We have always prioritized spending time with our children and gifting them experiences over material possessions (see this post and this post). Traveling with children can be expensive, but we’ve learned a few tricks over the past decade for saving money while road tripping.
We are fortunate to live an hour outside of New York City and we take advantage of our close proximity as much as possible. There are so many family friendly places in the 22 square miles of New York City that our list could potentially go into the hundreds! For this week, however, we’ll stick with 25 places we have explored over the past decade, including a few spots that spill over into the Bronx.
We’ll acknowledge some gaps in this list- the Metropolitan Museum of Art and American Museum of Natural History are missing from this list- but we have not been to some very popular spots in over a decade (all the more reason to rerun ASAP!) For organizational purposes, we’ve listed sites by location, starting with the Financial District and working on our way up island through the Upper East and West Sides all the way to the Bronx (we had to include a couple of our favorite spots, which happen to in the Bronx- see #23-25)
This past year, 2022, was an incredibly difficult year for our family. Our son unexpectedly passed away on January 1st, and while we don’t get too personal on this blog and choose to focus on our travel adventures, we could not reflect on the year without acknowledging our profound loss and deep sadness.
We did honor our son with several adventures by exploring new cities and starting new traditions. It is always with a sense of gratitude that we look back on all the places we visited in the past year. We reflected on five years of adventures in this post celebrating the 5th birthday of the blog.
The blog has been filled with posts featuring Florida attractions this year (see the complete index here). This week, we’re sharing a post we never got the chance to publish from the last time we visited family in the Delray Beach area: our top 10 guide to Butterfly World, located 45 minutes north of Miami and 45 minutes south of West Palm Beach.
Butterfly World in Coconut Creek is located in Tradewinds Park, which includes dozens of outdoor activities- see the full list “here. Opened in 1988, it is the largest butterfly park in the WORLD and home to over 20,000 butterflies, as well as insects, birds, macaw and more! Butterfly World typically has up to 50 varieties of live butterflies for guests to see each visit. There are both indoor and outdoor exhibits and most guests follow the one way path (and walk over the suspension bridge) through six aviaries, gardens, and a tropical rainforest.
The “gift of time” has always been one of my favorite phrases and one of my life mantras; I believe that spending time with someone is the greatest gift. I’ve been on a mission recently to pare down our possessions (aka get.rid.of.all.the.things) and have really adopted the “less is more” mentality.
I truly believe that the one of the greatest gifts we can give someone is to spend time with them. It is in this spirit that I am (again) sharing a “gift guide” of sorts with ideas that inspire time together. We also think many of these ideas support local and small businesses, which is always a priority for us.
While most people head to the pristine beaches or pools of Palm Beach County, Florida, there is plenty to do off the sand and surf. We’re lucky to have family who live in Delray Beach and over the years, we have enjoyed exploring a wide variety of family friendly attractions. Palm Beach County includes 39 cities, towns, and villages from Jupiter (the northern most part) to Boca Raton in the southern part of the region- see the full list here.