Age-appropriate vacations?

When my oldest child was nine months old, we got on a plane and traveled to Mexico. Despite the fact that my husband and I both served in the Peace Corps and consider ourselves fairly seasoned travelers, that vacation with our baby was the roughest trip of our life. Here’s an excerpt from a 2004 story I wrote after coming home:

GUADALAJARA, Mexico - The baby has puked again - on my left shoulder, down my back and all over the white sheets of the hotel bed. It’s 3 a.m. and he has a slight fever. He’s teething. He’s wailing. And we are a long, long way from home.

Here’s the rest of the story.

It should have been obvious, but having a child made us less portable. We learned that the hard way. Still, we’ve persisted in the last few years. We took our son to Guatemala and Honduras when he was 2. And last year, we traveled with both our kids, ages 3 and 1 at the time, to Nicaragua.

Some people say that taking kids on an overseas trip isn’t worth the trouble. In an Associated Press story published last year, one mom who took her children to Venice when they were 2 and 4 said she wished she had waited until they were a little older. “It was expensive, they were cranky and we said next time we’d go without them,” said Christine Louise Hohlbaum, an American living in Germany.

Even Maureen Wheeler, co-founder of the Lonely Planet guidebook company, recommends waiting until children are at least 3.

Is international travel with kids a complete waste? Is there such a thing as an age-appropriate vacation for a child?

What would be the ideal vacation for your family?