Mini breaks ideas (with kids)

[yorkie99]

I’m after some holiday ideas please! Solo mum and 5 year old boy. We’ve been on beach holidays but our favourite trips have been to Disneyland Paris and London. Anything similar to these? I know there’s a theme park in Netherlands which looks good but not sure how easy it is to get there. I also quite fancy Scotland but not sure how exciting it is for kids.

Budapest! You can visit the secret cave hospital, take a ride on the railway run entirely by children (still operated by teenagers). There are loads of open air spas with family areas all over the city. There's a funicular railway and then you can get back down the hill on a ski lift. You can take a boat ride down the Danube and visit Margrit Island where you can hire bikes, including ones with a cart on the back if DC doesn't cycle yet. On the island there is a huge fountain that plays in time to rock music (Queen when I visited.)

There's a zoo. (We didn't visit) The cafes all sell incredible cakes. There is a lovely animal petting cafe. We had a chameleon climb all over us, changing colour according to our teeshirts. On hot days they have these doorframes just dotted around the pavements and town squares, and when you walk through them, they mist you with cool water spray. It's a perfect city to take a young child. It's sort of like a live Disneyland. It's so magical.

Edited to say - and you can take a day trip out to the bear sanctuary (where the bears are genuinely very well looked after, with loads of space to roam. You get given very long wooden spoons and a pot of honey and if the bears want (they do) they come to the edge of the enclosure and you put the spoon through the bars and the bears lick off the honey.

PortAventura in Spain is very easy to get to by public transport and there’s an airport very close. There’s more than 1 park there and a few hotels so definitely worth a mini break.

Edinburgh - national museum of Scotland, dynamic earth, camera obscura, climb some hills, the zoo, portobello beach, castle, lots of green space in and around the city......
Head to Aviemore if you want more rural scotland, there's loads to see and do with kids in that area.
York - national railway museum, castle museum, jorvik, walk the city walls, boat ride on the river, open top bus tour......

Have you thought of Billund in Denmark? Home of Lego including the amazing legohouse and mini chef restaurant (can’t be missed).