Family vacation. The phrase either inspires excitement or incites fear among adults who are lucky enough to still have their parents and siblings around and still want to hang out with them. Sometimes it triggers both disparate feelings in equal measure. Getting to spend uninterrupted time with our loved ones is a privilege! But it can also be challenging, and I’ve heard plenty of horror stories from friends and colleagues about well-intentioned trips which have ended in rather frosty flights home.
I’m lucky: I’ve traveled extensively with both my sister Emily, who’s three years older than me, and my mom. Emily and I have spent a week in Paris following a break-up and in New York, trotting through Central Park, clutching bags from Magnolia Bakery and attempting to get the perfect photo holding a frosty Martini glass. My mom has been my chosen plus-one for some of my glitziest work trips: a sleepover at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, a weekend in Cannes, and 24 hours on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. But until this year, we hadn’t traveled as a trio, without my dad in tow, since we were teenagers.
As my sister and I ease into our 30s and my mom into her 70s, there’s that feeling that traveling freely—hopping on planes for a long weekend on the continent—won’t always be this easy. There will, one day, be partners to consider and family demands to factor in. So we chose Venice, somewhere my mom had long wanted to return to, and locked in the dates on one of the rare occasions when we were all in the same room.
Perhaps you’re supposed to outgrow traveling with your mom, but I know neither my sister or myself have ever felt that way. Our relationships flex and shift and change, and roles that were once set in stone shift too. Something I’ve always found especially joyful about traveling with other women is that things just get done—dishwashers in Airbnbs get loaded and unloaded, restaurant reservations get made, flights are checked into without anyone ever having to ask. But I admit I was surprised to find the same is true when traveling with the women in my family, too.
