Entries by Matt Villano

Building Brand Loyalty at an Early Age

My older daughter always will remember her first visit to a Four Seasons Resort. It’s not because we spotted Bruce Willis in the elevator. It’s not because she got a personal tour of the spring collection at Badgely Mischka. It’s not even because a thoughtful housekeeper had written her name in stickers on the door […]

Take That, Magic Eyes

Parents who travel with young children know all too well that a constant dose of new places requires creative and innovative approaches to helping sons and daughters get past irrational—and totally normal—kid fears. Some kids might need help with overcoming the notion of eating vegetables. Others might require moral support to wrap their heads around […]

Packing Tips for Air Travel with Little Ones

Packing for travel is sort of like kissing—you always can improve. This statement rings especially true for family travelers; as our kids get older (and as we add more kids), the challenges of squeezing all of their stuff into a manageable number of bags and boxes require increasing doses of innovation and skill. Fittingly, a […]

The Best Goodie Bags Ever

When family travel is all you know, you can’t help but share that passion with others. Case in point: A writer buddy, Meg Nesterov, who put together quite possibly the coolest goodie bags ever for her daughter’s second birthday party this coming weekend. The bags, which will be doled out to a handful of kids […]

A Little Help from Some Friends

As much as I despise the word, “staycation,” we’re big fans of family travel to destinations within a 1- or 2-hour drive of our home. Partly this is because we live in Sonoma County, California, IMHO one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It’s also because Powerwoman and I believe strongly that you don’t […]

Wandering Pod Surfaces on Another Major Site

Another month, another new content partnership for Wandering Pod. This time, the partnership is with Smart Family Travel, a new family travel site published in conjunction with Scholastic’s Parent & Child magazine. The site debuted in June but didn’t really go live until this past week. My inaugural piece serves up five stress-free tips for […]

Why Stop at Breast Pumps?

It’s about time. That’s pretty much exactly what I thought earlier this week when I read about a new program at the Hard Rock Chicago through which nursing moms can request (for a tax-deductible fee) hospital-grade Medela breast pumps to use during their stays. A breast pump! From the hotel! To save moms the hassle […]

Lessons in Family Travel Preparedness

Our recent family road trip along the western side of Oahu certainly was filled with surprises. Some of them were pleasant—on the way from Disney’s Aulani Resort & Spa to Ka’ena Point State Park, we spotted a pod of dolphins frolicking in the surf and pulled over to watch them for a while. Others , […]

Balancing Work and Family Travel on the Road

As many of you know, Wandering Pod is only one of the things I do professionally; I actually earn a living writing about family travel (and business, technology, education, science, gambling, and other stuff) as a full-time freelance journalist. This means that many of my family’s trips are work trips for moi. It also means […]

Baby Steps with Behavior on Planes

The meltdown came with about 75 minutes left in our flight home. Somewhere over the Pacific, thousands of miles east of Honolulu, where the flight began, R, our baby, went berserk. We weren’t entirely sure what set her off. Perhaps it was exhaustion. Perhaps it was a slight-but-noticeable change in cabin pressure. Perhaps it was […]