about us — Travels with Luca

This journey started with a walk in the woods.

My husband and I were taking a rare hike together, alone, in the Catskills region of New York while a babysitter watched our then sixteen-month-old.

Traveling had defined our relationship in many ways--its stages marked by our first gleeful trip together to Puerto Rico, a more mature river cruise in France, a magical but grueling year living abroad in Tunisia, a life-changing honeymoon in Patagonia, and several other shorter but no less meaningful trips to Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere.

But since Luca’s arrival, we hadn’t had the mental or physical energy to think about traveling for more than a week or two. That day in the woods, something shifted. Perhaps we’d finally had more than a couple solid nights of rest in a row, or maybe it was being outdoors and moving our bodies that made us feel youthful and alive. We have always said that nature is our church.

On that hike, we started talking about taking a year away. Not a backpacker-style, round-the-world adventure, but three to five carefully selected destinations where we could spend enough time to really soak up the feeling of living in a place before moving on. Two to three months in each spot felt right.

That way, we wouldn’t have to make too many transitions, which are the toughest part about traveling with toddlers (not to mention hauling all that luggage). We started tossing out ideas--New Zealand (me), Ireland (David), Argentina (both), Scandinavia (both)...

Because we had already done it once--giving up our home and selling/boxing/storing all our things to go to Tunisia--we knew we could do it again. We knew that David could continue his work as a web developer from another country and maintain his relationships with clients in the U.S. I planned to return to caring for Luca full-time while also maintaining a few freelance writing/editing clients. I knew that meant I’d be getting up early or staying up late to work, but I thought with a little support from David, it would be worth it.

This little bubble of an idea for longer-term travel with our toddler bumped around in our brains for 9-10 months until it became the right time.

A few things happened that let us know. We lost our beloved babysitter. Luca was turned down for admission to a cooperative play school we had been very enthusiastic about in our neighborhood. And the real estate market in Philadelphia took such an upturn that it suddenly became clear we could make a very nice profit on our house if we were willing to sell quickly. We knew we wanted to move within a year anyway, and this would allow us to have cash on hand to pounce on the next house whenever we were ultimately ready to do so.

Around the same time, I discovered a way to travel long-term more affordably: international house-sitting. I learned about a site called TrustedHousesitters.com where you can create a profile and apply for house-sit assignments in a process much like online dating. No money changes hands--the home owners get a reliable person to care for their home and pets, and the house sitters get a free place to stay in the destination of their choice. Without paying for accommodations, I realized we could continue to save toward our next house while traveling.

This pragmatic upside to our romantic notion of a year adrift in the world was what cemented it for us.

We could chuck everything to go travel and still be responsible adults/parents? Yes, please!

On a more serious note, I am interested in how this trip will change us as a family, and how our individual relationships to travel and to a concept of home will shift, too.

Why "Travels with Luca"?

Several years ago, when I was still single and child-free and could travel wherever I wanted, I read the book Travels with Charley about John Steinbeck’s roadtrip across America with his standard poodle. Like Steinbeck’s, our travels this year are heavily influenced by the small critter riding along in our back seat. Not to compare him to a dog, but when I thought about a title for this blog, Travels with Luca just sounded right. He is the planet around which we orbit these days, and we wouldn’t be doing this trip if it weren’t for him--certainly not in this way.

My aim is to share not just the halcyon moments of family travel but also the strikingly difficult ones. Not just the rainbows on mountaintops (of which there have been a few) but the bone-tired nights/mornings when we ask ourselves why we are doing this thing (of which there have been a few).

We hope it inspires more tired people like us to think about how travel can become a reality--and how sweet its rewards can be.

About this website

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