Your daughter just moved to London for a study-abroad semester. You and your partner are back home in Seattle. You miss her, you want to visit — and the obvious move is to book a flight to Heathrow. Makes total sense for the first trip.
But what about the second one? And the third?
The London loop gets old fast
That first visit is great. You see the flat, walk through the neighborhood, grab dinner with her friends. The second time, you’ve already done all that. She has midterms. You end up wandering around the same area while she’s in class, waiting for the weekend to actually do something together.
Meanwhile, she’s been living there for months. She doesn’t need you to show her London — she needs a break from it.
Pick a place that’s new for everyone
A different approach: instead of one person always flying to the other, you both fly somewhere in the middle. A city that neither of you knows, reachable by direct flight from both Seattle and London.
Nobody is a host. Nobody is a guest. You’re exploring together.
Midway was built for exactly this. Enter Seattle and London, and it shows every destination with direct flights from both — no spreadsheet required.
Where Seattle and London overlap
Having a family member based in Europe opens up a lot. She hops on a 2-hour flight; you cross the Atlantic. Here are a few cities that work well:
Barcelona. Architecture, food, the Mediterranean. A long weekend here feels like a proper trip. Your student can get there for under €50 on a budget carrier.
Istanbul. This one surprises people. Direct flights from both London and several US cities. Genuinely different from anything in Western Europe — the food alone is worth the trip. And it’s significantly cheaper once you’re there.
Lisbon. Walkable, relaxed, affordable. Several US airlines now fly nonstop, and London connections are everywhere. Good for a family that wants to slow down rather than check boxes.
Rome. Works for every generation. History for the parents, nightlife and aperitivo culture for the student. Direct flights from London are frequent.
The practical benefits
- She doesn’t lose a week. A 2-hour flight to Barcelona fits around a class schedule better than hosting visitors for five days.
- You share the travel effort instead of one person always making the long-haul trek.
- Each trip is different. Over a year abroad, you could meet in three or four cities — that’s a collection of shared experiences, not just repeated visits to the same place.
- Budget-friendly for the student. Short-haul flights in Europe are cheap, and Southern European cities stretch a dollar further than London does.
It’s not just study abroad
The same logic applies any time family is spread across different cities — not just across an ocean.
Say your parents are in Denver, you’re in Boston, and your sister is in Austin. The default is everyone descending on your parents’ house every holiday, which means one household doing all the hosting and two sets of travellers fighting connections. Run the three cities through Midway and you’ll often find a fourth city everyone can reach nonstop — somewhere like Nashville or Chicago — that turns a logistics headache into an actual trip. Nobody cooks for ten people, nobody sleeps on an air mattress, and the time together happens on neutral ground.
It works for adult siblings who’ve scattered, grandparents meeting grandkids halfway, or a parent visiting a kid who moved across the country for a first job. If the trip spans three generations across as many states, our guide to planning a multigenerational trip from three different states digs into that case specifically.
How to plan it in four steps
- List every origin. The home cities of everyone who’s coming — two, three, or more.
- Filter to nonstop-from-all. Enter the cities in Midway and look only at destinations with a direct flight from each origin. A connection turns a short hop into a half-day.
- Sort by balance and budget. Among the nonstop options, favour the ones where flying time splits evenly and fares are reasonable from every city — not just the cheapest from one.
- Pick for the trip, not the logistics. Once a handful of cities clear the flight test, choose on what you’ll actually do there: food, walkability, weather for your dates.
Spending ten minutes on steps one and two up front is what keeps the second and third trips from defaulting back to the same airport.
Go see the flat first. Then start exploring.
There’s no reason trip one can’t be London. Go see her place, take the awkward Big Ben photo. But for trip two, try meeting somewhere neither of you has been. You might find that the best part of having family abroad isn’t visiting them — it’s discovering new places together.