The Cat's out of the Bag

The original plan was to take 4 weeks vacation and spend it all in Europe.  Of course, with that much time available I wanted to visit different areas, countries and cultures.  I also wanted to make this trip romantic which is why one of the destinations I picked was the City of Love, Paris, France.  Naturally, I thought if we were going to be that close to Scotland we could go the the highlands and visit Kilvarock Castle, my ancestral home.  From there we'd make our way down to the lowlands where a branch of her family began.  And lastly, head to Spain to discover where the other branch of her family began.  All destinations would be relatively close and easily accessible.

But, I had a thought.  A thought that many husbands wish they had had before they bought a bowling ball for an anniversary gift.  The clueless husband does have his heart in the right place, "I love bowling, get the wife a bowling ball and she'll love bowling too and we can spend more time together."  Ahhh, no, it doesn't work that way.  It works when you include your wife and get her input, what does SHE really want?  And that was my thought, I had the perfect trip planned ... in my mind.  Naturally, after I had "the thought" I did what any reasonably sane husband would do.  I ignored it.

I continued planning the perfect trip but for some reason it wouldn't come together.  I couldn't get flights to line up, hotels were getting expensive, the time frame of being there meant we could enjoy this but miss that.  It just didn't feel right.  All the time I spent researching and planning, "the thought" was still there.  It would poke through the cloudy ignorance of husbandhood and make me doubt everything I was trying to do. I decided I would get her input without her knowing she was giving me input.

One night I casually turned the conversation to traveling, don't laugh, I can do casual.  Anyway, I asked her, "If we ever make it to Europe, where would you want to go?"

"Paris."

Paris, check.

"Scotland."

Scotland, check.

"Greece."

Greece, che ... what?

"Greece?  I don't remember ever talking about going to Greece, honey.  Why Greece?"

"I don't know, I just always thought it would be cool to go to Greece."

Okay, time to regroup.

Quickly checking my mental geography maps it was easy to see Paris and Scotland are in Western Europe while Greece is about as far east in Europe as you can go.  Suddenly images of Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks filled my mind.  The scene where he is explaining to his son where Seattle is in relationship to New York and utters the classic line, "what are they teaching you in school?"  Mind you, all this played out in my head as I would never, I repeat, never say this out loud to my wife.  (Husbands, boyfriends too, take note of that.  Don't question your wife's intelligence, accept the fact that it is far above yours and always will be).

I don't actually remember if it was that night or the next day but I quickly realized this was not going to be something I could plan secretly.  I had to tell her what I was up to.

I do remember my wife being very excited about it and she enthusiastically threw ideas out for where to go and what to see.  They came so fast I don't remember everything she suggested.  I mainly remember her being very excited about it and very appreciative too.