We’ve been home now for a week and have had time to reflect on our big 8-week trip. One thing up front: it is nice to be home and not traveling. I am admiring our local surroundings like a tourist and finding a lot to like. We do live in a beautiful place.  But WOW did we create some family memories together.  Each of us will remember this trip for the rest of our lives.

There are a few takeaways on taking a trip like this that are worth sharing:

1. If you’re thinking of taking a trip like this with your family, buy non-refundable airplane tickets right away. We couldn’t decide on an itinerary for this big trip: Greece again? Amsterdam? Trains to Prague? We kept talking and talking about potential destinations for months and months. There are so many choices and all of them incredible. It took me booking the airline tickets to Madrid and back from London with specific dates for us to get serious about planning the trip. Having non-refundable airplane tickets was a great incentive to make sure the points in between were planned well.

2. Plan ahead and book your hotels and apartment rentals online. We started booking hotels and VRBOs about eight months in advance. Even with that much advance notice, we still couldn’t book all the the places we wanted. The best places get booked up way in advance. We booked 24 different hotels and apartment rentals via the internet and had zero reservation problems during our trip. 95% of our reservations were made with either booking.com or vrbo.com and all came off without a hitch, including a couple nervous all-cash on arrival VRBO bookings. You have to appreciate how technology is reshaping the vacation industry. If you haven’t tried a VRBO rental yet, you should. We stayed at some incredible places this trip for a fraction of the cost of hotels.

3. Build some down time in your itinerary. We really appreciated the longer stops where we had some time to relax and take in the surroundings. Paris in three days sounds good on paper, but a week in a small town in the Basque country of Spain is better. If we had to do it again, I would have booked longer stays in fewer places. Also remember that each member of your family will have a melt-down moment at some point in such a long trip (mine came in Paris at the Louvre). Plan on it and joke about it later. You can’t take a two-month family trip like this without a few hiccups.

4. Don’t procrastinate about taking a trip like this. Plan it, book your tickets, go! Time goes faster than you think and your kids grow up faster than you’d imagine. You only live once. Go see the world and its wonders while you can.

All this travel has also given me new eyes here at home. For the past week I’ve been able to look around at where we live with the same wonder I had abroad. We live in a pretty magical place here on Vashon Island. The incredible views off our front porch across the sound all the way to Mount Baker and Whidbey Island, goldfinches whirring about as I take it all in. Hugging dear friends that you missed tremendously while away, wishing somehow they could have come with you on your travels. A walk through Vashon town seeing so many people you know at the Saturday farmer’s market and at the small shops on main street, and the excitement of a happenstance meeting of new friends at the local winery, kindled by a future of kinship and laughter not possible with the transitory nature of traveling abroad.

It’s nice to be home.

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