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 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 […]

Your eight-year-old will not stop asking if a ghost is real, and you are going to love that you cannot give her a straight answer. That is the whole draw of haunted towns in the south. History here does not sit quietly behind velvet ropes. It leans over your shoulder on a dark street. It […]

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 […]

Nobody warns you that the hardest part of planning a Napa Valley family vacation isn’t the itinerary. It’s convincing yourself that you’re allowed to bring the kids. I have stood in that exact hesitation, scrolling through photo after photo of couples clinking glasses on a terrace, wondering if a place this polished has any room […]

Here’s the question every parent asks me before they’ve even booked the flights: Can one island really work for a toddler who naps at noon and a teenager who wants a real adventure story to bring home? After planning enough Kauai trips to lose count, I can tell you the answer is yes, but only […]

Somebody is going to cry before you cross the Oregon border, and it probably will not be the kids. That is the truth nobody tells you about a family getaway on this coast of the United States. The tears usually belong to the parent who packed too much into one day and forgot to breathe. […]