Travel guide, $2.99

Children are so darned easy to please. Last summer we took the train to Sydney, and throughout our week there my five-year-old kept bursting out, “This is the best holiday I’ve ever been on!” This year, we’re taking the ferry to Tasmania. I gathered the children around the computer and showed them a picture of one of the cabins on board. “We’ll be sleeping in these bunk beds, and when we wake up, we’ll be in Tasmania,” I explained. Their mouths dropped open. “Whoa…” the younger one finally said.

I take a guidebook with me no matter where I go, ever since I went on a family holiday to New York at the age of nineteen and found I had no idea where to go or what to do with my precious free time. I had a mind to catch sight of some local hipsters, but I didn’t know where they hung out. My parents have never needed guidebooks, you see. They just plan their days in accordance with whatever pamphlets are in the hotel lobby.