Our family just spent 57 days traveling around Europe. Seven weeks of living out of suitcases, hopping from plane to train to automobile. We stayed in 17 different homes of friends and family, plus a healthy dose of Airbnbs. We are finishing summer with a heap of memories and some lessons learned. After so many days on the road, these are my four indispensable tenets of travel. 

1. Take the trip

You’ve heard the studies that show experiences bring greater happiness than material possessions. I will back this up 100%. Nothing we ever buy could eclipse the family time we’ve spent hiking the mountains of Austria or watching the Highland games in Scotland.

Tiffany Gee Lewis, left, and her family prepare to embark on their journey through Europe. | Provided by Tiffany Gee Lewis

And yet, there always comes a time, right before a big trip, where I second-guess all my life decisions. Vacations take a huge amount of research and planning, not to mention money. At the midnight hour, with the suitcase half packed, I’m always ready to bail. I said to my husband, Seth, more than a few times during our prep, “I don’t think this is going to be worth it.” 

However, I’ve done this enough times to know that the minute I climb on the plane or point the car in the direction of our destination, I leave all doubt behind.

Vacation has a way of helping you look at life with fresh eyes. Whether it’s three days or three weeks, to Paris, France, or Paris, Texas, adventure away from home allows you to hit the reset button. Take the trip.

2. Get in the water

I’m doling out advice I don’t always follow. But here it is anyway: Get in the water. Jump in the waterfall. Dip in the ocean. Dive into the lake. Be spontaneous and saturated in the moment. Kids always get in the water. Only as adults do we need to be persuaded.

Make immersive movement your motive. Our favorite days involved canoeing in the Versailles canal, swimming in Alpine lakes, diving into the Mediterranean or reenacting the iconic scene from “Chariots of Fire” in St. Andrews on the North Sea. Getting in the water means not holding back from being right in the moment. 

3. Visit the friends

We have found that our most rewarding vacations include people. This can mean traveling with friends, or better yet, visiting friends. Especially in foreign countries, those interactions will often be the most meaningful part of the trip. When we travel, we often skim the cultural surface. But visiting friends allows you to immerse yourself. 

We spent five days in Paris, climbing the Eiffel Tower, visiting the Louvre and Napoleon’s Tomb and Sainte-Chapelle. When I asked our boys what they thought was the highlight of Paris, they all had the same answer. It was the evening we visited Seth’s cousin. He and his family have an apartment overlooking the opera house, right where the old Bastille used to stand. They fed us French cheese, fresh bread and a host of miniature snacks, including hamburgers the size of my thumbnail. We talked until late in the evening, walking back to our Airbnb under the midnight street lamps.

We stayed with Viennese friends who baked us monstrous apple strudel and led us to the tops of their favorite mountains. We visited friends in Provence in France who persuaded us to order mussels and extra helpings of crème brulee. These times were the golden nuggets in a gilded summer. 

Tiffany Gee Lewis and her family stayed with their good friend Angela Neufingerl in Vienna, Austria.  | Provided by Tiffany Gee Lewis

I have sometimes made the mistake of thinking that visiting friends will take away from my precious sight-seeing time. Yet I am always reminded that face-to-face interaction is always more meaningful than ancient stone. Time with friends is never wasted. 

4. Eat the ice cream

In our first 27 days of travel, we ate ice cream 25 times. Europe was in the middle of an oppressive heat wave. There was no air conditioning in sight. Every afternoon, just as the sun blazed overhead and our spirits slumped, we hit the ice cream stand. We ate gelato in Vienna, chocolate ice cream bars in Brussels and the most extraordinary lemon clotted cream cones off a canal boat in York. Every ice cream was different. Our kids quickly tired of historic churches and art museums, but the daily ice cream run never got old. In fact, each time I steered us in the direction of ice cream, my kids looked at me in surprise. In real life, I’m a complete sugar sergeant. But this was vacation, heck, this was an emergency, manifest 25 times over.

Tiffany Gee Lewis and her family ate ice cream nearly every day of their travels. A favorite was Zanoni & Zanoni in Vienna, Austria.  | Provided by Tiffany Gee Lewis
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Eating the ice cream may mean literally eating the ice cream (you won’t regret it), but it can also mean forking over a little extra for the special indulgence, knowing that this time is out-of-the-ordinary, and frankly, irreplaceable. 

On past trips, we’ve made the mistake of getting ourselves to historic places only to pull back without stepping foot inside, skittish of paying the extra fee. After doing this a few times, we realized how silly this was. We had gone to so much work to get there! Eat the ice cream, pay the fee. 

That’s it, my four tenets of travel, honed over many years and an adventurous 57 days this summer. My husband, who is the logistics guru behind our travels, would add: Eat at grocery stores. (Save money, healthier food — to offset all that ice cream, of course.) Do the research: Find the deals, book ahead of time, read up on every place you go, scour Trip Advisor. If you go to Europe, trust the Rick Steve’s guides with your life. Finally, it doesn’t hurt to ask. Don’t shy away from being bold.

Tiffany Gee Lewis is a freelance journalist and children’s book writer. Based in the Pacific Northwest, she and her family are on sabbatical for a year in Oxford, England. 

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