Throwback Thursday: Canada and USA 2015 •

We’ve spent our summer vacation 2014 in Italy – the first real vacation as a family of 4 – and realized that we are quite a good match in being travel buddies. For 2015 we’ve decided to extend our radius and spent 3 weeks in Canada and the USA.

our Canada-USA itinerary – 1600km in 3 weeks

After visiting family in Montréal, we travelled through Québec and Ottawa down to the Niagara Falls and then back to Montréal through upstate New York.

I don’t need to say that it was a great trip cause obviously it was, but I don’t want to deny that it was challenging at times. The kids were alright: excited and happy. The stress factor – I have to admit it in all honesty – had been us parents.

Sure, jet lag hit us hard and all but the real difficulty laid in the inability to “come down” and to leave all these shhh-not-so-loud’s and hey-don’t-run’s behind us. After a week circling in a spiral that ended down in 4 utterly stressed people who could just not do it right anymore, we’ve managed to talk and hug it out and got rid of the pressure.

The essential progress we’ve made as parents during this trip was to acknowledge that we are stressed, generally. Full time jobs, living in a capital, rushing from A to B and trying to do everything right is a lifestyle that leaves its marks. When travelling, it became crucial for us to actively focus on leaning back and letting go, to reconsider what is important for us and to let the kids be kids. Short, to forget about the expectations that we think we need to full fill when being at home and to actually BE on vacation, to disconnect and to reconnect with each other instead.

We live in a big city by choice and we are not under the impression to just cope with our life generally; the opposite is the case – we are embracing it! But the gap between our daily routine and a relaxed life is as impressive as difficult to overcome.

We’re getting there 🙂

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