Mom used to drag me to some nerdy places on holidays. I remember being bored as hell at Colonial Williamsburg and on a tour of the Gettysburg Battlefield.
It’s hard to guess how to play the Smithsonian in order to avoid kids. Do you go during school vacation to avoid entire classrooms being dragged through or do you go when school is in to avoid individual families dragging their kids?
I’m going to go with Rome.
Other than the Coloseum and getting into St. Peter’s Basillica, the crowds aren’t bad. If you go early in the morning, both can be empty. The other places to see have people for sure, but they wouldn’t be overwhelming. The amount of history is just ridiculous as well as the amount of engineering and art can’t not stir an intelligent human being. With day trips to Pompeii and Florence, there is too much to see. Also, Italy caters to your food concerns. You can survive on gelato alone for a week, but pizza and pasta on every street corner restaurant. If you go in the off-season, you will have a blast!
The Houston Natural Science Museum is nice but the big dog down there is Johnson Space Center.
Consider Puerto Rico if you like Pirates of the Caribbean or age of sail stuff in general. The seaside castles (San Cristobal and El Morro) are amazing. Oh, and the city of San Juan itself predates British colonization anywhere in the Americas by about a hundred years. Ain’t going to find buildings that old in Boston or Philly.
I think that Washington DC is your best option. If you go to the museums once school has started, and families are no longer vacationing, then there aren’t very many crowds. My favorite time of the year to go to the Smithsonian is November-February. There are very few people there so we can go in and out.
DC has the Kennedy Center so you can see an opera, a symphony or if you time it right, you can watch the ballet. There is the Washington Ballet, which has performances around town. Last but not least, there are various theatres where you can watch a play.
If you are a food wuss, Gallery Place (a DC neighborhood) has plenty of chain restaurants where you can eat the same kind of food you would eat at home.
If you go to Italy, watch your wallet. And don’t expect things to run smoothly.
If you do go to the Colosseum, buy your tickets at the Forum. The tickets are good for both places, and the lines at the Forum are much, much shorter. They are right next to each other.
Take a good map of the Forum. The audio tour does not match the signs, so it is not clear where you are at any time. When we went we had just come from Berlin, where audiotours and signs are super organized, just as you’d expect.
Actually, Berlin is a pretty good place to go, especially if you remember the Cold War. Excellent museums (we saw the Ishtar Gate) and you can see the remnants of the Wall, and old East German architecture and socialist realism murals.
Some really cool nerds already have and they called it “outside”.
Your conditions aren’t really all that unique and so long as you avoid Disneyland, you should be fine.
Pick a place that’s always sounded interesting and go. If you pick a medium to large city, there should be historical and/or cultural venues and sights. There will likely be arts performances. And even really touristy places have off seasons where the crowds disappear almost entirely. If you pick somewhere less populated, there will still likely be educational opportunities (everywhere has museums. I’ve been in a town of 1300 people that still had two museums. National parks have ranger presentations, etc.) If you dig around on travel websites (like TripAdvisor or the travel guides company websites and the like) you should be able to find restaurant suggestions that you will be able to work with.
Also, after you pick a place, you can always ask here for suggestions on what to do once you’re there.
I have most of the same vacation preferences as you. One thing I found which I really enjoy is “The Amazing Meeting” (also called TAM) in Las Vegas in July. If you’re of a skeptical bent, you may really enjoy it. I’ll be attending my third TAM this year.
J.
Honestly, even a Disney cruise isn’t too bad in terms of being around kids–thy have their own deck, and the Disney ships do have adult-only deck areas.
Vegas would be a place with even fewer kids, of course–and it certainly has plenty of shows, along with things like the Pinball museum, an Atomic museum (which I believe also gives tours to the Trinity test site, though I recall reading that this required early reservations for security clearance), Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam tours, etc.