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Month: September 2022

TRAVELLING
Autumn holiday with the family ahead? Read our tips for travelling with children

There are plenty of activities and play areas for children at Helsinki Airport.

At Helsinki Airport, there are various services for families with children, such as play areas and childcare rooms.

The best play areas at Helsinki Airport are found in the gate area. At gates 16 and 20 there are nature-themed areas where the smallest in the family can play.

Leikkipuisto porttialueella

Kids can climb and play at Helsinki Airport’s play areas at any time for free.

Maja Living Room is located at gate 52 after the passport control and is a space for people of all ages to stretch before their flight. The Christmas Cabin, which is open all year round, is located at gate 40, and is something that the whole family can enjoy.

There are also several quiet spaces at the airport for childcare and breastfeeding. There are separate childcare rooms for changing diapers next to the bathrooms. Childcare supplies are also available in the airport’s accessible toilets, which provide more space for parents with children.

Olohuone Maja

Maja Living Room is perfect for children and adults. Relax and stretch before your flight!

Prams and pushchairs

With regard to prams, the rules vary according to the airline. If you have to leave your pushchair at the check-in, children who need it can continue their journey through the terminal using a pushchair provided by the airport.

Pushchairs and prams that will go in the plane’s hold must be packed in a protective bag. Some airlines offer passengers a protective bag at check-in.

Family-friendly restaurants

The restaurants at the airport offer children’s meals, high chairs and the opportunity to heat small children’s meals and milk bottles.

Families that love the Moomins have plenty to admire in the Moomin café at gate 40. The Moomin café is located in the long-haul flight area

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VACATION
Photos show why I need a vacation from my vacation after taking my toddler to Hawaii
A family of three posing for a selfie all wearing sunglasses in a tropical location.

My family in Honolulu on Oahu.Emily Hochberg/Insider

  • I went to Oahu, Hawaii, with my husband and 1-year-old daughter on a long-awaited vacation.

  • Except traveling with a toddler is not exactly a relaxing vacation.

  • I thought I’d relax on the beach and dine by the ocean but my reality was often tantrums and takeout.

Hawaii is a tropical paradise and after a long pandemic, it was where I really wanted to travel to this summer.

A beautiful beach with calm blue water and a boat on the shore of gold sand.

The beach at Disney’s Aulani Resort and Spa in Ko Olina on Oahu, Hawaii.Emily Hochberg/Insider

And as the parent of a 1-year-old, I know that at this age, the best vacations are low key, namely, to a place involving a beach or pool. Hawaii checked both boxes.

Little girl with a pink hat on sitting in a shallow lagoon with palm trees in the distance.

I only book tropical vacations when traveling with my toddler.Emily Hochberg/Insider

Read more: As a travel editor, I vowed kids would never stop me from traveling. But one baby and a terrible trip later, that’s exactly what I’ve done.

Since I live in California, the flight would be shorter than to most other tropical places. It seemed like a great idea, and I traveled to Oahu with my husband and daughter.

A woman walking holding the hand of her small child to a lit up sign that says Aloha.

An Aloha sign in Hawaii.Emily Hochberg/Insider

Our travels did not go exactly as planned. As I learned, traveling with a child is not a vacation, it’s a trip. And it’s not usually a relaxing one.

A toddler girl asleep on her mother while she takes a selfie.

One of many times when I was nap-trapped.Emily Hochberg/Insider

I booked an 8 a.m. flight thinking it would keep my daughter on a somewhat normal schedule. But she was cranky from waking up early and wanted to be carried, solely by me. Since she weighs 25 pounds, I was exhausted by the time we boarded.

A woman taking a selfie on an airplane holding her toddler next to the window who is holding a muffin.

On the plane with my daughter.Emily Hochberg/Insider

Onboard, I thought we’d offer

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ADVENTURE
Cranberry Mountain Nature Center gets facelift
Colorful panels with photos and descriptions of flowers found in the Cranberry Wilderness adorn the back wall of Cranberry Mountain Nature Center’s exhibit room. The center has made several upgrades to the exhibits, as well as adding new displays. S. Stewart photo

Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when travel was at a standstill and visitors were scarce, the Cranberry Mountain Nature Center was hard at work making changes to the main exhibit room. It was time to rearrange and upgrade the more than 20 year old exhibits.

Now, with touch screen kiosks, informative panels and a historical display, the exhibit room has new life and is ready for visitors to return.

Entering the center, to the left there is now a panoramic mural of a photograph taken at daybreak at the overlook at High Rocks. It acts as a great backdrop for a family photo or selfie, and is also an introduction to the Cranberry Wilderness. 

On the wall is a touch screen with information about places of interest in the wilderness.

“We started with some basic stuff,” Nature Center Director Diana Stull said. “We’re going to add more [to the touch screen] later. There’s a QR code that takes you to websites and in some cases, there are more sites that you can get to, such as the Pocahontas County CVB website.”

As its name implies, the center is focused on nature, but Stull said it was important to include tourism and historical information, as well.

To the back of the exhibit room is a new multi-paneled display about wildflowers that are found in the Cranberry Wilderness. The panels are double sided and are changed throughout the year to display spring, early summer, late summer, autumn and winter specific flowers.

The panels also have a

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TRAVELLING
Pet travel: Tips for travelling with your bunny from a cotton-tailed TikTok star

Miffy the bunny’s first trip was one of necessity. When his owner Sami Chen relocated to New York from Taiwan in 2018, she couldn’t bear to leave her fluffy companion behind.

Once she was settled, Miffy followed with a pet travel company.

“He came here by himself and he was really brave,” says Sami, who works as a classical pianist and fashion designer.

Miffy’s 25-year-old owner hadn’t planned on gaining a new travel buddy. “Bunnies are usually very tense in new environments. They get stressed out easily…it’s really hard for them to trust humans,” she says.

But after spending an extended time in a cage during the flight and between homes, Miffy needed to stretch his legs.

“I started taking him out to the park to exercise,” says Sami.

She noticed Miffy was really friendly to humans – “I feel like he thinks he’s human or something!” – so she decided to take him further afield, starting with short trips close to home.

“When I travel with Miffy he gets really cuddly – I think it’s a bonding experience,” Sami adds. “And he trusts me [because] every time after we travel, he goes back to the same house.”

Now, the pair are inseparable.

“He is kind of attached to me and I’m attached to him. So it’s nice that we travel everywhere together,” says Sami.

Does Miffy the bunny enjoy travelling?

As Sami says, bunnies aren’t always suited to the travelling life. But Miffy doesn’t seem fazed.

“A few weeks ago we went travelling and he was ‘binkying’ in the hotel room,” recalls Sami. “He was just so happy dancing all around and it was super cute.”

When they return from their adventures, Miffy displays his affection by licking Sami and shows he’s relaxed by flopping onto his

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VACATION
Collier County beaches still popular before arrival of Hurricane Ian

While Collier County’s schools were already slated to be off Sept. 26, overcast skies and the occasional drizzle kept most beachgoers away for the day.

Some but not all.

On Marco Island, Lely High School student Kai Spitzer strolled South Beach’s public entryway with the goal of assessing wave heights before lugging his gear from home.

His goal: Teaching his girlfriend Kaitlyn Abellar how to surf. 

Hurricane Ian:Collier remains under tropical storm warning; Lee under hurricane warning

Closings and cancellations:What’s closed, being canceled in Collier County because of the storm

Preparations:Sanibel businesses board up; shops start prep ahead of Hurricane Ian

School closings:Lee, Collier schools closing ahead of Hurricane Ian

Kaitlyn Abellar and Kai Spitzer along South Beach's walkway on Marco Island.

Elsewhere on Marco, three generations of the McHugh family from Buffalo were all smiles while having fun splashing, swimming and building sandcastles at the beach. They arrived for their annual month-long island vacation Sept. 24.

Matriarch Melissa McHugh said they were staying put at their Sunset Cove timeshare for the potential storm, noting, “We have food, shelter and water. We’re all set and hoping to make the best of it.” 

Overcast skies on Sept. 26 were not enough to stop Melissa and Edward McHugh and their grandson Eli from having fun on Marco Island's South Beach.

The bartenders at the waterfront Sunset Grille aimed to help with that goal; her husband Ed returned with a potent potable to sip at the beach.  

Heading uptown to a few blocks north of Naples Pier, Christy Renata, a ski instructor from Vail, Colorado, who’s spending season here, brought therapy dog Lily to the beach to acclimate her Australian Shepherd to the sounds of potential storm conditions.

Lily is not a thunder-shirt kind of dog.

Though this is pup’s first storm threat, this isn’t Renata’s first hurricane; she was in South Carolina during Hugo in 1989. Her rental home is prepped with supplies to last at least a week.

“What’s the worst thing that could

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TOUR
Japan tourist restrictions to end on October 11: Independent travel to resume

It’s the news so many Australians have been waiting for: Japan is reopening to independent travellers.

The nation that has been one of the world’s most cautious in its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping its borders closed to tourists into 2022, and then beginning a staged reopening with guided group tours, and then unguided package tours, has announced that from October 11, Japan will resume allowing visa-free, independent travel for foreign visitors.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made the long-awaited announcement during a speech at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, following a pledge he made in May that Japan would bring its border controls more in line with other Group of Seven nations.

“We are a nation that has flourished through the free flow of people, goods and capital,” Kishida said. “COVID-19, of course, interrupted all of these benefits, but from October 11, Japan will relax border control measures to be on par with the US, as well as resume visa-free travel and individual travel.”

The announcement will be welcome news in Australia in particular, given Antipodean travellers’ fascination with Japan over the past decade. The number of Australian visitors to Japan grew 324 per cent in the 10 years prior to the pandemic, with more than 520,000 Australian visitors in 2019. The country was one of our top 10 international destinations before the pandemic – number seven in 2019, just behind Thailand and China – and Japan was also the most-searched country on Traveller.com.au before international travel restrictions took hold.

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ADVENTURE
Sunset Summit brings big-name mountain bikers to Bentonville

Later this week, the Sunset Summit will draw international and prominent national mountain biking ambassadors to the Momentary Green in Bentonville to give women tools to become better mountain bikers while forming deep bonds and community.

The events are hosted by the Women of OZ, a local nonprofit organization that has produced the highest number of certified female mountain biking coaches in the country.

Sunset Summit will include a panel event, coaching clinics and a concert by alt pop band Japanese Breakfast, named Best New Artist at this year’s Grammy Awards. More than 75 top mountain-biking industry leaders and coaches will lead OZ trail rides and workshops, according to a news release.

Scheduled keynote speakers for the summit are Brooke Goudy, co-leader of Black Girls Do Bike; Lindsey Richter, the founder of Ladies AllRide, whom you might remember as a contestant on “Survivor”; and the first professional mountain biker of east Indian heritage, Anita Naidu.

“Anita (Naidu) is a talented trailblazer in the women’s mountain bike space,” says Allyson de la Houssaye of Women of OZ. “She’s the first Black/Brown pro female rider, DEAI advocate and conservationist. We are beyond excited to have her as a part of this incredible event.”

Naidu is an award-winning humanitarian, engineer and aspiring astronaut from Whistler, British Columbia. She will be speaking at the panel event on Sept. 16 and coaching mountain biking clinics on Sept. 17. She chatted with What’s Up! prior to her visit.

You hold titles as many “firsts.” First mountain biking pro of Eastern Indian descent and being among the first women to compete at Crankworx Speed and Style at Innsbruck, Austria, are just a couple. How does that feel to earn those distinctions? Is it ever bittersweet knowing that surely women before you must have wanted the same opportunities?

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TRAVELLING
Tips For Traveling This Fall Season

August has flown by fast as lightning and summertime is dwindling down. Most folks waited all year for summer. However, no one can deny that fall weather, colors, and events are a vibe we all look forward to. Travel is essential during the fall months and there are a plethora of destinations that come to life during this season. So while everyone else is returning to school, you can take a break and vacay somewhere popping in the fall.

There are quite a few perks to traveling during fall time. Not only will you beat the heat, but you’ll also catch a few deals you won’t find during the summer. Keep your travel plans fun, efficient, and stress-free with these tips for traveling this fall.

Research Your Destination To Avoid Crowds

Traveling This Fall Season

Photo Courtesy of Cameron Casey.

Everyone knows Summer is prime time for overcrowding in popular destinations. It sometimes seems like everyone everywhere decided to take a vacation at the same time. Although the Fall season usually signifies a drop in travel plans, some destinations attract large crowds year-round. 

Depending on your destination, be sure to research the tourist attractions to find out the busiest times for visitors. You’ll want to plan your visit around those times to avoid large crowds. If you’re trying to avoid crowds altogether, research to find out which destinations attract fewer tourists during the Fall season. This will help you narrow down your list of options.

Find Travel Deals

Traveling This Fall Season

Photo Courtesy of Andrea Piacquadio.

Since traveling during the Fall is nowhere near as busy as the Summer months, some travel agents will offer special discounts. Look out for these deals when booking Fall time travel. Because there are fewer tourists visiting, you may even find special deals on attractions and excursions as well.

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TOUR
Free Pennsylvania Game Lands tours available

(WHTM) – The Pennsylvania Game Commission is offering tours of Pennsylvania Game Lands next month.

There will be free tours offered on three Sundays in October at various locations across the commonwealth.

Tours are rain or shine and open only to vehicles licensed for travel on public roads.

Sunday, Oct. 2

  • State Game Lands 42, Somerset and Westmoreland counties, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. — The tour begins at the game lands parking lot located off Route 271 on the Somerset/Westmoreland County line. Look for the sign. The tour will conclude at Furnace Lane in New Florence. This self-guided, one-way tour spanning across an approximate 7.3-mile stretch of game lands will highlight mountainous terrain and various habitat enhancement projects. Items of interest along the tour include a study area for ruffed grouse, road maintenance and access improvements, forestry projects, remnants of an old iron furnace and more. Game Commission staff will be along the tour route to highlight projects and answer questions.
  • State Game Lands 57, Luzerne and Wyoming counties, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. — Game Commission personnel will be on hand to explain points of interest, including wildlife habitat-improvement projects. Four-wheel-drive vehicles with high clearance are required for this 30-mile, self-guided driving tour, which will take about three hours to complete. The tour will pass habitat-improvement projects completed by the State Game Lands 57 wildlife habitat crew with help from the National Wild Turkey Federation, Whitetails Unlimited and Ducks Unlimited. Representatives from the Game Commission and conservation organizations will be on hand to explain the projects and answer questions. The route will start at the game lands parking area on Mountain Springs Road just off Route 487. Each vehicle will be provided a map and brief explanation of wildlife habitat management programs being carried out on
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TRAVELLING
Travelling into 2023: Top tips for planning your next trip from The Independent’s travel team

Train strikes, the future of aviation and the dreaded B-word (you know the one – Brexit): these were just some of the topics covered in The Independent’s latest virtual event, Travelling into 2023, with travel editor Helen Coffey and travel correspondent Simon Calder.

In a fast-paced hour-long session, our experts attempted to answer as many reader questions as possible, sharing top tips on how to save on a trip abroad (Simon’s recommendation of a Barcelona hostel costs just €30 a night, while cheap ski destinations included Bulgaria, Italy, Slovakia and the Pyrenees) and inspiration on destinations for your next cultural break (Antwerp, Rotterdam and Lille all got a name-check).

While the upcoming October industrial action on the nation’s railways was no cause for celebration, Simon advised that there might be a brighter future when it comes to air travel – the age of the £10 flight may be “over” (in the words of Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary), but the competitive aviation market in Europe means flight prices should fall compared to sky-high summer fares.

Watch the event in full in the recording below

Travelling into 2023: Top holiday tips with Simon Calder and Helen Coffey

Sustainable travel was also high on holidaymakers’ agendas, with plenty of questions about reaching European destinations by train. Helen gave reassurance that travelling by rail from London to Munich was eminently doable, involving as little as two changes and taking less than a day. In response to a query about reaching Albania flight-free, Simon suggested catching trains to Italy and a ferry from there to the historic port city of Durrës.

Meanwhile, some popular Brexit-related queries were dealt with: you can stay in the EU for up to 90 days in any 180-day period; a new Etias system is launching in November next

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