Rome is one of the best first international trips for a family or group: walkable, dense with history, and endlessly forgiving of a flexible itinerary if kids need a gelato break every few hours (which they will, and that’s fine).

Skip-the-line tickets for the Colosseum and Vatican Museums are worth booking well ahead: lines without them can eat up half a day. Dave typically builds in a guided tour for at least one major site, since context genuinely changes how much kids (and adults) get out of it.

Santorini’s blue-domed churches over the caldera are exactly what they look like in photos, and exactly why it’s one of the most requested honeymoon and anniversary destinations Dave books.

Most Greek Isles trips work best combined with at least one other island (Mykonos, Naxos, or a mainland stop in Athens) rather than a full week in one spot: Dave typically builds a short island-hopping itinerary using ferries rather than trying to do it all by cruise ship alone.

Paris rewards a trip that isn’t over-scheduled: some of the best family memories come from an unplanned afternoon wandering a neighborhood like Le Marais rather than a fourth museum in three days.

That said, timed tickets for the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre genuinely need to be booked in advance, especially in peak season, and Dave handles that sequencing so your group isn’t standing in a two-hour line on vacation.