Yes, perhaps my plans for a peaceful 10-day family road trip through the scenic South Island of New Zealand with a two-year-old were a tad naive.

Starting out in Christchurch, we were to make our way into the centre of the island to visit the spectacular Lake Tekapo, then back to the coast and the city of Dunedin, via Oamaru.

Then we planned to head over to the wild west coast and the mountain-ringed towns of Te Anau, Milford, Wanaka and Queenstown, our final stop.

An easy itinerary for a couple of adults, sure. But I discovered that road-tripping with toddlers is a whole different kettle of fish. While we had a wonderful time overall, here are a few tips I’d give to any brave parent contemplating a similar holiday.

TAKE IT SLOW
Been for a walk with your toddler lately? They like to try on every pair of shoes before they go, then stop every two minutes to observe a snail or say hi to the postman. Being stuck in a carseat for more than a few hours a day is torture for a busy little person. Plan your trip you can keep driving to a minimum, and stop regularly for a run around (preferably away from crowded wharves).

FORGET ABOUT THAT NICE VINEYARD
Our trip became a whole lot more pleasant once I realised that we were actually on the Playground Tour of New Zealand. (My tip – Wanaka.) You might be able to wrangle a few wine tastings or a couple of short shopping trips, but most under 3’s won’t have the patience.

Instead, focus on activities the whole family can enjoy. We found the Wanaka Toy and Transport Museum to be a surprise hit, as well as the Skyline Gondola and Kiwi Haka show in Queenstown.

Don’t forget that small children are more likely to suffer from motion sickness. Consider this when planning any boat trips or scenic flights.

SHELL OUT EXTRA FOR A SELF-CATERING APARTMENT
Sure, a roomy apartment with a full kitchen may cost a few bucks more that a motel room. But your child is more likely to feel comfortable in a home-like environment. An apartment gives you the chance to put your child to sleep in another room while you stay up enjoying that fine Marlborough Sauvingnon Blanc. Having your own kitchen means you can be more flexible with meals and cut down on expensive restaurant bills. Being able to make your own toast at 6am before any local cafes are open sure has its advantages.

INVOLVE YOUR TODDLER IN PLANNING
A busy itinerary with a new hotel room almost every night can be very confusing for a toddler. Try making a calendar for the days of your holiday and cutting and pasting images of the scenery and activities of each location. If there is a choice of activities to do in each place, involve your child in the decision and add their choice to the calendar. Having an end date to the holiday may also make your child feel more calm about being away from home.

MAKE YOUR CAR AN ENTERTAINMENT HUB
Staving off toddler boredom will require all the weapons in your arsenal. You’ll need plenty of music – try dividing the amount of CDs you have by the amount of hours driving you’ll need to do. Believe me, you do not want to have to listen to the Bananas in Pyjamas more than twice a day. If you tire easily of children’s music, consider an audiobook. (Perhaps not American Psycho as narrated by Christian Bale).

Colouring-in books and pencils are always useful to have on hand and are a great distraction while waiting in restaurants. And you just can’t go past a good, old-fashioned game of I Spy.

USEFUL LINKS AND RECOMMENDED ACCOMODATION
Kids Friendly New Zealand

Driving New Zealand

Clarion Suites Wanaka

Top 10 Holiday Park Te Anau

Breakfree Highview apartments , Queenstown

The obvious starting point for a Tuscan vacation is Florence, where the surfeit of art — and other travellers — is mind-boggling. Pisa, too, with its iconic Leaning Tower and proximity to Aeroporto Galileo Galilei, Tuscany’s largest airport, is an inevitable stop. But the real challenge lies in deciding where to go after everyone has had enough of shuffling past nude Michelangelos and brushing shoulders with tour groups.

Our top five suggestions include a mix of cities and villages, five-star resorts and country homes. You can plan a whole vacation around any of these sites. Or, if your family is lucky enough to have a long stretch of time, you can create an itinerary that includes all of these locales. Believe it or not, a Tuscan trip with the kids can be as good as — or better — than the one you dreamed of before you started a family.

Lucca

Travel literature likes to talk up Tuscany’s hill towns, but little Lucca, which lies in the valley of the Apuan Alps, lives up to the hype. A compact city center of a few manageable sites, Lucca’s most family-friendly feature is that it is almost entirely closed off to cars. Bicycles — albeit older, single-speed types — rule the roads here, and an umbrella stroller wouldn’t be out of place, either.

Head to the tourist kiosk in Piazzale Verdi, where, at €2.50 per bike per hour, you can rent bikes for the entire family — bicycles equipped with baby seats are also available at no extra charge. With your transportation set, pedal from one piazza to the next. Or, take a spin on top of Le Mura, the city’s medieval fortifications that do double-duty as Lucca’s public parks and passegiata paths.

Staying overnight, when the city has been drained of its tour bus crowds, is the best way to do Lucca with kids. Hotel Ilaria, located along a canal near the Botanical Gardens, has wi-fi, satellite tv, and babysitting services, as well as free bikes to use during your stay.

Hotel Ilaria, suites from €180

http://www.hotelilaria.com

Tuscany: Runners-Up

Arezzo

The genius of Il Borro, a 2,000-acre country estate just a few miles from Arezzo, is that you can physically contain your kids without containing their enthusiasm. Owned by the famous Ferragamos, who redeveloped this vast Arno Valley lot to use as a family retreat, Il Borro includes farm land, complete with orchards, olive groves, sunflower fields, and vineyards; wilderness areas for mountain biking, horseback riding, and fishing; and an entire medieval village of shops, rentable apartments, and holiday homes.

While you’re sipping the latest vintage from the Borro’s cantina, your kids can play in the swimming pool or on the full-size soccer pitch. Resident artisans provide a full roster of courses, such as ceramic making, wood-turning, painting, and cooking, so your family has plenty of opportunities to spend some quality time together. But, should you wish to venture out to Arezzo’s antique market or to the Prada outlet in Montevarchi senza bambini , you can call in one of Il Borro’s team of babysitters.

Il Borro — 3 bedroom apartments start at €350

http://www.ilborro.it

Siena

The Palio horserace, a twice-yearly event on July 2 and August 16, is Siena’s biggest — and, arguably, most kid-thrilling — attraction, pitting a selection of Siena’s seventeen districts against one another in a breakneck derby around the main Piazza del Campo. But, unless you’ve got a masochistic need to herd your group through throngs of worked-up race fans, you’ll visit at any other time, when the shell-shaped piazza is a stage for flocks of pigeons, and, yes, handfuls of day-trippers.

Kids who are into Eragon but haven’t quite moved on to D&D will dig Siena for its moody, medieval feel, while the young ones will be able to make a game looking for the mascot of each neighborhood. Each district, or contrada, is represented by an animal, such as a tortoise or owl, or by something more nebulous, like a forest, which makes a simple family stroll through Siena’s cobbled streets more like a scavenger hunt.

Although the city has several worthy hotels within its borders, a holiday here is best when coupled with a stay in the Sienese countryside. Hotel Borgo Grondaie, located about a mile outside of town, offers comfortable apartments with kitchenettes and washing machines.

Hotel Borgo Grondaie, Apartment for four people start at €178

http://www.borgogrondaie.com

Collodi

It isn’t exactly Disney World — or EuroDisney, for that matter — but the Parco di Pinocchio is the spot in Tuscany to bring your grade schoolers, if only so they can commune with other kids their age. Pinocchio Park gets its inspiration from the world’s best selling children’s book, written by Collodi son Carlo Lorenzini. The original story about the mischievous puppet is a much darker tale than Walt would have us remember.

If you think your kids can handle encounters with grotesque, bronze sculptures, intimidating topiary, and original Pinocchio characters, such as the coffin-carrying rabbits and the great whale, then you’ve just bought yourself a few hours without the kids bouncing off the walls.

Located about halfway between Lucca and Florence, Collodi is ripe for a daytrip. But if you want to keep it local, head south to the spa town of Montecatini Terme. Hotel Columbia has discounts and amenities for kids and relaxation treatments for mum and dad.

Parco di Pinocchio:
http://www.pinocchio.it/old/uk/infouk.htm

Hotel Columbia, suites from €150 (or $205) per night

http://www.hotelcolumbia.it

Forte dei Marmi

When all else fails, you can always pack ‘em up and head to the beach. Forte dei Marmi isn’t just any beach, though. This seaside town on the sandy Riviera Versilia is like the Tuscan Hamptons, with a walkable downtown, fine dining, and prime people-watching.

Within sight of the colorful umbrella-dotted beach, Hotel Il Negresco is a godsend for parents who want to soak up the sun without having to worry too much about the kids. The hotel provides children with drawing kits, bike rentals, nighttime cartoons, and kid-sized portions at dinner. A swimming pool and a supervised play area also keep them busy. Adults are treated well, too, with amenities like an outdoor Jacuzzi and discounts at the local golf club. You can even have the concierge call in a local nanny — for an extra €25 per hour. This place is like the Hamptons, after all.

Hotel Il Negresco, sea view rooms start at €290

http://www.hotelilnegresco.com/en/index.html

“Yeah, and money doesn’t grow on trees, you know,” Inky chimed in, helpfully repeating a shopworn mantra she must have picked up from me. I worry about her, remembering how reticent I once was about expressing anything resembling material desire. If one day she decides to haul off and really want something, loudly, unequivocally, the way her brother does, I don’t think I’d mind.

Meanwhile, her brother’s magpie tendencies were dragging us all down. Things came to a head in Sarajevo’s Turkish bazaar, a charming warren of tea shops, coppersmiths and souvenir stalls. I’d call it a minefield, but that seems a tad insensitive, given what the citizens of this city went through in the early ’90s. Any Sarajevan schoolkid who endured the siege understands the true meaning of deprivation. For the record, deprivation doesn’t mean your mom refusing to buy you a giant pencil fifteen minutes after buying you an expensive handicraft octopus carved from a palm nut.

I like to think I’m not the only mother who cares whether her child is perceived as a brat. It’s not so much a problem with the girl, but the boy is a trickier prospect, particularly in any setting where money is exchanged for goods. Both children had already been promised a souvenir from the Turkish bazaar, and as far as Milo there was nothing to be gained from delayed gratification. I decided that the best way to avoid a scene would be to purchase the first thing he claimed he wanted, with the understanding that there would be no do-overs, no begging for the next inviting item that caught his eye.

There was one other stipulation: I wasn’t going to shell out for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or any flimsy plastic doodad easily procured in Chinatown. This ruled out everything in the toy store’s window display save a just-for-pretend Glock that looked way too much like the real thing to take on a plane (not that I’d have bought the damn thing anyway).

Although the handicrafts spilling out of the shops weren’t exactly hand-crafted in the traditional sense, I still extolled the virtue of choosing something reflective of the local culture, like a brightly painted flute, or some curly-toed slippers, or a poorly-made plaque featuring a shoddy reproduction of the circular brass knockers one sees on the old city’s heavy wooden doors. This last seemed to hold some appeal for my frantic son, who set to banging the first one he could reach as if his life depended on it.

Greg was dubious. “Thirty-seven konvertible marks for that? You think it’s worth it?”

“To avoid a scene? Yes! Look at him. He’s totally stressed out.” I put my hand out for the money.

“Ayun—”

“Greg, he’s on the verge of total meltdown!” I know how this sounds, but bear in mind that we were in a very small space, presided over by an older woman whose parenting skills were no doubt unimpeachable.

“Let’s think this through.” Steering me by my elbow, Greg herded the entire family to a bench several storefronts away. Milo was one monofilament away from losing it, but Greg implemented some horse-whisperer techniques and laid out a counter-proposal. The way he saw it, each child should be given a set amount, a sort of seed grant to spend as he or she saw fit. I immediately conceded the superiority of his plan, which was not only brilliant, but also educational. It would let me pretend we were reinforcing the homework they weren’t doing. It sounded good to the kids, too, even Milo, who pocketed his ten-mark bill with something like relief.

After fifteen minutes trolling the bazaar, peacefully pawing at the merch, we decided that we’d be more effective, i.e. we’d get to the museum Greg and I wanted to visit sooner, if we split up, each parent escorting one child. I got Milo. “Is it okay if I know what I want now?” he asked.

“Sure, it’s your money. Do you remember where you saw it?”

He described a newsstand we had passed earlier that that displayed a few toys and other non-touristy tchotckes behind glass. I remembered it because Milo had found it so painful that I wouldn’t agree to any of the items at which he pointed. All former bets were off, though, now that he had his own money to blow. I navigated the ancient maze as Milo skipped by my side, alternately singing and fretting that I wouldn’t be able to find it, or that someone else would have beaten him to the punch, snapping up the one thing on which his heart was truly set, a made-in-China, plastic play set featuring two muscle-bound commandos and a toy grenade.

You heard me.

Greg’s plan had utterly failed to address my long-standing no-guns policy. To invoke it now would have been dirty pool. “Do I have enough?” Milo asked hopefully.

“You tell me. It’s eight point seventy-five.”

He held his breath and calculated. “I do!” he screamed joyfully.

“That’s right, you do. Now, are you sure this is what you really, really want?”

He flung his arms around my thighs. “Oh, thank you, mama! Thank you! Thank you!”

“Well, it’s your money,” I smiled. Or rather, your money and my reputation — though, technically, the Special Forces Combat Forces gift pack is a gun-free plaything. Unless one counts a flimsy walkie-talkie with a conveniently barrel-like antenna and a lurid cardboard backdrop featuring a realistic, fiery explosion, that grenade is its only weapon.

Still. We were in Sarajevo.

The newsstand vendor didn’t betray any particular opinion she may have had regarding the little American boy’s choice, but neither did she offer to bag his purchase. Fortunately, I never travel without a nylon shopping bag, and the one I had on me was just big enough to contain this blister-packed monstrosity. I let Milo carry it himself, telling him that though I was happy for him, he should be discreet. “See, some really bad things happened to the people here. There was a war, and there were real explosions and real guns and a lot of people got killed. So, while you and I know it’s just a toy, it might be the kind of toy that could make the people who live here feel bad. And I know you wouldn’t want to make anybody feel bad.”

Dumbing things down in that way makes me cringe, but Milo, bless his heart, seemed to get the message. When he handed his treasure off to Greg, who would be dropping stuff off at our guesthouse before our excursion to the Siege of Sarajevo Museum, he gave explicit instructions that the contents should be kept under wraps. He didn’t want to hurt our hostess, who had introduced him to her pet Dalmation and invited him into the kitchen to help her make pancakes.

As to the museum, it was excellent, though perhaps not so much for children. There are plenty of photos of children there, of course, but also photos of people lying in their own blood, their bicycles toppled nearby. Again, Milo, who initially was quite taken with the displays of munitions used by the Bosnian Resistance, seemed to get the message. “I don’t like this museum,” he announced in a quavering voice, and retreated to the stairwell with one of his sister’s Archie comics.

Later, in the privacy of our own room, he spent the better part of two hours happily maneuvering his plastic commandos around the bedsheet frontlines, the danger of their missions implied by a non-stop stream of whispered sound effects. Even though I’ve never been able to make those noises myself, I could appreciate this for the peaceful situation it was.

Five Tips for Surviving a Disney Vacation

BE THE CRAZY OLD LADY AT BREAKFAST.

At the end of breakfast, open up your nappy bag, take out some zip-lock bags and put everything left on the table into plastic and then into your bag. Yes, you may be channelling the dementia-addled frequenters of early bird dining. But when your three-year-old starts crying on the monorail that he is "so hungry," you will take out your half-eaten Mickey waffle and feel like you are the Best Parent Ever – which, for that one shining moment, you will be.

IF A RIDE HAS NO LINE, THAT RIDE IS YOUR FRIEND.

The line to board Dumbo’s Flight at the Magic Kingdom: up to three hours. The length of the ride itself: 90 seconds. And I cannot tell you how many people I saw who had clearly waited at least an hour with their squirming spawn to go on Dumbo, only to board and have their toddlers scream like their limbs were being ripped off the entire time. A better idea: only go on rides with short lines, regardless of their content. (Although I will admit skipping the Hall of the Presidents.) And if the Dumbo ride is vital to your vacation, test your kids’ stamina first at Aladdin’s Magic Carpet in Adventureland — which seldom has any line at all.

DON’T RENT THE STROLLERS IN THE PARK.

You may be thinking, "Oh, how great is that – I can rent a stroller once I get to the park! I don’t have to bring my own!" Well, make room in the boot of that rental car. First of all, the Disney strollers are huge plastic behemoths and are a pain in the ass to steer; they also don’t recline, which means lots of toddlers will wake up from their naps with insanely sore necks. Second, the last thing you need is another line to wait in. Trust me on that one. Third, forget about being in the airport with the inevitably-delayed flights and no stroller; just the idea of holding my two antsy, jazzed-up-on-Disney toddlers through the security check was enough to make me want another vacation. BYOS. One with a recline function.

CONSTANTLY RECALIBRATE EXPECTATIONS, OR CHILL OUT.

You need to be flexible. Just because your kid adores Peter Pan, and has been talking about him nonstop for months, doesn’t mean that he’s going to love Peter Pan’s Flight. And shockingly, he might be awed at the panoramic pictures of French chateaux, the live belly dancing and the gelato in EPCOT’s World Showcase. You’re not going to have fun every minute, but being ready to go with the flow will serve you all better in the end than your Type A neuroses. Helpfully, many Disney restaurants serve wine with dinner.

WHEN IT’S TIME FOR FIREWORKS, TRY THE CHEAP SEATS.

Your kids will not feel bad if, rather than waiting 45 minutes on the sidewalk in the Magic Kingdom so they can sit in their strollers and have their views of fireworks blocked by people taller than them (i.e. everyone), you opt to take them to the monorail, car or hotel. They can see the fireworks, not hear the loud explosions (which, I have it on good one-year-old authority, are "very scary") and go to sleep virtually instantly afterwards. Everyone’s a winner.

For a long time, we were paranoid about how the kid would behave on a plane. But then we realised what a baby did mattered less than what the parents did in response. As long as you made good faith — or at least visible — efforts to keep your kid quiet, the people around you are usually forgiving. And besides, you’re graded on a curve; your kid doesn’t have to be absolutely quiet, she only has to be quieter than other kids on the plane.

On the fourteen-plus hour flight to Osaka, our daughter was a champ. A slightly high-maintenance champ, but a champ nonetheless. My wife came more prepared than a troop of Boy Scouts, though, with several little surprise toys or activities to keep the kid occupied: new sets of stickers, a toy plane (that was too loud, I thought), and the killer, a tiny disposable set of modeling clay, bought for all of sixty-five cents at some hippie card shop down the street.

Other things that worked:

- getting the bulkhead seats, which gave us enough leg room for the kid to sit down on the floor for a snack picnic. There was also enough room to take the car seat out for a while and let her use just the big kid’s chair. [Note: the first three side rows in Economy Plus on our United B777-Heavy were apparently crew seats, and they came equipped with extendible leg rests, a business class-y bonus. Check seatguru.com to see if you can identify and book the best seats on each type of plane.

- we pre-ordered kid’s meals, which makes sense, even though the kid didn’t eat the hot dog or the hamburger. She did get lots of raisins, though, and the waffles were a much better breakfast option than instant ramen.

- Though she slept so hard on previous trans-Pacific flights that people asked what drugs she was on — nine-to-eleven hours each way — this time, she fought it, hard. Net: she slept for about four-and-a-half hours total. She stayed awake on the seventy-five-minute train ride to Kyoto, and sacked out immediately when we got into our hotel, at about 10:30. Five hours of sleep.

Kyoto, the hotel: My wife’s people booked us into the Granvia, a relatively nice hotel right in the Kyoto train station, a cavernous, open-air atrium of black granite-and-glass with a giant LED Christmas tree. In the hotel lobby is another Christmas tree, covered with those white feather quills like you see at wedding books, pungent enchantment lilies, and… test tubes filled with what looks like crack.

Hmm. that sleeping on the plane thing didn’t quite work out. The kid woke up at three a.m. At around 5:30, after a couple of hours of unsuccessful coaxing, my wife bundled her up and took her out around 5:30, walks the dark, empty streets of Kyoto for three hours. There are no bagels in Kyoto, at least none within a two-km radius of the train station.

1. Hobnobs (good oatmeal cookies).
2. Boots brand chapstick. It’s way less waxy than ours.
3. Clotted cream and scones (our nanny can’t get enough)
4. Real BBC news television. The news seems a bit more realistic and less sensationalised than let’s say, um, FOX.
5. Television actors aren’t as overpaid as Hollywood ones.

6. Bollywood.
7. Indian food. You can find it everywhere, even at rest stops, even at McDonalds. Except, of course, when you are really hungry.
8. The way the one pound coin (quid) feels. It seems like you are holding a piece of gold from the olden days. It rules over the quarter, nickel, dime, penny and especially the paper dollar… and not just because it’s worth more.
9. The old ladies. Older English ladies are sweet and offer you tea. They’re not as snotty as the younger generation of English women. Plus, they’re such bad dressers that it’s cute. All those crazy hats and horrible floral dresses.
10. Fireworks day. They don’t have July 4th over here, of course, but that didn’t stop the Brits from finding some reason to have a national day for pretty bombs bursting in air. No one can convincingly explain the reason behind the holiday.
11. English commercials. They have made us cry and laugh.

12. It’s not that far from New York.
13. Borat is actually English when he’s not in Borat get-up.
14. The lottery TV show. We are addicted. They give you the first part of a word and if you can guess the second part, you can call in and win 20,000 pounds. It’s so stupid but so good. (The first one was: head____). I tried to call in to guess "headless" (the clue was Halloween), but they make it kind of hard to get through.

Things we hate about England

1. Snotty people.

2. Baby-talk sayings (“mushy peas,” “cheeky monkey,” “nappies,” “nobbly”)
3. Skinny roads not meant for anythings bigger than a mini.
4. Lack of street signs.
5. Rules, and the undying need to make everyone follow them. It makes me love not being proper. Live free or die!
6. The weather. Why would you live here if you know how great the sun feels on your face?
7. The food. How come these limeys aren’t all fat? All we can find to eat is biscuits and chips.

8. NME, the weekly music mag. It sucks. But we like trying to find people we know in the pictures.
9. The feeling of entitlement. Everyone feels compelled to tell you what they think.
10. Where are the king size beds for families to sleep in?
11. Hotels are too expensive. (Hence, the RV.)
12. Why does every American who comes here start adopting the British accent? It’s catchy. I hear my friends starting to end their questions in an ascending fashion and feel concerned.

13. Assigned seating in movie theatres. So you still have a first-come, first-serve situation, only people take time picking their seats with the ticket window guy. It makes no sense. And if you want ‘posh" seats, you have to pay extra. The posh seats are just a little bit cushier and a little farther away from the screen.
14. Catherine Tate, some British comedian. The only reason I say this is because people keep telling me I look like her and I’ve gotten the feeling she’s not very attractive.