Steve is the planner in our marriage, especially on our vacations. He is very good at researching places to go and all the details of a trip like transportation and accommodations. As he is very interested in history, every battlefield and historical site near our destination is added to his list of places to visit. I will then add museums and theater shows to this list to balance out the heavy history lessons. Our itineraries, subsequently, end up packed. Ten o’clock at this battlefield, twelve thirty at that museum, three o’clock run over here to this church. It ends up feeling like we are on a military campaign with lots of marching and orders being barked.
Our friends and family look at our trips and shake their heads. We don’t plan any downtime anywhere. It tends to be go, go, go and then crash at the end of the night. Occasionally we will have some extra time if a location didn’t take as long as we planned but on the whole it’s pretty strictly scheduled. There is just so much to see and so little time to see it.
We are well matched in our love of traveling and seeing new places. My only complaint is I would just like him to include more food stops in his itineraries. The one thing my husband tends to skip in his itinerary planning is meal time. It usually takes me threatening to throw a fit to get him to agree to take a brief break. In his mind getting to the next location takes priority over paltry things like grumbling stomachs. My stomach heartily disagrees, one meal a day doesn’t work for us.
Steve gets so excited about all the places he gets to see in real life when we travel. He is like a kid in a candy store when we see a place he has only read about or seen on a documentary. I get the same way when we visit a museum that has artworks I have only seen in books before. The excitement of seeing all of those places, pushes us to ignore when we are tired or our feet are hurting from the miles of walking.
Currently we are on a three week trip in Europe, with two more weeks to go. We have seen so much already and the itinerary doesn’t slow down any going forward. I am sitting here on the train to Budapest writing this post, as it is a forced moment of idleness. It has been an amazing trip so far with plenty more to come but I know when it’s time to go home, I will be ready for a vacation away from our vacation.