The quietest your children will be all year is the moment an elephant walks past close enough to hear it breathe. I have watched it happen on a family safari in Africa more times than I can count, and it never gets old. A seven-year-old who could not sit still through breakfast suddenly forgets to […]

Somewhere around hour six of an eleven hour flight, my client’s mother leaned across the aisle and asked the question every trip organizer dreads. Whose idea was this again? That question gets asked during nearly every family reunion abroad I have helped bring to life. Usually somewhere between booking the flights and the moment the […]

By day three of most family vacations, someone is bored, someone is exhausted, and the person who planned every minute of it is you. A family river cruise quietly solves all three problems. The most rewarding river cruises sail far beyond the castles everyone already knows. Picture a different kind of trip. Your ten-year-old counts […]

Nobody warns you that planning a family trip to Montreal turns your kitchen table into a small, loving war zone. One person wants a Ferris wheel. One wants a nap. A teenager will not budge unless there is decent Wi-Fi and something worth posting. I have sat at that exact table more than once, holding […]

Nobody dreams about standing in a roped off line for forty-five minutes just to take the same photo three hundred people took before breakfast. Nobody books a flight, packs three generations of luggage, and coordinates six different work schedules so that everyone can spend the trip elbow to elbow with strangers, waiting their turn to […]

Somewhere between booking her mother’s plane ticket and typing “can a nine year old handle a five hour car ride” into Google at eleven at night, every woman planning a multigenerational trip to Scotland hits the same wall: Will this trip work for everyone, or will someone come home exhausted instead of happy? I think […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]