As much as possible, we’re trying to avoid restaurants. They take too long if you’ve got a busy day of touring, good ones can be expensive, and given my kids’ horrendous eating habits (more about that later) they're just not a healthy choice long-term. So whenever we have our own kitchen, which so far is most of the time, we’re shopping in the local grocery stores (which I find sort of fun and is also an education in itself for the kids) and cooking for ourselves.

Breakfast is easy: fruit, yogurt, toast, cereal and milk, with the occasional toaster waffle or pastry thrown in. Leftovers from the previous night’s dinner are also good.

Lunches vary—if we’re touring in the car, it’s pretty much going to be sandwich bar. We’ve got a cooler bag, blue ice, and a default list of what to pack for lunch on the road. Or to be more specific, on the side of the road (thanks to whoever is responsible for putting all those picnic tables on the highways, by the way!) We’ve also had some pretty great lunches in random parks, village greens and sheep fields.

If we’re touring a city without a car, lunch in a restaurant is more likely since the schlep factor is too high for DIY. There you’ve got to work harder to avoid the tourist trap factor (the closer it is to your museum/castle/cultural draw, the crappier/more crowded/more overpriced it will be). Local recommendations are the best way to find the roses among the thorns. We’ve had some great lunches by finding out where locals eat—see our specific destination pages for those.

Dinners tend not to be super imaginative: lots of pasta meals, the odd roast chicken, and some soup if I’ve planned ahead and it’s not too hot. But in general, I tend to buy whatever vegetables I can find (availability is the limiting factor) and then fill in with whatever I think the kids aren’t sick and tired of. But honestly, we’ve defaulted to spaghetti bolognese more often than I’m proud of. So much for my grand vision of retraining the kids' palates! I’ve not given up, though—stay tuned for progress reports on that front.