOT get the FastPass back.

6. When you sit in the front of the Splash Mountain log wearing denim shorts, the shorts will stay damp in the crotch all day and you will look like you peed in your pants. Your children will think this is hilarious, as will Grandma.

7. If the Dumbo ride says the wait is only 10 minutes, the sign is lying. It’s 30.

8. Your children will outgrow wanting pictures with the characters. You and your sister, however…

9. If I give my kids $10 to spend at Disneyland, one child will buy the first thing he sees, and the other will shop at every possible store. Come to think of it, each child takes after a different parent. Scary.

10. Sign of the times: The sign for Tom Sawyer’s Island is now covered with a ‘Pirate’s Lair’ sign. But the most popular sign is the one that says “restroom.”

11. Pirates of the Caribbean is a great place to take a nap. Ask my dad.

12. If your husband hates Disneyland before he goes, he’ll hate it after. Especially since you can’t buy beer there.

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Need a hotel near Disneyland?  Here are two we like:

Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel
Candy Cane Inn

Last night in bed, I attempted to read the following story aloud to my husband. For 10 minutes I yelped and wheezed with laughter as I tried to get through the funny parts. It’s anybody’s guess why he didn’t just smother me with a pillow.

Please give a warm welcome to guest blogger Sheri Bell-Rehwoldt. She’s an award-winning writer, author of You Think It’s Easy Being the Tooth Fairy?, and an unapologetic nature-phobe.

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Most days run about the same, right? You wake up, stumble toward the coffee, and assume that if there’s hot water, no zit on your nose, and all family members are present and accounted for, the day is good.

But some days hand you surprises, little gifts that warm your heart and rekindle that childlike sense of wonder. I received such a gift during a recent trip I made to Oregon with my 11-year-old niece, Emily.

Emily and I started our week of exploration in Portland. I’ll admit right now that I’m a card-carrying city slicker, much more comfortable within walls than I am in open, rural areas. I’m talking places populated with poorly marked dirt roads, people missing teeth, and lots of nature. Ugh. Nature gives me hives!

It’s the mosquitoes, the dirt, and okay, I’ll be honest-the possibility of having to pee behind a bush. Camping? Fuhgitabouit! Get up close and personal with God’s wildlife? Happy to—in a steakhouse!

And yet, I decided to get out of the van when it arrived in the small town of Molalla, at Rosse Posse Acres, a 55-acre elk farm run by Alan and Brenda Ross and their four young daughters. My motivation? The Ross’s offer up a room in their home as a B&B. Guests are invited to spend time with all of their animals—or not—whatever feels comfortable.

Behind the house are the fenced-off fields in which the elk strut their stuff. From afar I could tell the elk were big. But when the brutes finally deigned to make their way over to us-thundering over after Brenda repeatedly called to them as she shook a container of dry food-I felt my heart seize. “Nice doggie,” I kept saying in my mind, wondering if they’d ever thought to test the fence.

In a nearby barn, I was introduced to four-legged animals much more to my liking: cute, cuddly, and smaller than me! The Rosse Posse Petting Zoo contains 12 pygmy goats, four miniature donkeys, four turkeys, and seven miniature bunnies. Just a bit of hand sanitizer is all Brenda requires of guests. Trust me: not even gloves would have enticed me to touch one of those ugly turkeys!

Then Brenda brought out the big gun, the show-stopper, the You-Can’t-Top-This! pet that soon had me grinning like a drunk monkey: their baby wallaby. Still under a year old, this big-footed-long-tailed joey likes nothing better than being swaddled all day by anyone willing to hold him.

Who knew? One day, I wake up dissing nature. The next, I’m pining away for a wallaby. I’ve got to get back to Rosse Posse Acres soon!

***

Like vacationing with the animal kingdom?  Who doesn’t?  Besides Sheri, I mean.  Check these out:

Bosque del Cabo: Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica
The Fleming Jones Homestead B&B: Apple Hill, California
Pennard Hill Farm Estate: Shepton Mallet, England

Do you read Linda at All & Sundry? You should.

But not when your mouth is full.

The waiters wear pajamas. Cocoa Puffs are on the menu. The good news? You don’t have to feed your kids the dreaded personal pan pizza anymore. The bad news? You’re about to pay $7 for a bowl of cereal.

Who among us hasn’t felt a creeping sense of dread when confronted with family dining options in airports around the world?

Most kids—and probably most adults too—would rather eat their 8-count Crayola crayons than a stale egg salad and watercress sandwich from Starbucks. Pizza usually brooks no resistance, but it’s not exactly a health food.

Welcome to Cereality, a restaurant whose recipe for success is head-slappingly simple.

Take 30 varieties of America’s ultimate comfort food. Add a milk bar with myriad choices to reflect modern tastes. Finish with a toppings selection that would put any frozen yogurt joint to shame. That’s it.

And the fun doesn’t stop there either.

Meet the Cereality Bucket (a milk-tight bucket of crunchy, customized joy!) and the Sloop (a straw and spoon all in one!). You can even design your own cereal box (My Cereal My Way), but probably not before your flight starts boarding.

Is it silly? Yes. Is it better than pizza? Probably.

At the time of this writing, Cereality is mostly a college town phenomenon (though not near campuses with strong economics programs, I’d hazard). According to the company, there’s a Cereality location opening at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport later this fall.

So I guess the question is: how much would you pay for a bowl of cereal?

My children are hard-bellied, seasoned travelers. Except when they’re not. Not long ago, I was traveling alone with them from San Francisco to London. Half an hour into the flight, my 2-year-old daughter spilled yogurt all over me.

I felt irritated as I cleaned it up, which seems laughable in retrospect.

A few minutes later she threw up on me, and continued to do so for the next 9 hours. I arrived at Heathrow the next day so saturated with child vomit that my own mother opted to postpone hugging me until I’d had a shower.

Here’s what the experience taught me:

1. The seat pocket in front of you won’t help you. I discovered the hard way that you don’t always get your allotted one sick bag per paid seat. These days (when I have finally managed to cram my bags into the overhead bin) the first thing I do is check for a sick bag. More often than not, I find the airline hasn’t bothered to provide one. That’s why I always request 4 extra bags (while my husband cringes) when the flight attendant comes around offering pretzels and a drink.
2. Flight attendants won’t help you. I suppose they can’t risk spreading what could be E. coli as they merrily pass out drinks. They did eventually hand me some paper napkins, which was less than useful.
3. Fellow passengers won’t help you. Let’s face it, no one wants to get close enough to smell you, let alone help you.
4. Even fellow passengers with kids won’t help you. They will murmur sympathetically, but that’s about it. Who can blame them? It’s frightening enough exposing your children to a filthy plane without exposing them to a vacation-destroying virus as well.
5. A change of clothes for the kids won’t help you. I am a sensible mom who brings a change of clothes for my children on long flights. Not for myself though. I looked and smelled like puke for 10 hours.

The upside of all this is that I have become an expert at recognizing signs of sickness and catching it in a bag—a useful skill, I’m sure you will agree. The whole experience has made me develop my own safety procedure before take off: 1. Check seat pockets, 2. Ask for bags, 3. Sit back and hope for the best.

Now it’s your turn. Got a comparable story? Misery loves company.

I have a good friend Trisha whose father is an otologist. Otologists study the anatomy and pathology of the ear, and Trisha’s father specialized in hearing loss.

When Trisha was growing up, her father made her (and her three older sisters) wear ear plugs every time they blow dried their hair.

“Hearing loss is cumulative,” he used to tell them, as he bought earplugs by the case.

This story has haunted me for years.

At a Blue Angels air show last year, I made my kids wear protective headphones (the super-attractive kind that gardeners wear when using leaf blowers). I keep the car stereo volume annoyingly low. I make my kids cover their ears with their hands when a fire engine roars past.

I’m that mom.

So it will come as no surprise that I’ve never been entirely comfortable with headphones on airplanes (less so now that earbuds have pretty much replaced their foam-covered predecessors), but have treated them as a necessary evil. A flight without movies is not a flight I want to take.

That’s why I was overjoyed to discover a product called iHearSafe Earbuds. No matter how high the volume is turned on the connected device, the earbuds themselves will never go louder than 85 decibels.

Perfect, right?

Confident that my worries were over, I ordered two pairs and then left immediately on an 11-hour flight to England.

In the hush of the car, they worked like a dream. In the calm of the airport, they performed admirably. In row 32 of United flight 954, the honeymoon was over.

Now I can’t tell you how loud the jet engines are inside the cabin of a Boeing 747, but I can tell you how loud a 6-year-old boy is when he realizes The Spiderwick Chronicles is starting, and he can’t hear.

Very, very loud.

We rang the flight attendant call button (if ever there was an on-board emergency for our family, this was it) and explained that we would be needing a pair of headphones after all. Crisis averted.

So, it’s back to the drawing board for now for kid safe headphones. At least for air travel.

I am not one to look back or return to the same places. I am all for new horizons and exploration. Really, I am. Yet in June, I found myself back at Dover Castle, in Kent, England, for the second time in two years. And within two hours (possibly less) I realized we would probably be coming back for years.

The Sergeant Major’s House

The Sergeant Major’s House, an English Heritage property inside the walls of Dover Castle, is a little like a Jane Austen house: about 200 hundred years old, four stories, charmingly furnished. It’s romantic, yet with all mod cons. The basement is a dedicated play area with large flat screen TV, games collection and - beyond my children’s reach - ping-pong table. A private garden adds to the attraction.

Rabbits and Ramparts

One of the great things about staying at the castle is that you get the run of the place after the castle closes to the public at 5 p.m. until it opens at 9 the next morning. Nothing beats seeing your children running across the green slopes, laughing and chasing rabbits at 6:30 in the morning. Or seeing them dressed in foam knights’ helmets, waving wooden swords (from the castle store) climbing the castle towers. Even better, come evening, was sipping wine on the greens overlooking Dover, as our kids clambered over the cannons.

History

The castle is over 1,000 years old, and was frequented by Henry VIII and many other royals. There are medieval tunnels to run through, drawbridges, huge gates and cannons to climb on. The castle itself is perfect, with turrets and stone staircases to the top of the keep, where you can see for miles. More recently, during the Second World War, the dark, deep tunnels running from the castle grounds into the white cliffs of Dover were used as an operations center.

Outside the wall

Our favorite beach in the area is St Margaret’s Bay which has extensive rock pools at low tide AND a pub. The city of Canterbury is 20 minutes away, with its beautiful cathedral and cobbled streets. The Cathedral’s history includes an infamous murder that will excite your children no end. We took a beautiful walk over the White Cliffs of Dover at Langdon Cliffs next to the castle. There is a tearoom, a lighthouse, and views of Dover Harbour, the English Channel and France in the distance. Your children will love looking down on the busy harbour, with cars, truck and boats moving around like a miniature model town.

And my kids still haven’t explored half the castle. We haven’t explored the World War II secret tunnels, where Winston Churchill barked out orders. We haven’t even approached the ghost stories. And we would love to hop on the train through the Channel Tunnel to Paris for the day, or take a ferry to Calais. For all this, we will return.

Who knows? Maybe next year my kids will even be ready for ping pong.

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Looking for a family friendly hotel in England?  We’ve got dozens.

In a perfect world, none of us would ever have to lift a finger on vacation. Other people would do the cooking, the cleaning, and–above all–the laundry.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t live in a perfect world.

Maybe it’s just socks and underwear, but when I travel, I almost always wind up doing laundry in hotel sinks. Now that we have kids, that’s a lot of socks and underwear.

Travel catalogs are full of special gear, but you don’t really need much.

Forget the laundry soap.
Just use shampoo or bar soap. That’s one less thing to pack, and one less thing to leak in your luggage. Also forget the silly retractable suction-cup laundry lines and sink stoppers.

Focus on the dirty zones.
Save your super-scrubbing for the areas that really need it (armpits, crotches, and food stains for the uninitiated), and forget about the rest. This isn’t real laundry people, it’s triage.

Roll clean, rinsed items in a towel.
This will remove most of the water, and cut the drying time way down. Roll the towel up in front of you on the floor (with clean, rinsed items inside), kneeling on it as you go.

Don’t leave home without an underwear chandelier.
This is the one piece of travel laundry gear that is absolutely essential (try “carousel style hanging clothes dryer” if you’re googling). It folds up small, holds a ton, and can easily be moved to get more sun or air.

Watch your step.
Dry your laundry over the tub or shower for the first few hours when it’s dripping wet. You don’t want to turn your bathroom (or kitchen, or patio) into a Slip ‘n Slide. It’s amazing how many truly bright people (such as my husband) can’t seem to figure this out.

Be stealthy.
Most hotels would prefer you didn’t fly your family’s lingerie flag out a street facing window. Fair enough. They’re a little less particular if your room overlooks a back alley or a ventilation shaft (just another reason I actually prefer these cheaper, often quieter rooms).

Skip the sink.
On a recent family trip through Spain, we missed a couple days of laundry and were suddenly confronted with a mountain of dirty tee-shirts, panties, boxers, and socks. Instead of scrubbing tub-side on hands and knees, I grabbed a glass of wine, stripped, and got in myself (I’ll spare you the photographic evidence).

Obviously this method isn’t for everyone, but to me there are worse things than floating in a tub of soapy socks. Running out of clean underwear on vacation, for example.