Sometimes you just have to act. Where travel is concerned, if you don’t act quickly, you may lose out on an opportunity for a bargain priced trip and all the fun that goes along with it. For me, travel is like reading a book and, like Alice, falling right down the rabbit hole and becoming one of the characters. It’s new, exciting and a complete departure from life back home. The perfect trip is one where you are just a little bit ready to go home at the end, but regret what you leave behind.
This spring, my dear friend and I were both unemployed, frustrated by the lack of interesting jobs in our respective fields and each had a little bit of money that we could devote to travel. We started researching opportunities and found an incredible deal on a cruise to the Baltic and Scandinavia that was just too good to ignore.
We went back and forth about making the commitment and finally decided that we would do it if we could each use our airline miles and get business class fares on flights that worked on our schedules (which at that point were pretty flexible since we weren’t working). Remarkably, everything worked perfectly and we booked a 10-day cruise with a double balcony on an upper deck!
We both admit now that we had tiny twinges of buyers remorse immediately after making our deposit and debiting our airline mile accounts. But, that lasted only a few minutes. From then on, between time spent hunting for jobs, we had a wonderful time researching each port and making long lists of places to hit.
A cruise does not afford the luxury of getting to know the countries or the people or even the food since you dine primarily on the ship. But it does give you a snapshot of many places and a good idea of where you want to return and peel away the layers to get to know the places better.
I am so glad I wasn’t afraid to be a little bit spontaneous and just a little bit frivolous. And I am pleased to have something that registers high on the fun scale for this period of uncertainty.
You never know what is around the corner and sometimes you just have to live a little. I certainly don’t regret the decision and I know I would jump at the chance to go back to Scandinavia again.
