If you’re looking for destinations in Europe, Paris should be near the top of the list.

Like any trip, be sure to plan ahead.  September is the busiest month for tourism in Paris, so book your hotel room well in advance.  You can visit after September, of course, but if you do, pack extra raincoats and umbrellas, because you will definitely get rained on.

Upon arrival, kids with any sense of Europe are going to want to see three very important sites.

First, the Eiffel Tower.  Hated when it was built as an ugly monstrosity, it’s now one of the most famous landmarks in the world.  There are four lines to get onto the tower, so look for the shortest one.  Don’t be afraid to haggle over souvenirs underneath it, and make sure to go to the top of the tower at least once.

Second, thanks to Victor Hugo (and Disney’s) famous Hunchback, don’t miss Notre Dame Cathedral, where Napoleon took the crown out of the Pope’s hands and crowned himself.  If you don’t mind a bit of a wait and a climb up 386 stairs, the view from the bell tower is worth it.

And third, the Mona Lisa.  This will require a visit to the Louvre, which is like visiting another city inside Paris.  Fortunately, like all of the museums in Paris, anyone under the age of 18 gets into the Louvre for free.  Buy your tickets online, to avoid a long wait outside the museum (or, if you didn’t get the chance to do that, use the underground entrance in the shopping mall.  That’s where you’ll find shortest line).

It’s easy to get lost in the Louvre, because the museum is huge.  You’ll never see the whole thing in one visit, so don’t even try.  Just follow the signs to the most famous exhibits, like the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa, and enjoy the sights along the way.

Club Mediterranee–”Club Med”–is a chain of resorts based in France, based on the concept that the staff should make friends and freely associate with the guests.  Their Sandpiper location is two hours from either Orlando or Miami, and was designed to be the perfect “family friendly” Club Med location.

The rooms are perfect for a family.  They are roomy and comfortable, with large closets and easy access to washer and dryer, and even a sitting area with sofa and chairs.

Sandpiper offers specific rooms and programs for each age group.  Infants, one year olds, two year olds, three, etc; each one has a room dedicated and a program suited to them.  There’s even a “Baby Bottle Room,” open 24 hours and stocked to handle any child’s snack requests.

For walkers up to two years old, there are activities like Bubbles Walk and Swing and Slide.  Two and three year olds are helped with Plaster Hands, Magic Show, and Discovery Walk.

Four to seven year olds can enjoy hat making, trampoline, and the Sandpiper 500, while eight to ten year olds get to start on rollerblading, waterskiing, and tubing (waterskiing on an inner tube).  And eleven to seventeen year olds can enjoy trapeze, golf, tennis, sailing and more; just check the activities list posted daily.

Every week, the kids join in for a MiniClub stage show, complete with costumes and lighting.  And every evening, the kids hop into pedal cars for the nightly Sandpiper 500 race.

Oh, and there’s stuff for the adults, too.  Tennis, trapeze, trampoline, waterskiing, Disco Yoga, sailing, and golf are all available.  There’s also the Siesta Club, where Sandpiper staff will sit with kids from 8pm to 1am while the grownups get out of the hotel room.

All in all, there aren’t too many places more family-oriented than Club Med Sandpiper.

Universal Studios is a great place to take the kids.  Not only do they have wild and interesting rides, but you can get a look “behind the scenes” at how movies and tv shows are made.

The park is actually split into two parts.  The upper part is the theme park, with the majority of the rides, the characters, and the food.  It’s separated from the lower part with one of the largest escalators in the world.  The lower part is the actual film lot, and a tram ride shows visitors quite a lot of it.

First, the rides and attractions.  Using the same sort of “flight simulator” design as Disney’s Star Tours, the Back to the Future ride lets visitors ride in a modified time machine into the past and future, and the tourists almost get eaten by a dinosaur along the way.

The ride that dominates the entire park, though, is the Jurassic Park ride.  The plot is simple; the tourists are on a boat excursion through the park when the “incident” from the movie releases the animals.  The boats are diverted into the waste processing facility, while being threatened by a variety of animated dinosaurs, and just as it seems they’re about to be eaten by the T-Rex, they dive beneath his feet and down a huge drop into water.  The “you might get wet” warning is an understatement–the ride is designed to soak every rider to the skin.

Follow the soaking with the Backdraft attraction.  After an intro area that shows how some of the fire effects are created, the crowd is ushered into a mock-up of a factory that explodes into flame right in front of them.  There are literally explosions happening twenty feet in front of you, with no more protection than a handrail.

The tram ride is a mostly tame but very entertaining ride through movie history, complete with the Bates Motel from Psycho, the shark from Jaws, and a simulated earthquake in a train station.

All in all, Universal Studios Hollywood is a great place to take the kids for a weekend.

If you’re looking for skiiing nearly 365 days a year, then Whistler-Blackcomb is the place to go.  Located less than two hours from Vancouver, British Columbia, Whistler will be the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics.  It has over eight thousand acres of territory, including over two hundred ski trails, and receives thirty feet of snow per year, on average.  And, since the peak of Whistler Mountain has year-round snow, a trip in June doesn’t mean leaving the skis behind.

Winter fun abounds, with skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, heli-skiing (helicopter ride to the top of the mountain), and the Coca Cola Tube park, where entire families can ride inner tubes down the slopes.

In the summer, the upper peaks remain snow covered, and the lower hills become the Whistler Blackcomb Mountain Bike Park.  The Zipline Ecotour is a fun and exciting way to explore old-growth forest–by zooming across a cable a hundred feet off the ground.  Other summer activities include a combination bungee/trampoline, ATV and jet boat rides, whitewater rafting, bungee jumping, and a climbing wall.

Whistler has one of the best children’s ski training programs in the world, pairing the children with the same instructor for the entire week.  The ski areas include family friendly slopes with “Go Slow!” flags posted, a ski-through castle, and an Enchanted Forest.

Daycare is also available for younger children; the daycare attendants are licensed, and they keep a 1 to 4 ratio for infants and toddlers, and a 1 to 7 ratio for preschoolers.  For both groups, the parents are given a pager in case of emergency.  Whistler even has a Kid’s Night on Saturday evenings for children aged 5 to 12; after all, they deserve a break from their parents sometime, right?

Finally, Whistler is Dog Friendly!  No need to leave Rex in the care of neighbors or strangers, because even the furry family members are welcome.