The first time that we traveled with friends en famille, our daughter was only 9 months old.  Four families who had enjoyed a share house together in our child-free years brought our babies back to Nantucket, crowing about how we weren’t going to let parenthood crimp our vacation style.

The fact that there were more baby bottles than wine bottles strewn around the house that week was clear evidence that we had indeed let parenthood crimp our vacation style in a major way.  Nonetheless, that trip was enough of a success that we returned to Nantucket again the following year. (Only once more, though.  Four toddlers under one roof?  Oy.)

Since then,  our family has enjoyed three other group vacations, in locations ranging from Portugal to the Jersey shore.  Along the way, I’ve learned quite a bit about my friends’ quirky travel personalities.

Some families seem to chuck scheduling and routines out the window when they travel, others adhere tightly to  familiar rituals.  Some like to cook whenever possible, others believe that vacations and meal planning should be mutually exclusive. There are see-everything-on-the-vacation-spreadsheet-by-noon families and there are I’ve-got-everything-I-need-right-here-on-this-deck-chair families.  Families who blow the bank on vacation and those who would sooner stay indoors than pay THAT for sunscreen.

Will I lose my credibility a bit if I admit that I’ve knowingly and willingly vacationed with all of these types, sometimes all at once?

I’ve taken care of tearful babies while my own slept peacefully (no, really, guys, she was no trouble while you were gone).   I’ve surrendered my own restaurant reservations in order to get some extra time with the group.  I’ve talked vacation partners into some not-so-bright ideas (Portuguese Flea Market, anyone?) and taken the endless flack that resulted.  I’ve endured countless squabbles and tears (most, but not all, from our offspring).

And yet . . . I am a huge fan of vacationing with other families.

Our kids’ need for sleep is hardly a hindrance if we can all sit out on the deck with a bottle of wine once they’ve gone to bed.  My desire to shop and my husband’s need to golf can both be indulged when we both have playmates.  Our kids have built in playmates, too, which up the odds considerably that I might actually finish my novel.

Best of all, when we travel with friends, we all seem to laugh more.  If travel is about happy memories, then who better to create those memories with than the people who make us the happiest?

“He came silently out of the midnight shadows of August 31, 1888. Watching. Stalking. Butchering raddled, drink-sodden East End prostitutes. Leaving a trail of blood that led…nowhere.”

As I read the brochure for The Original London Walks’ Jack the Ripper tour, I could scarcely contain my excitement. Not only was I going somewhere, I was going somewhere without kids. Somewhere interesting! At night! The two-hour walking tour of the nineteenth century’s most famous serial killer’s slashing ground promised to “evoke an atmosphere of gaslight, fog, menacing shadows and stealthy footsteps.”

But wait it got better.

The guide, Donald Rumbelow, was Britain’s most distinguished crime historian. He was the author of The Complete Jack the Ripper. He was the senior consultant for every Ripper film ever made. He was the former curator of the City of London Police Crime Museum. He was . . . recovering from foot surgery.

With my enthusiasm flagging only slightly, I boarded the train for London from my home in the sleepy Surrey suburbs to rendezvous with the substitute guide. An evening without kids, after all, is an evening without kids.

*

As I pulled up in a black cab, I saw a group of tourists gathered at the entrance to Tower Hill tube station. Across the street, the Tower of London glowed eerily in London’s ubiquitous and justifiably famous fog. The guide, Russell, beckoned me near and took my £5. He may not have been the internationally recognized authority on all things Ripper, but as he called my attention to the remnants of a 2,000 year-old wall that had once surrounded the Roman settlement of Londinium, I forgot all about that.

The wall, Russell told us, had played a key role in the Ripper story. History’s most famous serial killer cannily struck on both sides of this ancient boundary. This threw the Victorian investigation into chaos as the rival police forces of the City of London and the City of Westminster argued over jurisdiction and ownership of key evidence.

Next we came to Mitre Square. Here Catharine Eddowes had been strangled. Here, with a very big knife, her uterus had been removed, and her cheeks slashed. Here her still-warm body had been found by a terrified beat cop on his nightly rounds. Here I discovered that practical-joking locals like to sneak up behind Jack the Ripper tours in the dark and frighten them for fun.

“BOO!” shouted a voice from the shadows, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t lead the short-lived, but panicky, stampede that resulted. It sounds silly now, but of course everything is scarier in the dark.

It happened twice more as we tiptoed in the footsteps of the five unfortunate prostitutes were chosen, stalked, murdered, and mutilated in and around the murky recesses of Petticoat Lane (Boo!), Miller’s Court (Boo!), and Spitalfield’s Market.

Our last stop was Whitechurch Lane behind the notorious Ten Bells Pub. Today the street is lined with posh restored eighteenth-century brick townhouses, but when Annie Chapman was disemboweled behind a flophouse there in 1888, it was not quite so upscale. Although it was never found, forensics of the day concluded that the murder weapon was-as usual-a very broad, fourteen-inch knife.

There in the chilly shadow of the imposing Christ Church, Russell concluded our tour. Ultimately, he told us, the murders were pinned on Montague John Druitt, a dead man who was conveniently unable to defend himself. Although the murders did stop after his alleged suicide, modern criminal profiling absolves him.

So who was Jack the Ripper? To this day, there is no real consensus. Twenty-first century sleuths can take their pick from among the acknowledged suspects. There was a local abortionist, a misogynistic tailor, a grieving father, a syphilitic Royal, a polygamous poisoner, a psychopathic sailor, and a bankrupt butcher, to name only a few. Whoever he was, eyewitnesses accounts all paint a similar picture: Jack the Ripper was a prosperous-looking, well-dressed man in his forties. He was about five-foot-ten, with brown hair and a brown mustache.

And tucked under his arm, he always carried a broad, flat fourteen-inch parcel wrapped in brown butcher-paper.

Boo!

*

The Jack the Ripper walking tour is for big kids only.  Obviously.  The company recommends children younger than 13 take a pass.  I’d say 15.  If you’ve got younger ones, browse their Walks for Kids.  Try the Harry Potter tour, maybe.  You can have just as much fun without all the gore.

I know it’s traditional to look forward on December 31st, but I’d like to look back instead.  It was a great year, and I am beyond grateful to the dozens of women who loaned their stories to Travel Savvy Mom.  They gave me an opportunity to laugh, learn, and think (pretty much in that order).

Here are some of my favorites.

1.  The Grim Reaper Goes to Scotland by Jody Mace.  In which an American mother living in England takes her kids trick-or-treating, and receives…a potato.

2.  5 Things I Learned When My Daughter Threw Up on a Plane by Jane Rytina, who once arrived at London Heathrow so saturated with child vomit that her own mother opted to postpone hugging her until after she’d had a shower.

3.  Why We Travel by Kayt Sukel, who defends her family travel philosophy that Museums>Theme Parks. Even for kids.

4.  Been There, Done That by Rebecca Tompkins, who found out the hard way on a road trip to Stonehenge that 6 is the new 16.  Or can be.

5.  Oh No!  It’s . . . a Grandcation by Jamie Pearson, who has vacationed with her parents and in-laws on at least four separate occasions and lived to tell the tale.

6.  Fair Play: Ethical Family Travel in South Africa by Katherine Barrett, a thoughtful expat mom who considers the political implications of family travel.

7.  Costa Rica: Five Family Favorites by Jenny Jensen.  All the jungles, volcanoes, and beaches, without the schlepping and whining.

8.  Top 12 Things I Learned at Disneyland by Debbie Abrams Kaplan, who loved her trip to the happiest place on earth, wet crotch notwithstanding.

9.  Look, Up in the Sky! It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a . . . Treesort by Jennifer Margulis, who lived everyone’s childhood fantasy of sleeping in the trees.  Don’t hate her.

10.  In Which an Indoorsy Writer Vacations on an Elk Farm by Sheri Bell-Rehwoldt, which is no less hilarious for being self-explanatory.

Thank you everyone for a wonderful year.  If 2009 is half as good, I’ll consider myself lucky.

Halloween photo courtesy of Jody Mace. Frowning girl photo courtesy of Rebecca Tompkins.  Treehouse photo courtesy of Jennifer Margulis.

Many years ago in Connecticut on swanky Fishers Island, I saw the world’s most perfect road sign.  It read: Dead End.  Just behind it was a tiny cemetery, the gravestones jauntily leaning left and right like so many crooked teeth.

I’ve kicked myself many times over the years for not having the presence of mind to take a picture.  Thus began my love of funny road signs.

Mark Sedenquist and Megan Edwards, the authors of Caution: Funny Signs Ahead, share my love of funny road signs, but not my photographic regrets.  They’ve been collecting pictures of funny American and Canadian road signs for over a decade, and have published the best ones here.  Whether because of burned out neon, unfortunate juxtaposition, or tragic grammar, there is plenty in their book to keep you laughing out loud all the way through.

A lot of the humor is off-color, but with the exception of one memorably tasteless joke about a Proctologist named Anil Ram, it’s pretty harmless stuff.  Shakespeare it’s not.  Still I found that once I started reading, I couldn’t stop.  Sort of like eating Cheetos.

We’ve got our review copy to give to the person who emails us the funniest road (or store) sign photo between now and January 5th.  Please send them to jamie@travelsavvymom.com.  If we get anything good, we’ll publish it here.

Good luck, and Happy New Year!