Mid-winter I often start to get itchy feet, especially if I’m housebound in the northern cold. I start to dream of warm places and adventures outside my four walls. For years, before we started traveling full time, we’d plan a mid-February escape, an early spring break of sorts, to break up the long winter’s night.

Where to go and what to do? 

Here are three ideas for how to take your winter or spring break beyond the boring beach resort and make it something truly uncommon and unforgettable:

Do Something Completely New

Instead of just signing up for the week at the all-inclusive resort in Cancun, like every other family escaping winter, ask your kids (and yourself!) to name of of their big, adventurous dreams.

• Go white water rafting in the Amazon
• Swim with dolphins in Mexico
• Camp in the desert
• Go deep sea fishing in Texas
• Book an everglades airboat exploration in Florida

Break out of the beach-bum mold and check a few things off of your bucket lists!

Stay Local

Hotels are horribly impersonal places and often a recipe for interrupted sleep schedules,  dietary distress and exposure to illness via the other guests, not to mention they’re expensive!

With six in our family, hotels are our least favourite lodging option. Our first and best bet is to rent a fully furnished apartment or house wherever we want to go. It’s so much more comfortable to have a home away from home than to be shoe horned into hotel rooms. In every case, it has been the cheaper option for us as a larger family. When we realized that these fantastic homes are available just about everywhere we want to be, it revolutionized our travel style, and our budget!

Where do we find them? There are lots of options online, but a consistently reliable source is Wimdu.com. Wondering how it works? Just choose the country you want to search, type in the name of the city, and a menu of fantastic places will appear!

Give me private bedrooms, a full kitchen, a living room to hang out in and a washing machine over an overpriced hotel, any day!

Learn Something

Who says spring break has to be a brain break? Often our brains are at our most stimulated and creative when we are out of our “normal” environment. Why not capitalize on that and learn something fabulous together?

• Go dig up dinosaurs in the Arizona desert
• Take Spanish lessons on one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, Lago de Atitlan, in Guatemala
• Take cooking classes in Thailand
• Take surfing or kite-surfing lessons in Hawaii
• Take massage classes together in Mexico
• Sign up for a family Yoga camp
• Spend a week at a working ranch and learn to ride horses and rope cattle

The possibilities are endless! 

Go ahead, ask your kids what they’d REALLY like to do over spring break, or on your mid-winter escape and let their imaginations run wild. Get outside the box and make your next adventure truly uncommon!

About Jennifer Miller

Jennifer Miller has written 80 post in this blog.

Married to my knight in shining armor, Mama to the fabulous four, I must write to breathe. I'm homeless by choice, a nomad by birth and am most at home sleeping my tent, shopping in the souqs of North Africa and wandering the highlands of Guatemala. My life is an "edventure!"

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