Take a look at our travel history and think about where you might want to go to next!
| Backpacking Europe (2006, Dan only) I’d never really been out of the country (Quebec in 8th grade) and I thought “Wouldn’t it be cool to backpack Europe?” I stopped cutting my hair, saved up for a year, put everything into storage, quit my dead-end job, and booked a one-way ticket to Prague. Prague was the coolest place I could imagine starting (“I’m in Prague next week, big deal. Probably going to be a bunch of spies everywhere I go”). It was the gateway to the (hopefully) cheap east side of Europe. The plan was to go until the money ran out. From the first week I was hooked and wanted it to last as long as possible. |  |
| 3 Couples in Italy (2008) Before my return flight from Europe landed I knew I had to go back, and this time there was no messing around. Italy. The plan was to be there around Betsy’s 30th birthday; 3 sisters and their spouses. |  |
| Honeymoon in Greece (2010 How do you top Italy? Greece. This trip was for our honeymoon and our last one without kids and/or pregnancies. The first half of the trip was also part of a private tour we customized (Greek gentleman named Nikos drove us city to city for a week). We wanted the history, the weather, the food, and the people and we got all of that and more. |  |
| Pregnant in Paris (2012) After a long road of medical tests and procedures we were thrilled to be expecting our first child and thought we deserved a vacation. Not knowing what traveling 6 months pregnant would be like, we thought we’d set up a home base and try to spend a week in the City of Lights. |  |
| Pregnant + 18 mo old in Amsterdam & Paris (2014) We were lucky enough to be expecting our second child and apparently traveling-while-pregnant is now a family tradition. Not knowing what traveling with an 18 month old and a pregnant lady would be like we limited ourselves to 2 home bases, both of which very dense and walkable city centers. |  |
| Back to Italy (2016) Time to walk the walk, Part 1: After years of telling people how important and easy it was to travel it was time to try doing so with a 3 and a 1 year old. We cheated a bit by bringing our 13 year old niece for back up. Time to walk the walk, Part 2: “You’ll be back. Don’t try and do it all.” Time to go back to Italy. 2 kids and 8 years later. We, too, have bills, full times jobs, school for the kids, school for the grown-ups (Dan), and other life stuff that go in the way. But we made travel a priority and were lucky enough to take another great trip. |  |
| Paris with 2 kids (2018) Paris worked for both pregnancies so it was time for our daughter to see the city of lights "outside of mom's tummy." We're kept the annual trip experiment going though the cos was dropping "France 2018" to "Paris 2018." No Normandy. No Loire Valley. Just one of our favorite cities. We went in targeting Gothic architecture and the Middle Ages since we'd previously struggled with those areas. We came out loving everything about them and looking to keep learning more about architecture on future trips. The kids had seen our photo books from 2012 and 2014 but now they were old enough to appreciate the Venus di Milo, Monet's Water Lilies, the Eiffel tower, and so much more! |  |