I have sights vaguely set on a big holiday in 2017, possibly the last one with all the family. By that time, I’ll have 16, 14 and 10 yr olds.
Pre kids, we’ve done China, Hong kong and Bali.
I’d like to take them to China and Hong kong, but Australia was always one of my to do destinations, barrier reef, Ayers Rock, Sydney etc.
I once wanted to move to NZ but don’t think there is enough there for a detour on a holiday.
America generally never really had any attraction but I’d like to see the Grand Canyon and have a day or two in Vegas.
So, if you had say 3 weeks, where would you be heading.

The European cities can wait until the kids leave home!

3 weeks in the US with a camper would do me. Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Crater Lake. A day panning for gold on the Rogue River in Oregon. Californian redwoods. Vegas maybe, San Francisco’s worth a visit.

Australia is certainly a good option. A campervan tour. Its a great place to travel round. Ayres Rock wouldn’t be that high on my list, we went to a similar big rock in WA except we had the place to ourselves. Camped at the bottom on our own. Climbed to the top and you couldn’t see any signs life in any direction as far as the eye could see. The reef is great. We stayed on a coral island in the reef, snorkeling, diving and watching turtles nest. Unforgettable. Lots of organised wild campsites dotted around so you get away from it all without too much planning.

Looking back I think you’ll find your holiday of a lifetime was all about what you did with whom and not where or what you saw.

A holiday with a 16-year-old and a 14-year-old stands a good chance of being hell on earth whichever bit of the planet you choose. I suggest Port Aventura in Spain basing yourselves in Salou.

A 16yr old in Vegas?

He’ll love it 😀

Oz.
Snorkeling on the Barrier Reef was amazing.

But I’d dearly love to see the Grand Canyon.

Go and see something really fascinating.
Russia, mainland China beyond the big cities, Patagonia, etc.

Vegas isn’t the holiday of a lifetime. It’s a dump.
Hong Kong is great, but really?

Patagonia?

Anwhere with wifi to keep teenagers happy. But West Coast-ish USA would be a great shout. Beach/Hollywood/Disney/Universal for a week Big Sur/Wine Country/Desert/National Parks for another and Crater Lake/Mt St Helens/Portland/Seaside/Rainer/Seattle/Vancouver gives you plenty to go at depending on your tolerance to driving.

The Falkirk Wheel and The Kelpies should be considered.

Three weeks is nowhere near long enough for NZ. So much to do. Wife and I want a month to visit and do everything. Same goes for Australia. You could tour the U.S. and Canada west coast Grand Canyon , Vegas , Yellowstone, San Francisco up into Seattle then carry on North. Again is three weeks enough?

I’d have thought Vegas with teenagers would be a bit shit – they’re really hot on not allowing under 21s to even stand around in the casinos!

Kind of depends what you want from a holiday of a lifetime. A degree of cultural exploration? Then Cambodia, Vietnam. A damn good time? Australia.

I really don’t know what I want, it’s a big world so just sounding out thoughts.
The kids would be asked in any event, but an ideas board is a good starting point.

Walk to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Ride in Moab.

Photograph Yosemite.

Read Keroac in Big Sur.

And ChubbyBloke’s itinerary.

3 week or 21 days
For OZ/NZ take off 4 days for travelling (17 days)
Internal flights 1 day each for faff etc.
Doesn’t leave much time.
Uluru/Alice (miles and miles apart) is suggested about 3 days (don’t climb the rock & don’t go in Oz Summer)
Great Ocean Road – 2 days min
Sydney easy couple of days
Not been up to the reef but another 2/3 days
Tasmania worth a week on it’s own. Wilderness, mountains. coastlines, history, one of the best Modern art Galleries in the world, food and drink.

And that’s before you get the bikes out

Lets be clear, it’ll be YOUR holiday of a lifetime – the kids can do theirs when they are adult.

So go where you want to go, or just park it until you can go by yourselves.

A 3-week roadtrip is not my idea of fun, did enough of those kinda things when I was working – e.g. Australia, Singapore, KL and east coast US in a 3 week period…

If I could take my kids anywhere it’d be the Masai Mara. I could spend a lifetime there just watching the beautiful animals.

Go to Nepal. Have a trek for 3 weeks in the Himalaya. Leave the backpackers trail for when they go on their gap year travels.

Africa.
Victoria falls is a must – White water rafting on the Zambezi, overnight train to Bulawayo, on to Maun in Botswana and the Okavango delta.
Should be on anyone’s list.

Himalayas or NZ and stretch it to a month?

Others have hinted at it but Vegas and the Grand Canyon aren’t that great. Way more to do and see in the west of the U.S.

Vegas is a bit of a shithole that preys on people’s weaknesses. Grand Canyon is a big hole in the ground. Worth going if you have the time and inclination to walk down into it, but not otherwise.

Igm and chubby have it right

J.

oh and echoing comments above it may be your holiday of a lifetime but your kids will have their own.

My folks have done far more adventurous holidays later in life (3 week tour of Patagonia & Argentina, 3 weeks in NZ, Cruised the Nile and explored Egypt etc.) than when burdened with kids and school holiday restrictions.

Save the big grown up stuff for when you get shot of the kids, the adventure stuff for when the kids do it themselves and are old enough to bungee and party and pick something that the whole family will enjoy together.

volunteer with a dolphin or turtle project in the Southern Hemisphere

rockhopper70 – Member
I once wanted to move to NZ but don’t think there is enough there for a detour on a holiday.

NZ has plenty enough to do and see to justify spending 3 weeks there. Bare in mind you’d want to go during northern hemisphere winter, so not sure if that would fit in with schools?
I’ve not spent much time in Aus so can’t comment, but given the choice between NZ and US west coast it would be NZ every time.

With a bike I could probably spend a couple of months in NZ, there is heaps to see (have a long list planned) but it’s a long way here (if you do go Air NZ/Singapore now do UK>Singapore>NZ flights which saves going via Syd/Melb) also it’s one of those places that your kids can probably do when they get older if they want to go travelling and do all the fun stuff.

As talltom said above : whitewater rafting all the rapids on the zambezi, I’ve done the low water runs in December and high water runs in June, i found the low water runs more of an adrenaline rush – you have the choice of being a paddler or just hanging on to the ropes around the raft and using your body weight to preload the raft. The paddling option is better fun but you do need to be pretty fit to get the most out of it.
I also did a 5 day canoe trip on the upper Zambezi and wild camped each night – that was pretty cool, also done the obligatory bungee jump off the Vic falls bridge, loads of safari game reserves to explore, the matopos park is an amazing place, friends of my relatives have the big cave camp out there – utterly amazing place, 6 months in the country wasn’t nearly enough.

There’s some amazing sights to see in Zimbabwe or Zambia, Botswana etc….I’d love to go back to Zimbabwe, shame the country is ruined by Mugabe.

Or try and do Kilimanjaro?, i dunno if your kids would be old enough though – it’s a fantastic experience and there’s a variety of routes from easy to very difficult. When i was out staying in Zim my cousin had climbed it a few times and one of his old schoolmates was a climber so we made the choice (foolishly) to climb the umbwe route, 20 years ago i considered myself to be pretty damn fit but that was quite possibly the hardest exertion i have ever put myself through but looking back on it now i am so glad i managed it.

Or how about a trip to India?, utterly fascinating country and it’ll either get under your skin and create an itch that you’ll continue to scratch for the rest of your life or you’ll detest the place and enter therapy to cleanse it from your mind.

Las Vegas would be my idea of absolute hell – even thinking about the place and what it stands for brings me out in hives.

I now live in Oz, and before that I spent countless holidays and a gap year exploring it – and I still haven’t seen half the places I want to! The distances between places are just vast – so you’d spend an inordinate amount of time travelling, even by plane. Adults can rationalise this and even “enjoy the journey”, but kids just get bored to tears and fractious which ruins it for everyone.

Here’s a couple of pictures which put the scale of Australia into the context of America and Europe. Ask yourself, would you try and criss-cross the whole US or Europe in three weeks?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to put you off coming to Oz as there’s some amazing holiday experiences to be had here, but just take it a bit at a time rather than spoil it by trying to be too ambitious.

Three weeks would give you a good relaxing time in one of the following, or if you wanted to up the pace a bit to avoid the kids getting bored combine two, or add a side trip to Tassie or Uluru (Ayers Rock) :-

WA – Broome, Ningaloo Reef, Shark Bay, Perth, Margaret River, the Southern Forests.

NT – Darwin, Kakadu (of Crocodile Dundee fame), Katherine Gorge, Litchfield park.

South East – Sydney, Blue Mountains, Great Ocean Road, Melbourne.

Queensland – Gold Coast attractions, Cairns & Barrier Reef, Northern Rainforests.

As others have said, the kids can do the rest on their own time when they’re older as a backpacker!

We spent 4 weeks in NZ and only scratched the surface, there’s so much to do if you like walking, cycling etc.

Does it have to be long haul? A 3 week tour of Austria, Germany, Czech would be fantastic. So many mountains, great beer, great regional food

You could spend 3 weeks anywhere, you just need some imagination!!
France or Spain are a lot bigger than most people think with such variation of terrain and areas with strong regional identities.

I think your problem is that you only have 3 weeks

I went on a “once in a lifetime holiday” last year.
Never again.

US national parks are great if you like that sort of thing (which I do). Perhaps not all your family will though, and it’s quite a lot of driving (though lots of stunning places to stop at too). I’ve been up to Glacier and down to the Grand Canyon, not on the same trip but would be easy enough in 3 weeks. Yellowstone is easily the best of them all BTW – scenery, geysers and bears…just amazing.

Africa might be more of an adventure.

Japan shirley?

<Boring story alert>

MrsDummy had always wanted to go to Venice. We went. It looked like it does in the pictures, but even more of full of bastards milling about than you can possibly imagine, and so expensive you don’t feel as though you can do anything without being savagely ripped off.

Then we took a ferry to Rovinj in Croatia. I had never heard of Rovinj except as the place the ferry was going to, and had no expectations. We loved it so much that we spent 10 days there, rather than the planned 2. Easily the best holiday we’ve ever had.

I’m not entirely sure there are any “must see”s. 🙂

For me it’s far more about doing things than simply seeing them. For example, lots of people go to see Zion Canyon in the US. There’s a visitor center and everything. However we walked up out of the top of it and wild camped in the sagebrush on top. That was memorable.

Likewise rough camping (near the car) in the National Grasslands in North Dakota. Very impressive experience, especially with herds of buffalo grazing in the distance as the sun sets, coyotes sneaking around and so on.

For me, it’s about find a way of experiencing a place deeper than simply being a tourist.. this starts with reading about it.

I had 2 “holidays of a lifetime” I wanted to do, having done them both I now know I will have to do them both again.

1. West coast of the USA. Fly to San Diego and take a slow drive up the coast to San Frnacisco then drive/fly across to Vegas for 3 days at the end. Did this for my honeymoon, is was wonderful (expect LA, LA was horrible). If you do this, please, please don’t miss out San Diego, many people do and they are so wrong to do this, we spent 5 days there, next time it’ll be 2 weeks.

2. New Zealand. I was meant to be there for 3 weeks, it turned into 6 months (I was young and without commitments). It has so much to do, if you’re even vaguely outdoorsy you’ll love it, it’s a wonderful, wonderful place.

I’ve also done Oz, Sydney is great, Melbourne is better, both well worth visiting and stunning places…but I’d still go to NZ before visiting them again.

3 weeks in US would be good – Grand Canyon, Zion, Canyonlands, Bryce, Yosemite etc plus Vegas and maybe San Fran and Pacific Coast highway. Amazing places and you can get right into them for hiking etc – bit more accessible than cold climate mountains. Great driving and camping.

Or 3 weeks in one or more of Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia – cities, deltas, beaches, amazing mountains and hill tribes in NW Vietnam etc. Mind-blowing cultures.

Or maybe Tanzania and Zanzibar – for culture shock, landscapes, safaris, exotic towns and beautiful sleepy beaches, snorkelling, super-friendly people etc.

It depends if this is a last big splurge for the kids or for you. With 10-16 year olds, I would say not too much driving (they will get bored and really won’t appreciate ‘the scenery’) and make sure there are activities they can do.

I was lucky enough to travel quite a lot as a teenager with my parents and really appreciated a Hong Kong / Chiang Mai / Thai beach break holiday. It really opened my eyes.

Rafting / canoeing might have age restrictions, but they can be a great family adventure – either as safari (I really want to do a Zambezi trip) or something like a multi-day camping trip through the Grand Canyon or Colorado rockies.

Some places are better visited as a back-packer, using public transport and local hotels to really get a feel for the place and that might not be best with younger kids.

Ideas:

Somewhere that I found very easy / affordable to do by public transport and taxis was Sabah (orangutans, turtles, snorkelling).

I can highly recommend a safari or visit to Africa, but you would have to check age restrictions. It would be easy to hire a car somewhere like Tanzania or South Africa, but safaris in Tanazania & Kenya are best done with a guide (in SA you can self drive in Kruger which is a lot of fun). I would think places like Zim and Zambia would be easier guided.

For easy to organise, easy travel and english-speaking, San Fran area, camping in Yosemite and then back to the coast with lots of activities thrown in.

Yucatan Peninsula. Although Cancun can be trashy (do not go there during spring break!) the snorkelling around the area and white sand beaches are amazing and there are many inca sites worth exploring without too much travel time, so the kids shouldn’t get too bored. You could travel down to Belize (ex-British) and look for whale sharks and jaguars.

Or Costa Rica has very good public transport and tourist infrastructure. It is more expensive than its neighbouring countries but has excellent conservation credentials and is small enough to make travel easy (think turtle nests, white sand beaches, volcano, rainforest canopy walks, whale watching).

If you are still tempted by Aus, try not to do too much. I would pick one corner and do as many activities as possible (i.e. spend a week learning to surf) rather than trying to ‘see’ everything.

A bit off topic, but this pic from upthread just makes me think how great it is to live in this bit of the world. There’s just so much packed in and the closer you look the more there is, between Africa, middle east and arctic… Even the boring bits (there’s threads on here of people going on about bloody Flanders or Wales, probably.) And it contains Yorkshire.

Back on topic – Filey’s quite nice. At least is was the 11 years on the trot my parents took us there…

Dirt bike across Mongolia

Women are really hot as well, so he will benefit from that.

Back on topic – Filey’s quite nice. At least is was the 11 years on the trot my parents took us there…

😀

We had the same childhood, except mine was perhaps slightly more cosmopolitan as we had the odd week in a caravan in North Wales.