Field guides for families

Real adventures. Real family. Tough challenges, made approachable.

Written by a family who travels frequently with a neurodivergent teenager, a dog and grandparents — rough parts included.

A parent and child on the trail at Rainbow Mountain in Peru, a llama standing beside them.
Rainbow Mountain, Peru Day 5 · with a 10-year-old

Written for the families most guides skip

Most travel writing assumes a family with no constraints. Ours has several. Every itinerary here was walked by two adults and a neurodivergent teenager — and, depending on the trip, a dog or a set of grandparents. What worked is written down. So is what didn't.

  • Neurodivergent kids

    Crowd levels, noise, age limits, and how much a day's schedule can move without the whole thing coming apart.

  • Pets

    Where the dog came with us, where they were turned away, and where one of us waited outside.

  • Grandparents

    How long the walks actually are, where the benches are, and which viewpoints you reach without the hike.

What's in every guide

The same three articles for every destination, so you always know where to look — plus a food guide or a 24-hour city plan where we have one. The itineraries print, and stay readable once you've lost signal.

  1. The Experience

    What the trip was actually like — what worked, what didn't, and what we'd tell another family.

  2. Itinerary

    The day-by-day plan in brief. Built to print, and to read offline.

  3. Tips & Hacks

    Food, driving, weather, timings and the small things worth knowing in advance.

Why "Trains & Frogs"

The name arrived on the ring road in Iceland, somewhere in the long empty stretches where the landscape does your thinking for you. Trains and frogs were the first two things our son loved, and they were what made a strange place feel like somewhere he could go.

Since before he was 2 years old, he has been obsessed with trains. He finds comfort in the sight and sound of the trains, the mostly straight and long paths it follows and how one carriage is connected to another. Another thing that he was in love with were frogs. He especially loved the green ones.

Riddhi, in How to pick a trip
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