A Summer of Travel

This summer, we headed to London and Portugal with our two daughters (ages 4 and 8) for three whole weeks. And what was most exciting to me was being able to read my Smart Girl's Guide to Travel book to the two of them to prepare.

We headed to Mexico City last summer, so this wasn't their first big trip but Mexico City was in our time zone and they were familiar with the spoken language (the girls are in a dual immersion program).

So we finally got to "sleep on the plane," deal with the extreme jet lag, and be away from home for a bit too long without all the comforts of home. And I have to say... it was pretty nice.

Before having kids, we were adventurous travelers—India, Ecuador, Cambodia, Thailand—we were all about it. I knew traveling would help my kids be better citizens of the world. To see how other people live, how similar we all are, and to be inspired by the art and food of different cultures.

But what I underestimated was how important it was for us to get out of our routine. My parenting experience has been that every moment of my week is scheduled to the absolute minute. I had turned into a robot just going through the motions. And it was really nice to just throw everything out the window and just live for a bit.

My husband and I had been to London before but it was a great city to play tourist in with the girls. (The Buckingham Palace tour was a highlight as well as seeing Midsummer's Night Dream at Shakespeare's Globe Theater.) And Lisbon was incredible—so unique and inspring and welcoming to families. And the Algarve gave us that vacation from the vacation that we needed.

It was a nice reminder that you don't have to go far to live a little. Sometimes you just need to step out of your routine to feel alive again.