Plan it with us,
or have us book it.
A New England weekend does not need much planning. That is the whole point of Northern New England. The trip that needs a flight is where families actually get stuck: routing, timing, where four people can stay together, and what to book first. We help two ways. A $99 consultation gets you an hour with us and an itinerary built from it. The booking service, from $499, has us book the whole week in your name.
Staying in New England this time? You probably do not need us. A drive to Boothbay Harbor or Portsmouth is simple enough to plan yourself in an evening. See Northern New England for those guides. This service earns its keep on the trips that need a flight.
Some links below are affiliate links. If you book or buy through them, NOE may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend what we would book for our own family. Our disclosure.
What we offer,
and what it costs.
Both start the same way: an hour on the phone with us, talking through your kids, your dates and the trip you keep picturing. The difference is who does the booking after that. You pay us a flat fee, and no hotel or airline pays us for where we send you.
- A one-hour intro call about your family, your dates and your budget
- A proposed itinerary based on that call: the routing from Boston, where to base, and what to book first
- One month of email follow-up while you book it
- Credited toward the booking service if you upgrade
- The intro call and itinerary, then we do the booking
- Accommodations, flights, tours and activities, booked in your name on your own card
- Each additional location adds $99, for the extra research and booking work
- A final check-in call about a week before you leave
- Your trip binder: every confirmation, contact and check-in time in one place
- Already did the consultation? The $99 comes off the price
If you want us within reach while you are away. Email only, and we reply within 24 hours, 9 to 5 Eastern. There is no phone line.
Two locations, so the booking service is $499. Add the Amalfi Coast and it becomes three locations, $598. Started with the consultation? Take $99 off either one.
From the first call
to the trip binder.
One hour. Kids' ages matter more than the destination, so we start there, then dates, budget, and what a good day looks like for your family.
Built from the call. If you chose the consultation, you book from it, and we answer questions by email for a month.
Stays, flights, tours and activities, in your name and on your card. Confirmations land in your inbox, not ours.
About a week out we walk through the whole trip with you, then hand over the binder.
Booked in your name.
Our support ends at departure.
Every reservation we make is in your name, on your own card. That makes you the airline's customer, the hotel's customer and the rental company's customer, and each of them has its own 24/7 support line you can call directly. We think that is the right way round. At 2am in a Lisbon airport, the person who can actually rebook your flight works for the airline.
Our part ends when you leave, and we put the work in beforehand. About a week before departure we have a final check-in call. Then we hand over your trip binder: one shared document with every confirmation number, supplier contact, check-in time and address, plus a page that reads "if this goes wrong, call this number."
We strongly recommend travel insurance with a 24/7 assistance line, because that covers the gap we do not. SafetyWing is the travel medical plan we link to across this site.
- No 24/7 on-call line. We are two parents with two kids, not a call center.
- No phone support during your trip. The trip-week add-on is email only.
- No changes on your behalf mid-trip. The supplier makes those, and your binder says who to call.
You pay us a flat fee, so there is no reason for us to steer you toward one hotel or airline over another. Full detail on how this site earns money: our disclosure.
Prefer to book it yourself? Here is the process we use, with the tools we use ourselves. Some of the links below are affiliate links: if you book through them, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, and it never changes what we recommend. We only link to things we have used on our own trips, with our own kids.
Flights, before anything else.
Flights control every other decision: the dates, the arrival time, how wrecked everyone is on day one. When we book for you, this is the first call we make. Doing it yourself, we search to find the fare, then almost always book direct with the airline so we can pick seats together and get the fare class that actually includes a bag.
We search here first because it shows the whole month at once, which is how you spot that flying a day either side of vacation week saves hundreds. Then we book direct. The cheapest result is not always the right fare.
SkyscannerOur maintained list of what actually flies nonstop from Boston, with the seasonal routes marked and a verified date on it. The single most useful thing on this site if you are starting from scratch.
Where to stay,
with four people.
The constraint nobody warns you about: most European hotel rooms cap at two or three people. A family of four is either two rooms or an apartment, and an apartment with a washer changes a two-week trip completely. We filter for two bedrooms and somewhere walkable before we look at anything else, whether we are booking it for you or you are booking it yourself.
Our search is always the same three filters. Two bedrooms so the girls share and the adults sleep. Walkable to food, so nobody is driving after a long day. A washer, so we pack five outfits instead of fourteen. Find family-friendly stays on Expedia (hotels and vacation rentals).
ExpediaWe are pulling together the rentals and hotels we have booked ourselves and would book again: Iberlagos above Praia Dona Ana in Lagos, the Piraeus hotel we use the night before an early Athens flight, and the rest.
Then the two or three things
worth pre-booking.
We pre-book very little. One thing a day is the rule, and the rest is left loose. But a handful of things genuinely need buying in advance, and a handful more are the boring purchases that save a trip when something goes wrong.
Private kid-focused tours in Rome and Athens were worth every cent: a guide who talks to an eight-year-old beats any museum audio guide. Book the two or three big ones, leave the rest open.
GetYourGuideCode NOWHEREONEARTH5Set it up at home so it switches on the moment you land. Airports have WiFi. The taxi rank does not. This has replaced physical SIMs for us entirely and it is the cheapest peace of mind on the list.
AiraloAirport WiFi, hotel networks, rental apartment routers you know nothing about. It also means the kids' shows still work, which matters more than it should on a rainy afternoon in a foreign apartment.
NordVPNFriends of ours got badly ill abroad and had to be airlifted: not covered by what they had. We carry travel medical separately from the trip-cancellation cover that comes with our card. Two different products, and most families only have one.
SafetyWing’s published per-adult rate for its travel medical plan; the final price is confirmed on their site.
Age by age, because what a family needs at two is nothing like what they need at eight. Includes the things we have never once regretted carrying and the ones we stopped bringing years ago.
Our picture book. The easiest way to get a five-year-old genuinely excited about a trip is to read her a story set where she is about to go. We wrote this one for ours.
Before you book with us.
How much does your trip planning cost?
Two options. The Trip Planning Consultation is $99: a one-hour call, a proposed itinerary, and a month of email follow-up. The Booking Service starts at $499 for one week and one or two locations, and each additional location adds $99. Trip-week email support is an optional $99 add-on to the booking service.
What is included in the $99 consultation?
A one-hour intro call where we learn your family, your dates and the trip you are picturing. Then a proposed itinerary built from that call: the routing from Boston, where to base, and what to book first. After that you get one month of email follow-up while you book it yourself.
Does the $99 count toward the booking service?
Yes. If you start with the consultation and decide you would rather we book it, the $99 is credited toward the booking service. A one-week, two-location trip still comes to $499 in total.
What if our trip has more than two locations?
Each additional location adds $99, because every new base means more research and another round of bookings. A one-week trip across three locations would start at $598.
What happens if something goes wrong during the trip?
You call the supplier. Every booking is in your name, so the airline, hotel or rental company treats you as its own customer and you have its 24/7 support line. Our support ends at departure, and your trip binder has an “if this goes wrong, call this number” page for exactly this. We also strongly recommend travel insurance with a 24/7 assistance line. If you want us within reach while you are away, trip-week email support is a $99 add-on: email only, replies within 24 hours, 9 to 5 Eastern.
Do you book with my card?
Yes. Every booking is made in your name and paid on your own card. The reservations, the loyalty points and the supplier's own customer support all belong to you, not to us.
Do we need travel insurance?
We strongly recommend it, and specifically a policy with a 24/7 assistance line, because that is who picks up when we cannot. Trip-cancellation cover from a credit card is not the same thing as travel medical cover, and most families only have the first. SafetyWing is the travel medical plan we link to across this site.
Not ready to book anything?
Start with the Boston-to-Europe family flight guide: which routes run year-round, the order we book things in, and how far ahead to buy for a school vacation week.
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