Ancestry Travel Tips: Plan a Journey Into Your Family’s Past

There are countless reasons to plan a family vacation, whether the genesis of the trip is to forge memories in a long-dreamed-about locale; a particular far-flung site that calls to you; or a multigenerational group getaway to a destination that ticks a new box for the whole crew. But one particular type of travel is increasing in popularity and brings people to an area that may have been subconsciously pulling on them for decades. Enter ancestry travel, or traveling to trace or explore your genealogical roots.

Driven partly by the rise of at-home DNA test kits, ancestry travel (a.k.a. origin travel or heritage travel) can mean a host of things to different people. It can simply be about traveling to a region from which your family hails to feel the spirit of the place. Or it can be much, much more granular … say, visiting the church in a small town where your great-great-grandparents were married, or strolling the same lanes as your ancestors in Edinburgh and coming home adorned with your family’s signature tartan fabric. The level to which you incorporate learning about your roots into a trip really comes down to how detailed you would like to be and how much information about your family you already have on hand.

A Beginner’s Guide to Ancestry Travel

As with all trips planned by the Ciao Bambino Travel Advisor team, knowledgeable local experts and guides are key to unlocking truly magical and one-of-a-kind experiences. CB works with phenomenally talented folks in most any destination you could hope to visit, and we tapped them to talk about how to plan an origin travel-inspired trip in areas that frequently bubble up for this specialty, like Sicily, England, France, Germany, Ireland and Scotland (it’s estimated that the U.S. alone has nearly 30 million people with Scotch or Scotch-Irish heritage). If you start feeling overwhelmed by the logistics, get in touch to be paired with an Advisor who can handle all the details for you and pull in the right local experts to help.

Gather as much information as you can

The first step in heritage travel is collecting as much info as possible about your family tree. Everything from birth certificates to marriage records and other items that detail specific towns, or potentially even neighborhoods and streets, is super helpful and can directly inform how dialed-in your trip will be. An ancestry travel expert can help you frame your expectations from there. For example, do you want to engage formally with a genealogist to trace your family’s roots using a native lens, or are you happy to lean into a more general idea of an area? Some travelers want to simply get the feel of a place and some want to visit a particular church or even locate a gravestone.

Plan ahead to make the most of your time

If you are interested in more in-depth research to frame your trip, six to nine months’ lead time is ideal. This window gives local experts a chance to do necessary research that will shape your visit. Ample planning time also allows for creating bespoke experiences — you could take a cooking class in a particular town in Italy where your family has roots; spend time in a part of Scotland tied to your clan; or enjoy being regaled by an Irish storyteller about life in their native land. In some areas you can find longtime local experts or guides who are intimately familiar with specifics about family lines and histories, and considerable lead time also helps identify them and coordinate their availability to bring what you’ve learned about on paper (and from across the ocean) to life.

Make family history just one facet of your journey

Although tracing your roots may be the impetus for your trip, it’s important to strike a healthy balance between research and enjoyment. After all, this is still a vacation! Working with CB experts will allow you not to lose sight of the forest for the trees, by anchoring some days with an origin-specific focus and then zooming back out to appreciate the culture and beauty of the regions you are visiting. This holds true for any destination. This approach also allows for a level of much-needed variety, whether in types of experiences, the people you interact with, periods in history or the physical differences in terrain covered, from mountains to lakes to beaches and everything in between.

Heritage travel isn’t limited by time of year, but keep in mind factors that will make the trip as smooth as possible based on your group’s ages and desired pace. Seven to 10 days in most locales will provide plenty of time on the ground to immerse yourselves in your family history as well as the surrounding area, perhaps adding day trips or another region within a given country. For example, Sicily is quite large and if your family hails from the northwest in Palermo, you’d need at least a few additional days to explore the vast history on the east coast (e.g. Syracuse, Taormina or Catania). While every trip is a custom endeavor, origin travel ups the bar to a different level, incorporating exactly what makes your family tick against the backdrop of your ancestral land.

Use the opportunity to connect with locals

Origin travel can be quite nuanced and provides a fabulous point of connection for taking travel from the tourist realm to another, more authentic, place. A CB Advisor can connect you with a host of experiences, from learning about the once-dying folk art of Sicilian cart-making, which was central to family life at one point, to shopping at weekly markets or simply embracing the ambiance in a pub or café, communing with the people who live nearby. A great deal of the beauty of origin travel is the invitation to slow down and leave enough time simply to take in your surroundings and wander at will. Prioritize not only doing, but also meandering … getting a bit lost, finding out more about yourself, and perhaps further fleshing out your family tree and its broader landscape in the process.

Relevant Links: 

Browse all tips and ideas for trip planning on Ciao Bambino

5 tips to make multigenerational travel fun for all

10 best places for multigenerational family vacations

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Editor’s note: This post was accurate when published. We advise checking independently for the latest information and updates. Ciao Bambino does not accept responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in, or for any actions taken based on, the information presented.