We’re a family that fell in love with travel long before it was anything else. Jen plans real trips for real families. Brian writes and shoots the stories from the road, including a night camping on the ice in Antarctica. Everything here comes from that same place: a genuine love of going somewhere new.
Before any of this, Jen ran international travel and exchange programs, connecting students and families with the world and watching people come home changed by what they’d experienced. That’s still what drives her. She’s spent the better part of a decade turning that instinct into real trips: safaris, polar expeditions, and multi-country itineraries for families who want more than a resort pool.
She’s lived and worked in Geneva, studied in France, cruised Norway’s Arctic coast in winter, and gone on safari in South Africa’s Sabi Sand. In January 2026 she joined an HX expedition to Antarctica and camped on the ice overnight, a trip that changed how she thinks about travel entirely. The trip she’s proudest of isn’t always the most dramatic one. It’s a 21-night custom Australia itinerary she built from scratch for a mother and daughter’s bucket-list trip, with stopovers in Hawaii and Fiji, because nothing off the shelf fit what they needed.
Jen is also the founder of Schwan Travels, a boutique travel agency based in Pennsylvania. After years of working as a travel advisor and building a business around relationships, firsthand experience, and thoughtful planning, she created Schwan Travels as a place where travel could be approached a little differently.
Brian is Jen’s travel partner and the creative force behind Schwan Travels. He’s the voice behind the Schwanderlust blog, and the photographer and videographer behind most of the images and video the family produces from their travels.
He’s navigated a Hurtigruten coastal cruise in winter Norway, driven a rental car through the St. Gotthard Pass with three kids in the back, and spent a night on the ice in Antarctica. He writes and shoots all of it: what worked, what didn’t, and what’s worth knowing before you go.
When he’s not on the road, Brian’s usually editing photos or writing up the last trip while already thinking about the next one. If you want an unfiltered trip report from someone who was actually there, the Schwanderlust blog is the place.