Hi everyone! As some know, my family is planning our second trip to Europe in summer 2026! I thought it would be amazing to document my process step-by-step, from start to finish, to show families that you can do this too! And if you’d like my help, I would be more than happy to help plan and book your family’s next adventure (in addition to being a family travel blogger, I’m a travel agent with Memory Lane Travel Company)!

I’m going to start this with an overview of who we are and where we’re going in 2026, but you can expect future blog posts on logistical things like airline and flight considerations for families, picking the perfect hotel, itinerary selections, how we turned our kiddos into great travelers, getting kids excited about things like museums, new foods, and being comfortable being uncomfortable, my top travel tips, and more! Consider this a massive brain dump of all my family travel knowledge, put into bite-sized pieces for you! So, let’s get into it! If you ever have questions – please feel free to send me an email (Casey@MemoryLaneTravelCo.com), a message on Facebook, or comment on the blog!

Family background: We are a family of 4 – myself, my husband, Jared, and our two girls, Gemma (age 7) and Remi (almost 5). We have traveled fairly extensively as our little family unit and we love discovering new places together! That’s us in Bimini over Thanksgiving this year!

Where are we going in Summer 2026? We are heading to Italy for some big city fun and an Adriatic Sea cruise! This is a land/sea combo adventure, so buckle up, because we’re going to cover everything that goes along with both a land vacation AND a cruise. And I can’t wait!

Here’s the basic trip outline: 4 countries; 8 cities. We’ll fly into Rome, Italy and spend a few days there; train to Florence, Italy and spend a few days there; train to Ravenna, Italy and spend one day there; board Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas to embark on a 7-night Adriatic Sea cruise with port stops in Koper, Slovenia; Split, Croatia; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Kotor, Montenegro; and Naples, Italy before disembarking back in Rome, Italy to fly home. All-in-all, this is expected to be a 13-night adventure, though depending on flight costs, maybe 14-nights.

Getting there: We live in south-central Pennsylvania, so we have A LOT of international airports to choose from. Think: Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, DC. (Dulles), Newark, or New York (JFK). I have a feeling we’ll end up flying from JFK, but more on that later. I will have an entire post dedicated to flying (domestically and internationally) and my key considerations and tips/tricks for families in another update!

Why a Land/Sea Combo adventure? We LOVE getting the in-depth experience you get when you visit a place on land for days. We did that last year in London and what we got out of that visit was phenomenal. We saw SO MUCH and really enjoying getting a feel of “being” somewhere for a longer period of time.

However, as parents with younger kiddos who still need a lot of assistance with life, doing some of our trip by sea (via cruiseship) takes some of the pressure off us. Not in the parenting realm, of course, but in the cooking and cleaning realm. 

We consider cruises to be a “sampler” – a way to determine if we’d like to add a location to our TBT (To Be Traveled) list for a future, more in-depth trip. We also love the ease of travel that cruises provide. Consider them floating hotels – they take us from Point A to Point B while we sleep, giving us the chance to maximize our vacation time and minimize the time we have to focus on getting to another place.

This gives us more time with our girls – something we cherish as parents with kiddos growing up a bit too fast some days. Keep in mind, we cruise without electronics (the only reason I ever have my phone is for photos and GPS; no tablets, no nothing!), so we get a lot of time together. I LOVE having literally nothing else to do but hang out with my kiddos. And I feel we get more of that when we cruise.

OK, enough about my love of cruises. If you have questions on cruising, send me an email. I will talk cruising all day with you!

Why did we pick this trip? To be honest, the reasons have grown since we booked it. Last summer (2025) we took the girls to Europe for the first time. We flew into London Heathrow and spent 5 days in London before embarking on an 8-night Scandanavian cruise with Royal Caribbean to Norway, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. We were on the last few nights of that trip and simply asked the girls “Did you have fun? Would you consider doing something like this again?” and the resounding answer was YES.

I went into the trip with pretty low expectations, knowing that our girls have traveled a lot but that was the first “big” international trip with a whole lot of time zone changes, 16-nights away from home, and a lot of “firsts”, and I was blown away by how they handled absolutely everything. So when they asked to go back to Europe next year? We couldn’t say no.

We ended up with 2 great options, knowing that the land/sea combo works well for us – the cruise we ultimately picked, and a 7-night Greek Isles cruise from Athens, Greece. Either would have been great, and Greece is on our list for future years, so definitely not off the table, just still on our TBT list.

What factors did I consider when we booked this adventure? I wrote another post specific to things your family should consider before selecting a vacation, if you’d like to reference that.

Specific to this trip, I thought about:

• Total travel budget – I go into every trip knowing a general budget that I would like to spend. That’s an all-in number, so flights, hotels, cruise (if applicable), activites, food, transportation, travel documents, etc.
  
  If I get an idea, I typically look up the cruise first, then flights, and finally hotel costs. Knowing those baseline numbers gives me an idea about how much wiggle room I have for the rest.
  
  It really depends on what we’re doing as to how much everything else will cost, but I usually assume $30 for breakfast, $60 for lunch, and $80 for dinner for our family of four. Those numbers work for us, based on how we eat and drink, but obviously you’ll need to tailor those to your family.
  
  Then, for every week we’re traveling, I usually budget $1000 for activities. I know, that seems like a lot upfront, but that actually breaks down to less than $150 per day for activities. Some days, we don’t hit that number, but some days we go over, so that’s a realistic number for our family. And frankly? I’d rather budget too much and come in under than not budget enough and bring an added stress to my planning!
  
• Airfare and flight times – I did a quick search to give me an idea of what flights would cost from two of our airport options. Living in Pennsylvania, we can fly from a whole slew of airports, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Newark, and New York, but typically, I find JFK or Dulles to be the most cost efficient, so those were the two I checked.
  
  If we drive to the airport, I assume $30/day for parking, or if we take Amtrak to JFK, I know that is about $300 roundtrip for us, so I add that into the cost too.
  
  In addition to cost, I looked for nonstop options as well. International layovers always add a layer of stress that I try to avoid. Domestic layovers, I try to give us 1 hour and 20 minutes, so we aren’t rushing and everyone can go potty before the next flight. Internationally though, you have to go through customs before you can board your next flight, and it’s nearly impossible to gauge how long that will take. Sometimes we basically walk straight through, but we’ve been in customs lines for well over an hour before, and when you have to catch your next flight, kids are tired, and you’re probably carrying all of the things THEY promised to carry on the flights, it’s just one thing I try to avoid to make things smoother.
  
• Location, Location, Location – I do a quick search to determine some of the major highlights in a place. I like to know there are kid-friendly things we can do and how easy it seems to get to them. I don’t have to know details yet, but a general “this looks like a place we would enjoy taking the kids because we could do X,Y,Z” is what we’re going for here.
  
• Accessibility – My (almost) 5-year-old makes the claim that she can walk forever and doesn’t need a stroller. And any parent who has ever heard that before knows it’s likely not true. It is definitely not true in her case. We did invest in a travel stroller which is absolutely phenomenal (I’ll have a whole post on the items we love most while traveling later!), and that has made our trips much smoother.
  
  However, even the best of travel strollers don’t work great on old cobblestone walkways. So next, I do a quick Google search on the ports and see generally what type of sidewalks we’re dealing with. Yes, things to do in those locations is important (that’s why it’s above this point on my list) but us knowing if we can use a stroller is a big selling point for us right now. We also have a foldable scooter for my oldest, which helps her handle the longer walks much better!
  
• In-City Transportation – This one gets a little contentious, so bear with me here. I don’t love taking Ubers/taxis with my kids, so I prefer going to destinations with solid public transportation options like trains or buses. They are tiny for their ages, and I prefer them to be in 5-point harness car seats still (yes, even my 7-year old). But, I have no interest in lugging 2 giant convertible car seats everywhere we go, and in most foreign countries, our USA-made car seats are not allowed (different safety agencies = different car seat rules). We do own inflatable booster seats like these ones (which are stellar and I highly recommend), but I don’t like to use them regularly just yet because my kids are at the very low end of acceptable weight/height for them. So, I much prefer to travel by local train or bus, if possible. It just makes me more comfortable. I also usually prefer the cost associated with these methods of transportation, over paying the cost of an Uber (I like to spend my money on activities, not getting to those activities, if you know what I mean).
  
• Cruise Port Location – A lot of cruise itineraries list a major city first, then another location in parentheses behind it. This is your clue that where the cruise ship is docking, the city in parenthesis, is not in whatever the major city is that you’re assuming it is. We specifically target cruises that do not list cities in parentheses. My husband and I have cruised to locations where you do need to take additional transportation to a city, and it’s absolutely do-able, however, with our kiddos, I want to make the travel days (which are already long and usually push them to limits) as easy as possible. Essentially, we want to walk off the cruise boat and be in the city. No more than a 15-20 minute ride, if possible.
  
• Language Barriers – It’s maybe not great to want to go places outside of the USA or the UK where there is enough spoken in English, or signage in English, to be comfortable. I do understand that, so take this for what it’s worth. I like to eliminate barriers to our travel days, especially when our children are traveling with us, so we prioritize locations where there will be minimal language hurdles.
  
  We have been to places where nothing is in English and we did OK with Google Translate, but if we know we can communicate easier, it just makes the location more appealing right now. Thankfully, most European countries do have English signs and a majority of second-language English speakers, so we haven’t had very many issues, and where we have we’ve navigated, but it is a consideration.
  
• Temperatures and Weather – We try to travel more during the summer since our oldest kiddo is in school. However, that comes with challenges with weather and temperature. I might be from Florida, but my kiddos did not inherit my “heat-resistant” genes, and when it’s above 80 degrees F, they start letting me know they’re hot. And when it’s actual hot weather outside? They melt like popsicles. So temperatures, or access to shade and/or AC, are definitely considerations for them. Nothing turns a great day miserable quite like kiddos who are overheating.
  
  The locations we are going to in summer 2026 will be hot. I know this, which is why we love the idea of doing history/culture in the morning when you’re in buildings (likely) without AC but it’s not quite so hot outside yet, and beach time in the afternoon so they can cool off in the ocean.
  
  We also take into consideration rainy seasons when traveling during the summer months. If you’re traveling to Florida and south (or more tropical places in general), you have to consider that every afternoon at a minimum, you’re likely to get rain. Maybe not a lot, but enough to plan around. And some days you could see rain-outs.
  
  Additionally, I think about hurricanes too if we’re heading south towards the caribbean, but I usually think more about hurricanes in August-October if I’m honest.

So why did we pick an Adriatic Sea trip over the Greek Isles? A lot of the factors I listed above – flight costs to Athens were significantly more than Rome, and there were more flight options with a layover than less to Athens; a quick glance at the cruise itinerary showed several “tendered” instead of “docked” ports which means if we didn’t book a shore excursion through Royal (I usually don’t) we’d be last to get off the boat which I know would frustrate the heck out of me (know your strengths! hahaha); a lot of the shore excursions we’d be interested in were ages 6+, meaning my youngest couldn’t participate even if I booked some of the activities outside of Royal; I don’t think my travel stroller or scooter would do well between the cobblestones and the hills on some of the isles; and my kids do not love Mediterranean food yet. We’re working on it, but I thought the foods the Adriatic Sea ports would offer may appeal to them more.

Does that mean Greece is off our list for good? Absolutely not. My oldest LOVES history, and she’s incredibly excited about seeing some ancient Roman history and art, so there’s no way we won’t do Greece within the next few years, especially because I also love art history and we’ve talked a lot about how the Greeks influenced the Romans and I want her to see that first hand! We’re just going to wait a few years until I know it will be a more successful trip for us.

So. What’s next to talk about? Well. Here’s what I have booked:

• Cruise
• Hotels in Rome, Florence, and Ravenna
• THAT’S IT. Hahahaha

The next episode/blog post is going to focus on how I made the determation of where we’re going in Italy (Rome, Florence, Ravenna). Then, I’ve got a fun bonus episode/blog planned on how we’ve helped our kiddos to be such stellar travelers, because trust me, my youngest was NOT a great traveler for a long time, and I’ve got some great tips for everyone interested in learning how to tip toe their kiddos into travel and make it a success!

Questions? Email me, send a message on Facebook, or comment on the blog. Happy to answer anything you’ve got!

Thanks for reading Part One! Can’t wait for what’s next!

💛 Casey