Finding excellent things to do in Guadalajara with kids
Guadalajara is a really great city to visit for a family vacation because it has pretty much everything you could hope for – from gorgeous museums & art galleries to theme parks & zoos for the kids, as well as parks & nature spots, delicious food & superb ice creams the kids will never stop begging for (yes, this is based on experience)!
Whether you decide to base yourselves in Guadalajara for a week and explore the city extensively or just spend a few days in town before heading off to somewhere like Puerto Vallarta or Sayulita for some beach time, I can guarantee you that everyone will enjoy themselves.
This article is all based on my experiences in Guadalajara with my kids. They love it when we visit big cities because of all the opportunities for fun cities offer as long as parents have done the research – and lucky for you, I love to do the research so you can find it all in one place!
The article will cover the metropolitan area of Guadalajara as well as Tlaquepaque, Zapopan and some fun day trip options from the city. Activities are broken down under the following headings
🌳 Outdoor Guadalajara
📚 Museums and culture in Guadalajara
🎢 Other kid friendly activities in Guadalajara
👣 Day trip options from Guadalajara
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Where to stay in Guadalajara with kids
🏨 MexicoCassie top hotel recommendation: Hotel de Mendoza – this family friendly hotel in the centre of historic Guadalajara is a great option for families. With a great outdoor pool, family rooms and even kids-stay free offers, you can’t beat this hotel for price and quality.
🏨 MexicoCassie hotel recommendation: La Villa del Ensueno Boutique Hotel – for anyone looking for a gorgeous family friendly hotel in Tlaquepaque, this is a great option. Kids will love the pool and parents will love the elegance of this beautifully traditional hotel. The hotel also offers a great free breakfast.
🏨 MexicoCassie best value hotel recommendation: Country Hotel & Suites – located just outside of the centre (but on the metro), this hotel has a good pool, family rooms and a restaurant.
🗺️ Or, if these hotels aren’t what you’re looking for, use the MexicoCassie interactive accommodation finder to choose something else.
→ If you’re travelling with kids, be sure to open up the MexicoCassie guide to feeding kids in Mexico to take the stress out of mealtimes
Outdoor Guadalajara
Guadalajara is an enormous metropolitan city and it’s delightfully full of green spaces, parks, playgrounds or plazas where the kids can play and let out their never-ending supply of energy as you explore. These are some of my family’s favourite options:
Bosque Los Colomos
This is a huge park/forest to the north of Zapopan. Everyone will love exploring, running and playing in this fabulous 92-hectare park. There are playgrounds, wild spaces, a Japanese garden and even an area where people offer horse rides (however, the horses have definitely seen better days).
Parque Mirador Independencía
This park is well worth heading to if you also love stunning views over huge canyons (picture above). Just down the road from the Guadalajara Zoo and Selva Magica, this park is a great place to take a short stroll, admire the views and then let the kids play in the playground.
Parque Agua Azul
This park, in the centre of Guadalajara, is very close to the Palaeontology Museum. It felt as if the park had seen better days but the kids will still have a great time running around and enjoying the large playground. There is an orchid area, a mariposarium (butterfly house) and an aviary in the park.
Parque Metropolitano
This looks like a pretty cool outdoor space to enjoy with kids in the northwest of Guadalajara. The park has an ecological area that includes a maze, butterfly park, traditional games, an aquarium, orchards, a wormery, tortoise area, ecological museum, meteorological area and more.
Vía Recreativa
On a Sunday morning, like many Mexican cities, the heart of Guadalajara closes itself off to motorized traffic and opens itself to pedestrians, cyclists / people on scooters / skates / skateboards and more.
Not only can you explore without the worry of getting hurt by cars, you will also find markets, free concerts in the streets, street performers, street food vendors and even areas specifically set up for kids to play.
➡️ Avenida Chapultepec (between Av Vallarta and Av Hidalgo you’ll find a space for kids 4 – 12 to play and take part in fun activities such as trampolining, bowling, jigsaw stations and more.
Plazas
Just like in any other Mexican city, there are plazas everywhere and plazas, as pedestrianised areas, are the perfect place to let your kids run off some steam when you’re exploring a city.
Let’s face it, sometimes they’ll be bored in a museum or a church and the best way to deal with their boredom is to find a way to have them let off steam after you emerge from said dull building (or, you know, bribe them with ice creams).
Top running plazas in Guadalajara
⭐️ Plaza de Armas
⭐️ Plaza de la Liberación
⭐️ Parque Morelos
⭐️ In front of the Museo Cabañas (super fun because there are sculptures to examine too)
⭐️ Parque Revolución
Family friendly cultural activities
Guadalajara is the capital of the state of Jalisco, it’s also the second biggest city in all of Mexico. As you might imagine, there is plenty of culture to be found in this big city and much of it is actually perfect for children. Just wandering the streets of downtown Guadalajara is a cultural activity in itself!
Monuments and sculptures
It’s pretty hard to not notice the incredible monuments and sculptures in Guadalajara, Zapopan and Tlaquepaque. My kids loved having their photos taken with their favourites. There are too many to list but these are our highlights.
Guadalajara Cathedral area
You should at least show the kids the Guadalajara Cathedral while you’re there even if you don’t take them inside, it’s pretty impressive. Just behind the cathedral is the Rotonda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres – my kids enjoyed checking this out and seeing how many women were included.
Escultora Cabeza Gigante
You absolutely can not miss this fabulous sculpture when you’re looking for things to do in Guadalajara with kids. And obviously, while everyone else is taking sensible photos, this is the one we took! Who doesn’t want to pretend to be a runny, snotty nose?
Fuente de los Niños Miones
As you walk towards the Hospicio Cabañas, be sure to pass by the Fuente de los Niños Miones (Fountain of Naughty Children) – my kids found this absolutely hilarious (but my photos were rubbish so can’t be shared here).
La Sala de los Magos Cósmicos
The other sculpture area that will blow their minds is located outside the Hospicio Cabañas – La Sala de los Magos Cósmicos by the outstanding Alejandro Colunga, one of my favourite sculptors anywhere in the world. This museum, by the way, regularly makes it into lists of the best museums in Mexico. The kids will find the sculptures here super interesting to examine.
Visit Mercado San Juan de Dios (Mercado Libertad)
This is the largest indoor market in all of Latin America. While you may be interested in the crafts and food sections, I highly recommend letting the kids spend a little time in the video game section to win some brownie points for later!
➕ This is a great place to try a Guadalajara specialty, the torta ahogada – the drowned sandwich. it’s really quite delicious. We also found great doughnuts and ice cream around the market, which of course helped the kids stay focused on not being too whiny.
Museums in Guadalajara
I actually wrote a whole detailed article about the museum scene in Guadalajara because we had such fun exploring the museums of Guadalajara.
⭐️ There are two museums specifically for children in Guadalajara:
➡️ Museo Trompo Magico and Globo Museo de la Niñez
Our kids loved Museo Trompo Magico almost as much as they did Museo de Papalote in Mexico City, which they remain firm in calling the best museum in the world.
Other museums in Guadalajara are actually very well set up for children too. Most have child-focused exhibitions or screens (let’s face it, that’s all the kids really want, right?). I particularly recommend
➡️ Palacio de Gobierno del Estado de Jalisco
This fabulous museum explains the history of the state of Jalisco and has great child centered interactive displays too.
➡️ Hospicio Cabañas
You must visit for the outstanding and entirely mesmerising Orozco murals. The building is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and although the kids won’t care much about the murals, they’re important to see and there are rooms with buttons to press later. (you can see that my kids did not care much for the art!)
➡️ Nuestros Dulces Factory
This small museum in Tlaquepaque offers a short and sweet (hah) tour around a traditional candy factory. This is a winner with the kids because they’ll get to try the products.
Take an electric carriage ride around central Guadalajara
Traditional horse and carts in Mexico are controversial. Some tourists and locals alike seem to enjoy them but animal lovers are very much against them. A great alternative in Guadalajara is to take an electric cart ride around the city. My kids absolutely loved the experience and even got to sit up front with the driver (who was very patient when we had to stop for bathroom breaks waaaaay more than you might expect on a short ride)
Tlaquepaque and Zapopan
Both of these small towns that make up part of Metropolitan Gudalajara are worth visiting at least for a day each.
Tlaquepaque highlights with kids
🎶 Tlaquepaque is a pueblo magico that is known as the birthplace of mariachi music so it’s a great idea to head here to eat lunch and watch a performance in the Plaza de los Mariachis.
🛍 This is also a great place to pick up some gorgeous souvenirs and traditional arts and crafts.
🍦 Nieve de Garaffa Chapalita has the best ice-cream I’ve ever eaten. Yes, the lines are ridiculous but they’re worth it. Figure out what flavours you want before getting in line. And remember, you can go half-and-half on flavours.
🍬 The Nuestros Dulces museum – mentioned above.
🎨 Find the tile replica of Diego Rivera’s Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central.
👨🏽🍳 If your kids enjoy cooking, why not take a baking class and learn to make traditional baked goods such as pan de muerto & conchas? (suitable for kids 6 and over)
Zapopan highlights with kids
💦 In front of the convent in Plaza de las Americas, there are water fountains that the kids will absolutely adore on a hot day. It comes on four times a day at 11.30 am, 2.30 pm, 5.30 pm, 7.30 pm. There’s also a musical fountain show at 8.45 pm and 9.30 pm.
Other kid-friendly activities in Guadalajara
Zoologico Guadalajara (Guadalajara Zoo)
I rarely recommend zoos but I was incredibly impressed with Guadalajara’s zoo. I believe it’s one of the best I’ve been to, the animals have more space than in many other ‘good’ zoos I’ve visited.
🐧 We particularly enjoyed the penguin enclosure (wow, it was amazing), the aquarium, and the sky zoo (a cable car OVER the enclosures – hold on tight to the little ones!!). The sky zoo offers some amazing views over the nearby canyon.
Selva Magica
Just next door to the zoo is Selva Magica, a theme park that I can highly recommend if you’re after something theme-parky.
🎢 Selva Magica has rides suitable for all ages of kids, including teens and tiny ones, yet isn’t a huge, unmanageable place at all.
→ Save time & buy your skip the line tickets now
Other activities for kids in & around Guadalajara if you’re looking for something less touristy and more kid-fun focused.
🐡 Acuario Michin (aquarium) or 🐧 Sealand for penguin and snow fun
🏎️ Volta Racing (go-karts for over 14s)
🧗🏼♂️ Up n Joy – trampolining, climbing and more (also has a nanny service area and a specific area for kids under 6).
🪢 Ameyalli Rope Climbing – Indoor and outdoor climbing for all ages. My kids love to climb so we are always looking for climbing opportunities like this.
🎠 Sky Park Punto Sur – this looks like a kid’s idea of heaven and would be perfect for a wet day when you’ve exhausted all the museum options or just feel like being kind to the kids – bumper cars, trampolines and more.
🌳 Natural Adventure Park – If you don’t have time or transport to get out of town, then for outdoor activities such as aerial tree top walks, ziplines, climbing and more, this looks like a perfect city day out.
🏄🏾♀️ Punto Surf – who doesn’t love a day of indoor surfing?
Family day trips from Guadalajara
When taking day trips it’s possible to use public transport although I would recommend renting a car or taking tours when travelling with kids as it’s just easier.
🚘 I use Discover Cars when renting a car in Mexico
👣 To find great tours, use GetYourGuide or Viator – these are the two sites I use when planning my own family’s vacation tours. You’ll see I’ve recommended a few options that I think are great for families, below.
MexicoCassie’s favourite day trips with kids
Tequila without the tequila 🤣
The fabulous pueblo magico of Tequila (yes, home of tequila) is a an easy & short day trip from Guadalajara and yes it’s fun even with kids. I’ve been both with my kids and on an adults’ only trip and had a great time both visits. It’s possible to take a train ride to Tequila but this is quite a boozy trip generally, so probably better to take a car or hire a private guide.
👣 MexicoCassie recommended day trip option – 🐴 Explore Tequila on horseback (includes tequila tastings for anyone over 18) – the tour includes 1hr horse riding through gorgeous tequila fields (photo above), a tour of a boutique distillery, tour of Tequila pueblo & a delicious lunch.
Relaxing & boating around Lake Chapala and Ajijic
Take the kids for a day trip to the largest freshwater lake in Mexico. Please note that it’s not generally considered a good idea to swim in the lake, so please don’t promise the kids a day in the water! Instead, promise them a day of ice-cream, boat trips, chilled out exploring, shopping and great food. If the kids don’t love the malecon, take them to Parque La Cristianía for a grassy run around.
👣 MexicoCassie recommended day trip option – 🚤 take a full day tour of Ajijic & Chapala towns that includes a boat tour, free time, & a bilingual guide showing you around both towns.
Check out the awesome ruins at Guachimontones
An incredible ancient ruins site is just over an hour from Guadalajara and shouldn’t be missed when you’re in town. My kids absolutely loved our day trip to the ruins. They were able to run, play, climb and yes, even learn a little, at the ruins site before we headed to the lakeside for a delicious lunch.
👣 MexicoCassie recommended tour – spend the day exploring some of Mexico’s only circular pyramids with a bilingual guide. You’ll visit the ruins, the site museum and then head into Teuchitlán town for some free time to try the local cuisine and check out the gorgeous lake.
Thermal Waters in the Bosque de la Primavera
Take the kids to splash about in this thermal river, it’s a great day trip although I have never found anyone offering this as a formal tour so you’ll either need to rent a car or a driver if you want to do this. We had a great time when we went. We took a picnic and spent a happy few hours splashing and playing. There also the option of checking out Balneario Cañón de las Flores if your kids are more into water parks than river fun.
Visiting Mexico with kids – a directory
🧳 Packing for a trip to Mexico with kids
✈️ Spring break in Mexico with kids
🏖 Best family friendly beaches in Mexico
🏝 Family fun in Playa del Carmen
✅ Río Secreto with kids – a review
🏝 Chilling in Cozumel with kids
⭐️ 50+ things to do in Mérida with kids
⭐️ Exploring Valladolid with kids
💦 Best cenotes in Yucatán for kids
⛰ Visiting Mexico’s Copper Canyon with kids
⭐️ What to do in Guadalajara with kids
⛰ Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte with kids
⭐️ Exploring around Queretaro with kids
⭐️ Getting to know Cholula (Puebla) with kids
🎄 Celebrating Christmas in Mexico
✏️ A guide to homeschooling in Mexico
🍭 All your kids need to know about Mexican candy
🍦 Finding the best ice creams in Mérida
2 Comments
Catherine · 02/12/2019 at 10:57 am
That picture with the nostril is TOO MUCH! Love it! I can’t wait to explore more of Mexico with my kids.
Cassie · 02/12/2019 at 10:59 am
Hahaha. It’s awesome, right? You guys will love love love Mexico.
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