Personal Travelogue

Choosing Wings: Our family gap year and trip around the world

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We love so many things about our family’s life in LA. We are surrounded by an amazing network of family, we have wonderful friends, we are deeply involved in a religious community that we love, the weather is usually amazing and the list of activities is never-ending. But as you might imagine, life in the City of Angels isn’t without challenges… it is crowded, it’s extremely expensive for a family, navigating school decisions can require an advanced degree and some days you feel like your entire schedule is planned around minimizing time in traffic. Through all its faults, LA has been our home for a very long time and the only one our children have ever known. In fact, Ronnie and I have shared this wonderful apartment for almost a decade!

For a few years we’ve felt that our family needed some sort of change and we think that this is the right time to shake things up. Ronnie and I are both ready to move on professionally after a decade in our jobs, Jacob has graduated from preschool and needs to transition to a new school, and Shoshana is still a sweet, flexible kid whose primary need is time with us. All in all, we feel that this is the best time for a transition if there will ever be one.

Read one mom’s story of her life-changing adventure of full-time travel with her young daughter!

So what’s the big news?

We’ve decided to take a “family gap year”! As you all know, family travel is a big part of our lives – we enjoy it very much and feel that it binds the four of us into an unbreakable team. So often, being out in the world feels like our collective “happy place”. We will be leaving LA at the end of August 2017 and returning to the US around the end of June 2018. After our almost-year of around the world travel, our family’s path isn’t very well-defined yet. We’ve told a number of people about our plans already, and here are some questions we get a lot and the best answers we can give you at this time about our new life as a traveling family.

family travelling the world
Travel is our happy place!

What does your “let’s travel the world for a year” itinerary look like?

We’re kicking off traveling the world for a year with a good ol’ American road trip! We’ll take three weeks to drive cross-country from LA to Nana’s house in Virginia. We’re so excited to visit with family and friends along the way!!! Definite stops include Phoenix, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Tulsa, St. Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia and of course the DC area. Once we fly out from D.C…

‘Round the world trip itinerary updated June 2018!

Panama

Chile

Argentina

New Zealand

Australia

Thailand

Spain

Morocco

Italy

Greece

Israel

Switzerland

France

back to the US

gap year family around the world itinerary

How did you choose your around-the-world itinerary? Did you buy a “round the world plane ticket”? Where will you stay in all these places? Is it a lot of work planning a gap year?

We chose our itinerary to travel the world with kids mostly based on three factors: personal interest, seasonal logistics, and health/safety concerns. Gap year planning took us around a month for framing out a rough itinerary, obviously with much more time along the way to work out specifics.

All of the countries we’ll be visiting until Israel are new for us! We started with a much longer list of destinations and spent about a month playing with different options and whittling it down based on further research. We’ll mostly be chasing the sun and avoiding nasty things like hurricanes and peak mosquito seasons. There are a few places we might have considered visiting if we didn’t have the kids with us, but in reality we feel good about the pacing of our trip and don’t want to add any more stops. We’ll spend several weeks in each country, which should give us a chance to explore beyond just the surface (though honestly sometimes even that pace seems faster than we’d like). Recognizing that we’ll need a little decompression along the way, we plan to give ourselves some slow-travel time in Australia and Israel, where we have friends and family.

We aren’t using a special round the world plane ticket. There are very few of them available these days, though I know they were popular back when most of our peers took their solo travel gap years. The few that are available have enough limitations in terms of routing and segment totals that they didn’t seem like the best fit for us. Moreover, we have a huge pile of frequent flyer miles and Chase Ultimate Rewards points from our travels and credit card spending (especially those awesome Chase sign up bonuses!). While we aren’t booking everything with miles and points, we’ll be able to use them to save money on air travel. If you’re considering buying a RTW ticket, this guide is an incredible resource to compare your options.

We generally prefer to stay in vacation homes rather than hotels. They offer more space for our family to feel comfortable, a kitchen for quick breakfasts and lunch packing, and often laundry facilities so that we can pack light. We’ve been fortunate to find a great partner for this trip in HomeExchange.com, an international leader in home exchanges.

Most people think of home exchange as it’s shown in The Holiday – Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet go to stay at each other’s houses (and find quirky romances in the process) and GuestToGuest has that traditional option (sorry, Jude Law not included). They also have a more flexible non-reciprocal option that allows you to earn points for hosting guests, which you can then use to stay in any home available through the network! For instance, Cameron goes to Kate’s house for Christmas and then Kate goes to JLaw’s house for New Year’s.

Throughout our trip, we’ll be staying in HomeExchange properties wherever they’re available – and I must say, we’ve booked some gorgeous homes and some beautiful locations! You can find all the details here. We’ll be sharing more info on how to use HomeExchange and showing you the awesome places we’re staying, so stay tuned. In the meantime, head over and sign yourself up — by going through the full registration and verification process, you’ll score enough points to try out the service as a guest before you even host in your own home. Sign up here to get started.

GuestToGuest home exchange - one way to save money on your gap year with family
One of our upcoming GuestToGuest homes in Argentina. Wow!

While we’ve had great luck booking HomeExchange homes in some countries, they are still growing their presence in others. In some remote areas without many restaurants or grocery stores, we’ll be staying at all-inclusive resorts or hotels to ease culinary logistics. In other places, we’ll rely on Airbnb for our accommodations.

After a few years of pretty serious travel, we’ve found that booking.com is our favorite hotel search engine. Most properties can be booked with no cancellation fee and they clearly show the pricing and details of every room available. There are tons of reviews on the site, and we try to target properties with an average score of at least 8+ (preferably 9+). Don’t miss these 5 simple hacks for saving money on booking.com!

We’re so jealous! How can we follow along vicariously/keep up with your adventures as you’re traveling the world for a year?

I can’t help you with the jealousy, except to hope that our world traveling family’s adventures inspire you to explore more and maybe even give you family gap year ideas. Want to travel around the world with your family? Ronnie is a master travel planner and we are always happy to give general advice on traveling with kids or specific recommendations for where to travel with kids. I’ll also set up part of this site where we’ll share updates that are more of a family travel journal than a formal advice-giving travel blog.

If you want to follow along from home, there are a few great options:

Sign up to receive our latest family gap year blog posts (when I have “free time” I hope to move to a monthly newsletter format)

Like/follow on Facebook (you’ll also receive new blog post notifications there)

See a sampling of our travel photos on Instagram

Our Youtube channel is still pretty sparse, but we hope to add more (especially interviews with the kids)

Get even more updates on Twitter

Updates from the road:

December 2017 (4 months)

March 2018 (6 months)

June 2018 (10 months)

September 2018 (1 year!)

Do the kids know? How do they feel about your family trip around the world? How do families traveling the world teach their kids?

The kids know about our big family gap year trip and they’re very excited to explore the world and especially to meet all of the different animals. If you see them around this summer, ask them and they’re sure to give you an earful. Jacob also feels a little sad to leave behind his friends and family, but he’s looking forward to Skype, exchanging emoji-laden text messages and even sending some postcards (check out these great options for staying in touch with folks back home). I’m hoping that we’ll be able to interview him in some of our destinations for our YouTube channel!

Since Shoshana is only 3yo, her primary educational needs are learning how to interact with people and with the world around her. We know that she won’t remember much from this trip, but hope that it makes a positive impression on her as a human being. We’re sure she’ll learn to appreciate and tolerate other cultures and her sense of curiosity will blast into overdrive as she’s exposed to so much of the world!

Jacob has just graduated from preschool and will be skipping kindergarten. His only strict educational objective for the year is literacy: he needs to learn to read decently and to write at least a little in order to be ready for 1st grade when we return. Fortunately he has already begun reading a little and seems to be gaining more interest. We’ll be working on hand-written journaling with him during our trip to help him learn how to write and to document our adventures through his eyes. I suspect that his travel journal will be the best souvenir of the entire trip.

We’re sure that the kids will learn so much during our gap year. We’ll try to educate them and ourselves in a developmentally appropriate way about things like history, food, climate, flora and fauna of the places we visit. Rather than occurring in a classroom, that teaching might take place while we’re hiking around ruins, visiting an indigenous people’s cultural center, using our art supplies to document the world visually or sampling desserts around the world. We’re continuing to read some great worldschooling resources and please feel free to send your favorites our way.  

Update: See what’s been working (and what hasn’t been) as we’ve done almost a full school year of kindergarten homeschooling while traveling.

Worldschooling for family travel around the world

How do you feel about leaving your life behind in LA? Where will you live when you get back?

Leaving our family’s life in LA definitely brings a mix of emotions. We’re excited for our year traveling as a family and also to see what’s in store after that. But of course we will miss all of our LA people so much! We don’t currently know where we’ll live when we come back to the US, but it will be driven largely by professional considerations in conjunction with our family’s needs. If we aren’t able to get the professional situation squared away in time for the beginning of the school year, we’ll probably come back to the LA area at least temporarily while we figure things out.

How much does a gap year cost for a family?

A lot.

In the interest of transparency, I’ll say that it’s costing less in outright money than we initially anticipated thanks to our awesome brand partners like HomeExchange, but of course we are essentially paying with our time and energy in those situations. We will still be paying for lodging in some places and our goal is to keep those costs to an average of $100 per night.

Through judicious use of our frequent flyer miles and points, I’m hoping to keep our total flight costs to around $10k for the four of us. I don’t yet know how much rental cars will cost and in total, but in some places like New Zealand and Argentina that will be a big expense. I’d love to hear any suggestions on keeping that cost down!

We often keep our food costs low when we travel by eating breakfast at home and packing a picnic lunch. Those food choices also keep us moving through our days at a decent pace since no one in our family is an early riser. I anticipate that we’ll eat dinner out several nights per week, because restaurants and local food are an important cultural experience in addition to being fun and tasty – a can’t miss part of our gap year with a family!

We’ve already spent over a thousand dollars on vaccines before we travel around the world with the family and we expected that travel insurance will cost around two thousand dollars. We got a helpful quote through Squaremouth to find the right policy for our family – it was a lot more affordable than we expected. Many long-term travel families opt for World Nomads, though it was very pricey for a family of four.

We could spend less on our family travel around the world if we chose our itinerary based on cost (like spending our whole gap year in Europe), but we figure this is (probably) and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the world as a family and so we let our interests dictate our destinations. We’ve discovered that New Zealand, where we’ll probably spend the most time of any country, is extremely expensive. Another surprise on the financial front is the high cost of renting an automatic car in certain places – we’re used to paying an extra hundred dollars in Europe, not the multiples that we’re seeing in places like Argentina.

We won’t be working traditional jobs while we travel full-time, but we will be growing this blog to provide some income and we might earn some side cash through online surveys that pay cash.

Another option for financing a gap year with kids is to put your house up on Airbnb. We would have done that if it was an option! If it’s something you’re consider, check out these awesome tips for Airbnb hosts.

What’s your packing list for a trip around the world with kids? What about car seats for a trip around the world? What’s the best stroller for a world traveling family?

We generally pack light (it’s take lots of practice over years of family travel and countless trips), but we’re still working on specific packing lists for clothing. I’ll update here when we know, but in general we’ll plan a mix-and-match travel capsule wardrobe for each of us. Update: it turns out we made some major packing mistakes! Laugh at us here.

Ronnie and I will each carry a large backpack. He has a Kelty Redwing 50L and I recently picked up the super awesome Thule Versant 60L after lots of research and testing. Upon the recommendation of another traveling family, we bought the kids his-and-hers REI Tarn 18L and REI Tarn 12L backpacks – they love them! Jacob will probably carry most of his clothing in addition to his Amazon Fire tablet (loaded with our favorite free apps) and some other entertainment, while Shoshana will probably just carry her entertainment and a change of clothing for herself lest she topple over.

Related: Check out our complete guide to traveling with car seats!

Obviously with kids comes additional “kid travel gear”. We’re trying to be very strategic! We recently reviewed the Ride Safer Delight travel vest and that is definitely coming with us. We will probably also bring a Bubblebum inflatable booster seat and our beloved Combi Coccoro car seat. During long drives in our rental cars, Jacob will use the vest and Shoshana will ride in the Coccoro. If we’re going out in a city where we anticipate taking a taxi, we’ll bring the Bubblebum for Jacob and Shoshana will use the vest since she does meet all of the minimum requirements. Remember: the laws of physics are the same in other countries and in taxis! (Unfortunately we may need to rent car seats in Australia, as their laws are extremely specific even though I don’t believe that they would make my children any safer than the choices we generally make for their ages. But that rant will be the subject for another blog post.) Update: we only brought the Ride Safer delight vest and the Bubblebum, and I’m so glad!

We still haven’t fully decided which stroller to bring for the trip around the world. When we leave the US, Shoshana will be almost 3.5 and Jacob will be 6. In some ways, they’re old enough to travel without a stroller and that could make life much easier at times. But travel days are long and legs are short. We want the kids to be happy and comfortable for their sakes and ours! We plan to bring a “big single” stroller that could allow both kids to ride in a pinch, either our Baby Jogger Versa (now replaced by the City Premier) that would allow Jacob to ride in the footwell or our Baby Jogger POD stroller/bike trailer (it’s designed for one or two kids, but it’s a little tight for two and doesn’t recline; I love that the front mesh zips closed to keep bugs out and potentially overwhelmed kids in). If you’ve done similar travel and have suggestions on our stroller choice, please drop a comment to let us know!

What will you do with all your stuff while you travel?

Step 1: sell/donate/trash as much as possible

Step 2: store the rest

This is high on my list of “things to figure out before abandoning life as we know it.” We don’t know where we’ll end up next August, so I’m not sure if it will make more sense to get a fixed storage unit in LA or a movable unit like a POD or similar. We do know that we’ll hedge our bets on the inbound return flight by leaving a car on each coast. Our apartment is fantastic and we feel a great deal of nostalgia for it, but given our uncertain geography it just didn’t make sense to hold on to it. If you are ever looking for an apartment in West LA, we’d be happy to recommend our landlords.

Planning your own gap year? Make sure to go through this checklist for long-term travel before you pack your bags.

I’m excited for you guys, but I am a part of your lives in LA and I’m sad/angry/hurt/lonely.

We love you and our excitement about the next chapter is absolutely tempered by the heaviness in our hearts too! We are hoping to get back to LA next summer before we settle somewhere and promise promise promise that we will come to see you as often as is humanly possible when we get back to the US (if you’re really lucky, we’ll even stay in your guest room!). Thanks for being so supportive even though you’re sad that we’re leaving you.

Make sure to sign up for our updates! You can also follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube.

That’s a wrap for now. If you have a burning question that I didn’t answer already, please leave it in the comments and I’ll try to add the answer to this post!

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39 thoughts on “Choosing Wings: Our family gap year and trip around the world”

  1. SOOOOOOOOOO excited for you guys! Do you have dates for OZ? We would love to meet you guys if our trips coincided.

    Also any tips on packing for multi seasons – something i am terrible at. Would love an update as you go! #fearlessfamtrav

    Reply
    • Thanks you! It would be great to meet up 😀 Do you have an itinerary fixed yet?

      I’m *almost* done with my packing list, just refining a few things. Have you started thinking about a capsule wardrobe? The keys are for nearly everything to mix-and-match and to rely on layering for the chilly weather. thefamilyvoyage.com/travel-capsule-wardrobe/

      Reply
    • We would love to add more countries, but we’re trying to make it back in time for my husband to get situated with a job before the next school year! He actually studied abroad in Vienna and we went there on our babymoon as well – such a beautiful country 🙂

      Reply
  2. Congratulations on this very exciting decision and time of your lives – how admirable and extremely exciting! I got a lot of awesome travel tips reading your blog thank you – especially loved the recommendation of staying in vacation homes instead of hotels – having a washing machine was the added benefit that convinced me we need to try it out! I look forward to following along with your unfolding journey and wish you every bit of luck and joy on your journey!

    Reply
  3. How exciting! Seems a perfect time to up and leave for a bit too. I visited L.A last year and can totally understand your comment about traffic – it’s insane.

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  4. These tips are great!! I don’t have a family yet but these are great tips to remmeber in the future. It’s nice that travel can still be made a priority even when you have children.

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  5. I also love to go on family trips and your post is pushing me to just go and plan one 🙂 . I loved your recommendations and suggestions. Especially liked this one “We chose our itinerary to travel the world with kids mostly based on three factors: personal interest, seasonal logistics, and health/safety concerns”. This one of the most vital part to consider when planning a long family trip. Also I think stroller will be very helpful as it is a long trip and kids will have to do a lot. Finally all the best for your trip and enjoy 🙂

    Reply
    • Thank you so much! I agree, the stroller seems critical. We’re just on the fence as to which one — and it’s a big decision since we’ll have to live with it for almost a year.

      How old are your kids? Where do you live? We’ve never regretted taking them on a trip with us, you just have to pace yourselves appropriately to keep everyone happy.

      Reply
  6. I’m SO excited to follow along with you guys and can’t wait to ‘party’ (used very loosely!) in Israel! Glad the kids love their Tarn packs 🙂

    Reply
  7. This is so exciting! Your kids are going to love it – you should definitely visit Taiwan, and if you haven’t been to Italy yet try to squeeze that into the Europe portion of your trip. All the best!

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  8. Very exciting! I can’t wait to follow along.
    I know you aren’t looking to add stops but was disappointed to see your around the world trip doesn’t include a single stop in any of the 54 countries in Africa. Between my husband and I we have been to only six of them and they are all vastly different. The seasons are mild and safety isn’t an issue in many of them. It’s particularly important that Americans see Africa for themselves given the misinformation about the continent rooted in our own country’s role in pillaging the people and vast resources there. Anyway I’ll get off my soapbox. Enjoy your trip and I’ll definitely sign up for updates.

    Reply
    • I absolutely respect your soap box!!! We have actually considered various options in Africa ? We may yet visit Morocco from the Iberian Peninsula. In considering adding Africa to our itinerary, we considered a few things:
      -the cost and time to get to Southern Africa from many other places make it a challenge to fit in with the rest of our needs
      -we prefer to stay out of malarial zones if possible
      -we would VERY much like to go on a safari and prefer to do it with a guide, but most tour companies don’t permit children as young as our daughter to participate

      In total, we decided that we *could* have visited parts of Africa, but we wouldn’t have been able to do it the way we want to AND it would have come at a very high cost. It’s absolutely on our list of places to visit when our daughter is old enough, and it will probably be a dedicated trip rather than one leg of an already-complicated itinerary.

      Reply
  9. I appreciate your response. It makes total sense. I would definitely recommend Morocco if you can swing it. It really dazzles the senses. Also what about Ghana? No worries about malaria in the city. Accra is a cosmopolitan city and Cape Coast is a coastal town with expansive beaches. You’ll only have to travel to West Africa and America’s history is tied very closely to Ghana through the slave castles off Cape Coast. Safaris are definitely cool but the reality is most Africans see the big three less often in their lives than we do. It wouldn’t be part of how most locals live.

    Reply
    • Ghana is a great idea but it may need to wait for a dedicated trip ? We’re hoping to be back and somewhat settled before the start of the new school year so it’s tough to add other countries. We’ve actually been discussing removing some countries from the European leg of our journey!

      Reply
  10. This is amazing! We had plans to do one as well, but life got in the way and we ended up moving across country instead. One day though! Enjoy it!

    Also, it would probably be worth it to learn how to drive a stick shift before you go, I can’t imagine paying automatic prices in places like New Zealand! Plus, we found that the tiny bit of extra attention you have to pay when driving a stick helped in countries where we drove on the wrong side of the road.

    Reply
    • I’m sorry you had to shift your plans, but hopefully the move worked out well for you!

      About the stick… I refuse to drive overseas. I did it on our first trip abroad together because my husband wasn’t old enough to be on the rental car agreement, and the experience was so horrendous that I told him that he’d have to all of the international driving for the rest of our lives. He married me anyway 🙂 All that said, I have some experience driving stick but my husband has NONE. We just talked this weekend about him learning in advance of the trip to try to save $$$ (it’s a big issue in Argentina too) and he feels like it will just be another stress on top of driving an unfamiliar car in an unfamiliar area. Given my personal stance on international driving, I can’t fault him for wanting to minimize the difficulty! But you are quite right that we’d be better off if one of us could do it. That would probably save us a few thousand dollars, so it’s not completely off the table but unlikely to happen.

      Reply
      • Fair enough! I’ve only driven abroad in New Zealand which was a dream, but I’ve had some horrible taxi experiences in India and Thailand, so I can definitely sympathize with only driving where you’re familiar! Best of luck!

        Reply
  11. Oh my gosh, how exciting!!! My husband and I drove cross country from Virginia to San Francisco a few years ago and it was awesome! Where in Virginia will you be coming? Thanks for all your transparency in this post. Have an amazing trip!!!

    Reply
  12. What an incredible adventure ahead of you! I can’t imagine the logistics of the trip like that. It takes me weeks to plan a two-week trip itinerary 🙂 Looking forward to following you!

    Reply
  13. Oh wow, what an amazing thing to do. I admire your bravery and am a tad jealous. While we recently made a big decision to emigrate from the UK to Portugal, your round-the-world trip with your kids sounds unreal. If we didn’t have our dog I think we would be seriously considering it before our son needs to start real full-time education. That said, my parents are close by so we have dog-sitters for holidays up to a few weeks long. I wish you all the best of luck and will be following closely as some of your destinations are on our to-do list. Thanks so much for sharing this post and linking up to #wanderlustkids!

    Reply
  14. I have been blogging for over twelve years, and I want to offer a counterbalance to some of the prevailing (and wrong) wisdom on how to succeed.
    There is no doubt that travel blogging is a crowded field – and it is getting crowded by the day. A job that pays you to travel the world sounds like an amazing opportunity. On someone else’s dime, you get to travel to beautiful places around the world!

    Reply
  15. In the end can you tell approximately how much did the GAP year cost?

    If you can provide a breakdown it would be awesome and I understand you saved because of HomeExchange.

    Thank you

    Reply
    • Hi Neha,

      We never did a full accounting but I would say that most families of four spend $80-100,000 for a gap year. In addition to the HomeExchange partnership, we did cover some flights with credit card points. To be honest if I’d been more savvy about points & miles we could have spent even less! If you’re in the planning stages, I highly recommend that you check out these credit cards for family travel and start accumulating points to cover all of your major flight legs – definitely focus on transferrable points like Chase. In addition I suggest that you start researching the Hyatt award program, which is a transfer partner for Chase and has lots of amazing value redemptions – plus once you reach their Globalist status you’ll get free breakfast even at their fancy hotels.

      Safe travels,

      Melissa

      Reply

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