“Where did I come from?” It’s a question that fascinates Americans, virtually all of whom have ancestors who came to the United States as immigrants, refugees or enslaved people. Increasingly, that curiosity is driving interest in ancestry tourism (also known as heritage travel or roots tourism), especially among boomer and senior travelers.

Ancestry travel can be as general as a heritage tour of Ireland or as specific as a quest to find your great-grandmother’s last living relatives in Poland. Here are our best tips for planning genealogy travel. As always, be sure to protect your trip with travel insurance from Allianz Global Assistance, whether you’re traveling within the United States or overseas.

1. Let DNA guide your ancestry travel.

EF Go Ahead Tours has partnered with Ancestry.com to offer DNA-driven ancestry tours. First, take an at-home DNA test. Use the results to set goals for your trip in a consultation with a genealogy expert. Then, you’ll set off on a 10- to 12-day tour of Ireland, Germany, Sicily or southern Italy, accompanied by a professional genealogist who can answer questions about what life was like for your ancestors.

Keep in mind that there are limitations to DNA tourism. DNA testing alone can show you the geographic regions from which your ancestors hailed, but not pinpoint specific towns or counties. If you’d like to delve deeper, you can pay for Ancestry to arrange an ancestral home visit during or after the main trip, in which a guide will take you to the exact town, village or parish where your own specific ancestors lived.ⁱ

2. Begin your ancestor search close to home. 

Genealogy research sites such as Ancestry.com and FamilySearch make it almost ridiculously easy to trace your lineage, especially if you discover that someone else in the family tree has already done the hard work. But it’s wisest to begin within your own family, the National Park Service says. “Ask your relatives what they know and see if they have any old documents that might provide information, such as birth, marriage, or death certificates; steamship tickets; naturalization papers; a family Bible; or photos that can help identify people and narrow down dates.”ⁱⁱ

If you’re serious about pursuing your family history, you may want to travel to Salt Lake City’s Family History Library, the world’s largest genealogical library. Access to the library’s massive collection is free, and the staff and volunteers are happy to help you figure out where to begin. (They can’t do the research for you, however.)

3. Think about hiring a professional to help trace your ancestry. 

Sometimes, tracing your ancestry back to a particular place is simple — especially if your family still maintains ties with relatives there. Other times, it’s not so simple. For example, Sicily has some of the world’s best genealogy records, diligently kept by local churches. Most Sicilians can trace their lineage back to around 1500, even if they’re not aristocrats.ⁱⁱⁱ Amazing, right?

However, these documents often aren’t available online, and if you can’t speak Italian/Sicilian or read Latin (the language in which early church records were kept), you’ll be out of luck.^iv That’s why you may be wise to hire a professional genealogist in your country of origin. These services don’t come cheap, but the results can be fascinating.

4. Take a trip to Ellis Island.

Nearly half of all modern-day Americans can trace their family history to at least one person who passed through Ellis Island, off the coast of New York City.^v More than 12 million immigrants entered the United States there from 1892 until 1954.^vi You can try to find out if your great-greats were among the throngs arriving in New York by searching the passenger database, which may reveal their place of origin and the ship they sailed on, among other details.

Even if you don’t travel all the way back to the old country, a trip to the Ellis Island Immigration Museum and the Statue of Liberty can be a wonderful way to begin your ancestral journey. Just plan carefully: In the summer, and especially on weekends, the ferry lines are long and the museum is crowded. Security checks are stringent, so don’t carry with you anything you wouldn’t bring on an airplane. You may also want to visit the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, a remarkable museum that recreates the lives of immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, China and Lithuania.

5. Be prepared to experience strong emotions. 

Ancestry travel may be emotionally devastating, particularly if your ancestors were enslaved. African heritage tours to Ghana often include visits to the infamous coastal fortresses where people were imprisoned before being sold abroad. Facing the sea was “the door of no return,” through which enslaved people were lowered into boats and taken to large slaving ships moored offshore. Ten to 15 percent of these enslaved people died at sea; the rest were condemned to lives of misery in a foreign land.^vii

Walking in your ancestors’ footsteps can be a profoundly sad and moving experience. But ancestry travel can also include moments of joy, as you discover the rich history and cultural heritage of your forebears. Ashanti African Tours offers travelers the chance to receive a local, traditional name based on the day of the week you were born, “a traditional practice here and a significant part of you returning home.”

6. Don’t be surprised by setbacks.

Trying to trace your ancestors can be terribly frustrating. You may get oh-so-close to discovering your ancestral home, and then find out that the records you need have been destroyed by war, fire, flooding or even mice. Or, you may find something you weren’t expecting, such as a tragedy that bent your family tree.

Then again, you may get lucky! Eunan Smyth, an Irish tour guide for CIE Tours International, told The Washington Post that one participant actually found his grandfather’s house, still occupied by relatives with the same surname: “And when he knocked on the door and told them that, they brought him in and showed him photographs of his grandfather and great-grandfather. That man came back to us with a tear in his eye, because he went home.”

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