Have Family, Will Travel

It didn’t start out as planned.

Instead of kicking off a family vacation with eight of my closest relatives, thanks to a delayed flight and a missed connection I found myself sitting alone in a hot tub in the backyard of an expansive house that sleeps 16.

I don’t know if absence truly makes the heart grow fonder, but at that moment I actually craved the typical commotion that comes with family travel – cramming into vehicles, squabbling over where to sleep, what to do or who pays the bill (or being outnumbered when you request to pull over to take yet another photo, sigh) – that inevitably ensued. It would indeed be the last time I was alone for the next eight days.

As my family is spread across the country as well as another continent, it’s become a bit of a tradition for us to meet up in different corners of the world. Together we’ve meandered through the hairpin turns of the Road to Hana in Hawai’i, cycled through the towns where my parents grew up in Germany and most recently explored the streets of Prague last summer. This time around the chosen destination was slightly closer to home – on the eastern shores of Canada.

Seven nights, two cars, and just over 1,000 km later from the fjords of Gros Morne National Park to the easternmost point in Canada, and plenty of pit stops in between, we’ve tested out some options to spark family bonding during a road trip around Newfoundland.

So if you want to find out more about assistant editor, Ann Ruppenstein’s family vacation in beautiful Newfoundland, check out this week’s digital edition of Travel Courier.