A grandmother is barefoot on the bow of a small wooden boat. Her sunglasses pushed into gray hair, laughing at something her nine-year-old grandson just said. All while her daughter and son-in-law sit two feet away doing nothing but watching the coastline slide by. Nobody is checking their phone. Nobody is negotiating what happens next. […]

Forty-five minutes. That is how long our tour guide gave us to stand in the middle of the most beautiful Christmas market square I had ever seen. I had a glass of hot gluhwein warming one hand and my father in law’s arm resting on the other. Despite what the guide thought was a long […]

Every guidebook you have skimmed has hinted, gently or not so gently, that the Galapagos is not really built for children. Yet, every one of them is wrong. Galapagos with kids is not a compromise trip. It might be the best one your family ever takes. I once watched a six-year-old freeze mid step, grinning […]

The question always arrives the same way, usually a few minutes into our very first phone call. A mom lowers her voice like she is about to confess something and asks me, what are the best hikes on the Big Island of Hawaii. After all, she already knows her family cannot survive a whole week […]

You have just unpacked your last suitcase from your summer vacation and someone in your family has already asked when you are going back to Cape Cod. I hear this every year, usually before the last load of beach laundry is even done. That question is exactly why I never wait until spring to start […]

You can spend eleven months planning a family trip and still lie awake the night before, wondering if you have made a mistake. That is the strange, wonderful truth of all trips, including a Galapagos family vacation. A Galapagos trip is one of the most researched trips a parent will ever book. And it is […]

The engine cuts off, and for a full ten seconds, nobody in the family says a word. There is no dock. No other boat in sight. No line of strangers waiting for the same photo they are about to take. Just water so clear you can count the fish beneath the hull. A coastline that […]

Your daughter has her nose pressed to the cabin window before her shoes are even on, watching a medieval town square drift past like something out of a snow globe. Plus, you unpacked your suitcase and are happy you won’t need to do it again during your trip. That is the first morning of a […]

Most people assume the desert closes for the season the moment the temperature drops. That assumption is exactly why the smartest travelers have the whole region to themselves every winter. A southwest winter vacation is not a consolation prize for missing summer. It might be the best version of this landscape you will ever see […]

There is a place on the coast of Egypt where, on the afternoon of August 2, 2027, the sun will vanish for six minutes and twenty-three seconds. Nothing on this earth will feel ordinary again for a long time after. This is the solar eclipse 2027, the longest total solar eclipse anyone alive today will […]