How to Backpack Through Europe, With Kids

'We had an underwear problem before we even got on the Europe-bound airplane. Cal — our sweet, expressive, supposedly potty-trained 5-year-old — had soiled his pants.

“Sorry, Mommy,” he said, embarrassed.

“It’s O.K.,” my wife assured him.

Under normal circumstances, such accidents are merely a nuisance, part of our job description as parents. But these were not normal circumstances.

My wife, Eva, and I had pulled our two boys, Cal, and his brother, Cormac, 7, out of school six weeks early to backpack across Europe: one month and 2,000 miles, from London to Budapest. Just backpacks, no massive roller bags. Just the stripped-down basics, not the mounds of gear you see families humping through airports, like J. Crew-clad Sherpas going to the mountaintop — or the nearest Starbucks.

It was the way Eva and I had traveled (before children) across Turkey, China, Vietnam and Japan. Our backpacks — salvaged from the shed behind our house in uptown New Orleans — bore the scars of travel, long ago. And we wanted our boys to appreciate this way of life. Or, at least, learn to deal with it. We were taking only the necessities: limited clothes, no toys and no iPads. If we were doing this, we wanted the boys to interact with the world around them, not with a glowing screen. . .

“Come on, Dad,” he said. “It’ll be fun.”

I had no response. I knew my son was right, and I knew what I had to do. We walked across the bridge, he and I, all the way to the other side and all the way back, looking right past our feet to the earth below. Eva and Cormac followed after awhile, going about a third of the way, as far as they could go. We were in this together. We were floating on air, and we would live to recount the tale.

That night, safely inside our hotel room in the majestic former Olympic town of Innsbruck, we laughed over takeout Indian food as we retold the story of our day, and the bridge and the bravery we all found inside of us.

It was 10 p.m. Way too late for dinner, way past bedtime for the boys. And none of us cared. There was only one question that mattered and Cormac asked it first. “Where are we going next?”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/travel/travel-with-kids-backpacking.html?