There is a part of me that gets goosebumps at the thought of touching the same walls, walking the same streets, seeing the same sights as hundreds of generations of "just regular people" before me. Children playing, men walking to work, women wondering what they'll make for dinner for the thousandth time, just like me...all our commonalities of human existence for thousands of years. There's just nothing like that here in North America.
Ever since as far back as I can remember...sometime around when I was about 6 years old...I have always wanted to visit England. Perhaps it was my Nanna's beautiful accent, possibly it was the idea of princesses and royalty. As I grew older, their history intrigued me - people, as well as architecture.
Back in 2010, I was sent to Brussels, Belgium on a work trip, and got a very brief taste of what I had dreamt of for so long. Although I only had a few hours to roam the city, I fell immediately in love and vowed I would have to go back.
Finally, a few years ago I decided enough dreaming, time to start planning. My husband was not keen on the idea and has some travel phobia. I knew it would take some time to warm him up to the idea, as well as save the money we would need. While thinking about it, I realized that my eldest child would graduate high school the same year my youngest would be entering high school, and we picked the summer of 2021 for The Trip.
I started reading up on options. I knew I would not want to rent a car. The thought of finding decent lodging, interesting places to see, and things to do, all on my own was daunting, intimidating, and utterly abhorrent to me. I am an excellent planner (it's what I do for a living, after all!) but giving me all of Europe and no frame of reference to start with led me to engage a travel agent this time. As members of AAA, we decided to use their local expert, Cristine. We picked up a few booklets and brochures in early 2020 and came up with a loose plan.
And then Covid. Things shut down, and the travel industry took quite the hit. We canceled so many trips we had planned that year, but we were optimistic that 2021 would be "normal", so we booked our tour with Trafalgar in Oct 2020 and got a fabulous discount for paying in full before the year's end. (Like I said, the travel industry was trying hard to recover from that terrible year. Even our flights were cheap as dirt! And also booked through Trafalgar).
The trip was supposed to depart in mid-June 2021. In April, we got the official word that it had been canceled by the tour company, and all our money turned into "future travel credit". After crying in disappointment, we rescheduled for April of 2022, crossing our fingers that things would be back to normal by then. And then I put all planning aside.
I went through a very deep depression in 2021. I had no hopes of anything. In my darkest moments, wondering if life was even worth living anymore, I had helpers who challenged me to think of things I still wanted to do someday. Among the list of things I thought of, like seeing my children married, was "travel the world". Yes, 6-year-old-me is still in there, hoping her dreams will come true. I still wasn't ready to go so far as believe this trip would happen, but we didn't cancel.
As another new year dawned, more trips happened, more things started to return to normal, and the more I realized that my youngest child was struggling enough in school that missing weeks of classes would not be a good thing for her. After much deliberation, and quite the fight our travel agent had to do to get Trafalgar to honor our originally-paid amount, we rescheduled the trip for mid-June again, almost exactly a year after the original booking.
That was just over 6 weeks ago, and in that time I have had quite a lot of thoughts I want to write down...things I've learned, the reasoning behind making certain choices, and also to share my excitement. I haven't done this yet, for several reasons. First, I am utterly frustrated with social media. I have started to realize that I am jealous of my friends' happiness when I see their posts, which is NOT "who I am" or how I wish to be. Second, I don't want to write things and have it be construed as showing off or trying to (or even inadvertently succeeding to) make someone else jealous. However, I really want to have a record of our trip, IF it actually happens. I want to be able to relive the memories. I also hope against hope that this will not be our only trip...and someday we might need to re-use this information for other trips.
And so...I've rambled on quite a lot longer than I meant to...but now that you have the history of how I got here, I hope you'll keep up with me on my adventures of both planning *and* taking this trip.
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