It’s a tale as old as time with plenty of sayings to capture its essence, “don’t bite off more than you can chew”, “don’t fly too close to the sun”, and “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” to name a few. The gist of them all being, there is a limit that exists between dreams and realistic feasibility. The thing that I always found comically unhelpful is that whoever penned these household phrases never bothered to elaborate on what that limit is. Consequently, in the world of travel planning, it can be difficult to determine how much is too much… do you have the money or time to do just one more thing? Well, either there is a very well-guarded secret that I am not privy to, or the only way to find out is to test the limits. I’ll be honest with you, it’s a slippery slope that always risks catastrophe, but the best waterslides and rollercoasters always do.
Money:
The money conundrum is always tough, and it’s different for everyone. Travel costs money, no matter how you slice it. When finances are limited, the key is settling on where you are most comfortable spending it. The way I see it, there are two camps of thought: 1) Plan the trip affordably and experience it extravagantly or 2) Plan the trip extravagantly and experience it affordably. I’ve done both and they each have ups and downs.
As a lifelong athlete and proud patriot, I have always loved the Olympic Games which is something I definitely inherited from my mom. For the sake of the story, I’m not going to geek out about it here, but what I will say is in 2012, I used our shared love of the Olympics to guilt my mom into entertaining a trip to attend them. We had a lot going on in the family that summer which really limited us in both time and money. Still, in an effort to pacify me, my mom told me that we could look into it, but only if the trip was affordable. By sheer dumb luck as a then 13 year old clicking around the internet, I found flights to London that were 75% off.
In a state of shock and excitement, my mom texted my dad asking him to take time off with just 6-days’ notice. Having booked the flights on a whim, we committed with a fear that we might find ourselves sleeping on a bench in Hyde Park. Thankfully, the stars aligned and we were able to rent a small Shoreditch apartment. And so, for under $600 a piece, we attended the London Olympic Games in an unconventional, less than stellar fashion. Still, while I have no desire to repeat the frantic planning process, the affordability of enduring that uncertainty left room for us to buy tickets to three separate events including the U.S. Women’s Soccer gold medal match against Japan, which is a memory worth it’s weight in gold (pun intended).
On a separate occasion, during my first self-planned trip as a young adult to Iceland, I decided that making reservations to snorkel between tectonic plates and to climb a glacier was more important than budgeting for the many hidden fees that can come with travel. By prioritizing expensive excursions, when the time came to get the car rental, I realized I couldn’t afford an automatic transmission. One moment I’m numb and happy swimming through 34-degree water and sending photos back to my friends and family at home, and the next I’m stalling out on a one-way bridge because I had absolutely no experience driving manual. As I said before, there are pros and cons no matter how you decide to budget, but either way, you are bound to walk away with a valuable memory.
Time:
Time certainly flies when you are having fun, and experiencing any new place for the first time is so overwhelming that it’s easy to feel like the sun is setting right after you finish eating breakfast. With so much to see and so much to do, you often have to make choices between 3 different museums, the ideal restaurant spot, and adequate time to shop for the best souvenirs. So, how do you decide what to do and what to cut? My family likes to do it the democratic way, where everyone picks one must-see or do, and we use that as a guide to our decision-making along the way. I will admit, the philosophy isn’t bulletproof, especially when the group starts to grow in size, but at the end of the day what matters most is the effort that everyone puts into making each other’s dreams come to fruition.
My best example comes from our recent trip to the Baltic Sea. During our cruise, one of the port calls was in Stockholm, Sweden. This hub of Swedish culture, which sits in a fairly remote location guarded by the tundra of Scandinavia, is home to rich Viking history, the pop-icon ABBA, mouth-watering cinnamon buns, etc. Having only 8 hours in the city meant that we had to prioritize. The first problem was, none of us are experts in Swedish culture and could adequately conceptualize what we wanted to do ahead of time. Nevertheless, as we embarked on our adventure, my uncle kept talking about Vikings, I couldn’t stop singing Super Trouper, and my mom kept going on and on about the world’s first Icebar. So, the Viking Museum, the ABBA Museum, and the Icebar provided us a template for the day.
The second problem was, we completely underestimated how large the city was. Before we knew it, we had 90 minutes until our cruise ship left and we still hadn’t made it to the Icebar that was 35 minutes away. My Dad, the quiet guy of the group, points this out as our Hop-on-Hop-off bus makes its stop at the cruise pier. Given the chance to step off, be responsible adults, and go back to our cruise cabins, we all opted for irresponsibility. What if we can fit in just one more thing? Since the bus is already moving and my mom really wanted to see the Icebar, we decide that we might as well finish the job and go. With rush hour traffic stacking up, we make it to the Icebar with only 50 minutes left until our ship was scheduled to leave. Once again choosing irresponsibility, we decide to go inside anyway. After a five-minute frenzy of taking photos in our parkas and downing lingenberry cocktails like they’re shots, we check off the box and laugh our way out, straight into a cab bound for the ship. Lucky for us, the alcohol took the edge off the stress and allowed us to stroll over the brow with 10 whole minutes to spare!
And so, I will wrap this up by saying that I believe fitting in just one more thing is always achievable so long as you have the right frame of mind. If you are willing to roll the dice on an experience that could have unintended consequences, then you have to be willing to accept those consequences as part of the adventure itself. Whether it pans out the way you hoped or not, you are bound to walk away with something worth retelling for generations to come. And we all know, the best stories are the ones that are so crazy that nobody can accuse you of making them up.
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