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On our way back from our wonderful Greenland trip , we had to spend a short (aka 5 hour) night in Reykjavik. I had booked the Hotel Klopp from CenterHotel in advance and it turned out to be the biggest disappointment in the entire trip. The management is incompetent and irresponsible. We were expecting to arrive late at the hotel due to our flight schedule. I had informed over email that we would be late, but this wouldn't be a no show. We needed the room to sleep. even for just a couple of hours, before heading to our next flight. I had received a response that it would be no problem and the reception would be open 24/7. We arrived, with 2 sleepy kids and tired adults and the front desk person told us that there was no room for us! They had "upgraded" us to another hotel of their chain, and we had to take another taxi to get to the other hotel. This, in the middle of the night, during Gay Pride! It took us 20 minutes to even get a hold of a taxi, and by then we were so ...

We recently traveled to Greenland for a week with our 3.5 year-old son and our 15-month daughter, for a variety of reasons. We were obviously not necessarily trying to optimize for a kid-friendly destination, and one of my concerns was how the kids would react on a trip with 3 destinations in a short week, plane, helicopter, boat, jeep rides, etc... and a limited amount of entertainment for them. The good news is that the logistics was much easier than expected, with high quality hotels and restaurants, punctual flights, etc... So we didn't have any issue to deal with on this front. We also got much better weather than expected, which helped with everyone's well-being. That said, emotionally, this trip could have been - and to be fair was at times- overwhelming for the kids. But overall, the kids did really great and I am sure they grew and learned a lot during that time. Charlotte, 15 months, got completely familiarized with the word/concept of "airplane" after ...

If anyone following my blog is interested in specific information about our recent trip to Greenland , below are some reviews of the hotels and restaurants we visited. I hope this is helpful. Nuuk : Hotel Seamen's Homes . Very clean and friendly. I love the view of the harbor, I think this is a key differentiator for this hotel. Our 3.5 year-old loved seeing the cranes lift the big containers. Also, he was excited to see that the dock workers came to have breakfast at the hotel, this was great entertainment for him! The only caveat is that the hotel is 20-30 minutes walk from the center, not necessarily an issue unless it rains a lot (which happened to us). Restaurant: Godthaab Bryghus. In the city center. Great muskox dishes and good service. Kid menu and crayons. Comfortable settings. Unfortunately, I don't drink beer, so I can't speak to this, but I know that my husband ordered several Godthaab Bryghus beers through the rest of our stay, so it has to be OK. Kang...

Our latest vacation led us to Greenland, a destination we hadn't necessarily thought about until this year, but one that made sense at some point, given that we regularly fly over it on our way to Europe. Since we had a wedding to attend in France, we looked into other countries we could visit on our way back and Greenland became a good candidate. It's actually not an obvious choice for a couple of reasons: the logistics is very complex (it took us several weeks to finalize our itinerary). Connections to Greenland had to go through Iceland so it was definitely more than just a "stop over" on our way back, oh, and each destination within Greenland can only be reached through planes. It's not known for being the most kids friendly. The weather is, well, cold and rainy most of the time, and mosquitoes are supposed to be an issue (we didn't get too bothered by them). But it turned out to be a good vacation nevertheless. We were very lucky and got a great weather...

Sorry for this obvious pat in the back, but I was so relieved after surviving a 20-hour journey by myself with 2 young kids, that I wanted to write about it. Maybe it will help other parents contemplating the same type of trip. As a background to the 20-hour journey idea, my husband and I had to attend a wedding in France in July, and it was a great opportunity for me and the kids to go and visit family closeby before the wedding (my husband wasn't able to get vacation time during that week, unfortunately). The idea was to spend some time post-wedding traveling to Greenland on our way back. So far so good, sounded like a great idea (and it turned out that our Greenland trip was so worth it ). In order to make the trip affordable, though, all connections has to go through Reykjavik (Iceland), so the itinerary ended up looking a little bit like this: SFO (San Francisco) -SEA (Seattle) -KEF (Rekjavik) - CDG (Paris). On the way back, the itinerary branched off from Reykjavik to Gre...