One random Friday in August 2014, Paul came home from work expecting a nice weekend of grocery shopping, sleeping in, and streaming old episodes of The Amazing Race.
EXCEPT!
When he turned from the hallway to the living room, he saw me standing there with our travel backpacks and the most insane grin on my face that could possibly be created with my face muscles. And I said,
"Paul! Pack your bag because we're goin' to NORWAY!"
And he just stood there...
And said, "....what?"
"Norway! Right now! We are going to Norway in literally ten minutes!"
Let me make this shorter than it could be and just sum up by saying that it didn't really seem to fully sink in for him until after we had actually landed in Bergen. Which, you know, was pretty funny. And also confusing. Because I was like NORWAY NORWAY NORWAY! and he was like ::wide eye confusion silence shock::
The thing was that Paul had always told me about how he'd always wanted to see Norwegian fjords and that, since I was pretty pregnant by then, that we most likely would never get up there before we had to move away.
Well. Challenge Accepted!
We went to Bergen for the weekend and pulled one long, all-day fjord tour on Saturday through Norway-In-A-Day (highly recommended). And it was just a blast. Even moreso for me because I love orchestrating surprises and I'd rank an international vacation pretty high for coolest possible surprise.
Our trip, because it was so short and dependent on a tour company was a bit more touristy than we were used to on our trips - Bergen, being a cruise port, meant there were a lot of older North Americans roaming the streets in camera'd packs but it had a lot going for it. I especially loved staying so close to the harbor and walking around the old, wooden 19th century neighborhood, Bryggen.
The next day on the trains, ferries, and busses through the fjords was super great and exhausting and amazing and everything. By that point, Paul was finally understanding that, yes, we were actually in real Norway and was really excited. I feel like I'm writing too many words like "amazing" and "excited" and it doesn't say what I meant to say but I'm trying to write this really fast while Hadrian is asleep and I have a cold so my vocabulary isn't, shall we say, at its finest. BUT I just wanted to say that it was all worth it. It was so worth it. It's always worth it to travel.
So, I guess, if you're a person who thinks all the time about how they wish they could go somewhere but "I can't right now" then...well, maybe that's true. But first make sure about that. Is it absolutely true? Could you do it? Are you just saying you can't because it seems like it would take too much preparation or time or you don't know if spending your money is the right choice? Well...I can't really say what your experience would be, but we're pretty conservative people - financially, time-wise, prep-wise. And we have never regretted any of our adventures for a second. Money is just money, but what's most important are memories.
That's why we went to Norway for a weekend. Because we could. (And for the SURPRISE!)
