We took Nora to Europe this summer, an enterprise we decided upon when she was eighteen months old and pliable, and because she walked quite late, still tentatively mobile. By the time her second birthday rolled around (we left three days later), she had morphed into a full-fledged toddler, very much the two-year-old, with all the opinionated charm (and, sometimes, distinct lack of charm) that implies. Still, we piled onto the airplane for the overnight flight from SFO to Amsterdam, having supplied ourselves well with packets of crayons and stickers, snack foods, tiny containers of gels and liquids (among them, I don't mind admitting, Benadryl), and one toddler who had been well coached in the idea that planes are for sleeping on.

We got her into her pajamas and actually asleep fairly close to her normal bedtime, and all was quiet, except for the unpleasant hum of the plane, for four or five hours—not much of a night's sleep for a two-year-old, nor for this particular 34-year-old. Still, the flight over wasn't so bad, and we took the train in from the airport and dragged ourselves across the street from Amsterdam Centraal Station to our hotel. My husband and child crashed in exhaustion; I dragged myself out for a walk in what passed for daylight, to try to get on European time.

The time adjustment, actually, went surprisingly well. The next day we set off on the train for Bruges, which Nora loved—especially the touristy horse-drawn carriages in the main square. The clip, clop, clip, clop they made on the cobbles was her favorite sound of the trip; she adored the frites we ate everywhere; and she liked pointing out the ducks on the canals. In short, she liked all the things she likes at home. I was entranced, myself, by European strollers, as I jounced our Maclaren Volo across the cobbles. (At least it was lightweight.) The Dutch and Belgians are people who invest in strollers: Quinny, Bugaboo, and other exotic brands proliferated at sidewalk cafes, replete with features like fetching wee umbrellas, convertible prams, full recline, and so forth. Who says you can't really see anything when you travel with children?

Seriously, though, I had had something of a wanderlust since before Nora was born. Our last trip to Europe was a five-day long weekend in London when I was in the queasy early stages of pregnancy, and it was exhausting and rather miserable. This time, my husband was giving a paper at a conference in Leiden, near the Hague, and I jumped at the chance to go along—planning a two-week extravaganza that included Bruges, Brussels, the Hague, and Amsterdam. I'd never been to any of these places, but they seemed child-friendly enough. When planning, I had not counted on the devastating strength of the Euro (ouch) or on the long, long summer evenings so far north (which made it difficult to get Nora to bed before 10), but, you know, it was fun anyway—aside from a memorably awful day spent on trains stressfully crisscrossing the Netherlands, thanks to a rail diversion. On that day, we realized that the purpose of travel is to make you desperately want to get back to your dull old home: you travel until you are broke, fatigued, angry with your travel companions, and generally disgusted with life.

From there, though, we bounced back to enjoy five days in Amsterdam at the end of the trip. We had rented an apartment near Museumplein and the Vondelpark—well out of the scruffy, smoky, druggy center—and it was a major thrill to have laundry, not to mention a kitchen. The first day, we headed to the Rijksmuseum to see the Dutch masters, trying to beat the crowds by going early. It was indeed crowded, but for a nice reason: it was Rembrandt's 401st birthday, and there was a party with cake and coffee and ham-and-cheese sandwiches, as well as balloons and free admission. We trawled through the museum with the crowds. Nora likes the Dutch masters; they painted plenty of horses, cats, doggies, bunnies, and so on. (We saw no reason to mention that some of those bunnies were actually in kitchen still-lifes, destined for the cooking pot.) The next day, the Van Gogh museum was less of a hit; she couldn't care less about sunflowers.

In these last few days of the trip, sadly, I got bad news from home: my grandfather was ill and in the hospital. He had been ailing for a long time, and this was worrisome; we were a little relieved to get on the plane and get back. About the trip home, perhaps the less said the better. Nora slept for maybe two hours out of the 11 of the flight, and we traded off hour by hour in supervising her, counting the minutes as she got ever antsier. After collecting bags, going through customs, getting out to long-term parking, and finally dropping, exhausted, into the car for the hour and a half ride home, my husband and I had pretty much had it.

From the carseat in the back, though, piped up a little voice: "I want to go back! Back to Amsterdam!" Yeah, right. Never again, we thought. We slumped in our seats just a little more, as our desperately overtired offspring refused to sleep.

When we got back my grandfather was improving a bit, but it was short-lived. He convalesced for much of the summer, and I entertained him with tales of our travels. He and my late grandmother were ardent travelers who took me on a five-week trip to Europe when I was ten, a driving loop from Paris down to Rome and back again, through Zurich. At ten, I probably went into every patisserie along our route, and Nora was similarly impressed with the sweets in Europe—especially the little bowl of real whipped cream we were brought to accompany waffles in Belgium. She disdained the waffles and ate all the cream with a spoon, proving once and for all that she is her mother's daughter.

Nora was an intrepid traveler, a better one than I am, truth be told: I love to be other places, but I'm not keen on the process of getting there, especially flying. Still, when my grandfather put me in the front seat of the French rental car, with the Michelin guide and the maps, I think he passed along the travel bug, more or less permanently. The less pleasant aspects of our trip have now faded sufficiently that I've been pricing tickets to Morocco, where my brother-in-law and family just moved, and also attempting to convince my husband that we should go—an even harder task than paying for the tickets. I think wanting to travel will stick with Nora, too. She still talks about the places we went, and things we saw (mostly the horses going clip, clop), and she thinks that all planes go to Amsterdam and all trains to the Hague or Bruges or Brussels.

My grandfather had seemed to regain a lot of his strength, but a couple of weeks ago I got another call from my mom: he was on his way to the hospital again. This time, it was really the end. This time, I was just blocks away, and I spent a few hours with him at the hospital before he died. I remember our trip to Europe well, but I still wish I had asked him just once more about where we stayed, or his travels with my grandmother, and I wish that he could have seen Nora grow up a bit more, or she could have known him when he was in his traveling prime. Sometimes, we all want to go back—and there's about as much chance of doing so as Nora has of getting back to Amsterdam in the next few years.