Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
To tell a story about finding a travel partner, I will tell the story about my first trip abroad. And you will decide, did it prove to be the trip of a lifetime. Or not?
Travel has the power to claim a relationship.
Cut to the chase: Our first trip abroad, wasn’t the trip of a lifetime…
By the time of The Great Dumpster Fire of 2020, I figured I would never have the chance to travel abroad. But then I met CheeseTed, the CheeseHead. After a couple months of dating he bought us plane tickets for Switzerland. This was a big investment in the relationship with delightful me, NatureNikki.
CT had already caught the travel bug both internationally and road-tripping around the USA in an RV. If we had any future together, he had to know if this squirrel he met online would be a good travel partner.
Traveling is both exciting and stressful at the same time. The truth of a person comes out. Finding a lifetime travel partner can take a lifetime to achieve.
Low stakes travel builds travel partners to face higher stakes travel experiences…
We started with a simple overnight camper trip to some local mountains. Then a five-day camper trip to the next state. But these had no real stress on the line. No (timed) reservations means no (mental) reservations. From these two successful road trips, we grew comfortable in the fact that we could stand each other’s company. Which, as jaded Gen Xers approaching 50, that is saying something.
An international trip, on the other hand–that was high stakes. Being just a year after the world came to a screeching halt, there were some hoops to jump through along with bookings and paperwork and passports and COVID vaccines. And then, the most exciting part of the whole trip: Planning The Itinerary. The trip of a lifetime only comes along, let’s say, once in a lifetime.
Itinerary Planning with a Travel Partner…
During these tense days of jumping through hoops, we fantasized about what we would do in CH once we got there.
“Pick three things you want to do,” CT said, after all, he had just had back surgery six weeks before and we had to take it easy.
Me: … (Deer in the headlights) …
“Don’t worry. We will go to Europe again someday. This won’t be our only trip.”
I just met this guy online, of all places! Which is the strangest thing to say because online is the absence of “places.” How would we do going to “real” places? What if “we” (like the many who came before) never materialized?
“The Trip of a Lifetime,” he opined (which you do in these situations, opine), “has to be perfect. Whereas one of many trips in a lifetime … there’s no pressure to get all the best in one trip. We’ll go back again.” When I look back to this part of the story, I realize, he already knew I was a worthy travel partner.
If COVID taught me one thing (alas, it taught many more), it was that there was life after COVID. I vowed to embrace the mindset of “trips” in my lifetime. This resulted in this overthinker making a much longer list of places to visit.
Pick 3 things you want to experience together as travel partners…
“We each pick three and leave the rest to chance,” he reiterated.
Eventually I whittled it down to:
- any castle in any alp,
- any arboretum,
- and the Lindt Chocolate Factory in Zurich.
His were:
- a Christmas Market,
- an Old Town / City Center,
- and a French restaurant.
Narrowing it down to these six adventures gave us the opportunity to be flexible with our timeline and meshing our interests. Packing in too much only adds to stress.
I had to agree. But did you notice that I snuck in an extra “to do” in my list? Number one on my list was “any castle in any alp” (that’s two things to see right there.)
Travel partners who are at different levels of maintenance…
As per where to stay, we chose based on the selected adventures. This included: Zurich (Lindt Chocolate World and bonus Christmas Markets), Lausanne (for the French restaurant and bonus Old Town), and an array of castles and alps in between.
Left on the cutting room floor was the Matterhorn (of my Disneyland-filled youth) and the Jungfrau Alps that Rick Steve’s said was a MUST SEE and I FOMO! OMG! Finding a travel partner in which to entrust this “lifetime of trips” mentality was as much a leap of faith as having a new relationship.
As per the budget, any travel partner who offers to pay should be the one with the say on the final budget. In my appreciation for being treated, I let go and let it happen. Turns out, I am the low maintenance one in the travel partnership. Having lower expectations than reality wound up dishing out de-escalated stress and skyrocketed the excitement.
Travel has power…
I posed a provocation a while back, paragraphs ago: Travel has the power to claim a relationship.
Claim, colloquially, as in “be the death of.”
Or… by the dictionary’s more positive spin: “an assertion of fact”…
We grew together as travel partners that first Trip of a Lifetime together. And happy to admit, we are still finding ourselves together as travel partners in every trip we take in our lifetime.
Please share in the comments below: Tell me about a “good” travel partner. What does that look like to you?
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