Reevaluating our Travel Idiosyncrasies

 We have had two incredible days of travel. Our seven hour train ride allowed us to see spectacular Norwegian locations that we would never have seen if we flew from Oslo to Bergen.  We were also entertained on the train by a little boy in front of us whose mother decided that crayons and coloring books were not the way to keep her son occupied.  She opted to buy him every sugary item sold at the train cafe. Our personal favorite moment was when he decided to break up the family size chocolate bar by smashing it against his forehead. The good news was that it worked and for the most part, he was very well-behaved for all seven hours. Who knew? We clearly took the wrong approach for years with our kids. 

We arrived in Bergen and met up with our daughter’s boyfriend, had an incredible dinner, and we’re all excited to begin the hiking part of our vacation the next day. We left Bergen early this morning for a quick train ride north to the small town of Voss, where we were to meet up with the hiking group. During our initial train ride to Bergen and our trip this morning to Voss, I realized that Bob and I may not be the seasoned travelers that we like to think we are.  When it comes to any type of travel, we always leave plenty of time (many might argue a ridiculous amount of time) to address any issues that may arise.  For example, we always build in plenty of time to travel from our home in Northern NJ to Newark Liberty Airport. While more often than not we do hit traffic in this highly congested area outside New York City, in the 38 years of marriage, we have never been late for a flight. In fact, we are usually welcoming the captain and crew as they arrive. Being so early does have its pitfalls, however. When you are the first to arrive, your luggage is usually the last to be removed from the plane causing us to spend even more time at airports. We’ve learned it’s a good idea to bring a book for both ends of the journey.  

With our daughter and her boyfriend with us however, it became more apparent that we may take this “early-bird” approach to travel to an extreme because not every trip is like going to Newark Airport. Case in point: Both our Norwegian train rides again. In looking at what time we left for both of these rides, you would think one of us was the engineer!  This morning for example, we left our hotel via cab at 7:45 for an 8:30 train, only to arrive three minutes later, at 8:48. Even for us, this was a bit early. Bob and I consoled ourselves by saying that none of us spoke Norwegian and we needed to figure out which track to take and that may take time.  But who were we kidding?  Everyone speaks English here. When we entered the train station, both Bob and I were quickly trying to figure out which gate our train would be leaving from, but our two younger companions, clearly travel officianados in their own right, had it figured out in 30 seconds… and then told us several times. The problem was we weren’t listening. It wasn’t until Bob heard from one of the train employees that yes, the kids were right, did we actually head towards that gate, much to our daughter’s consternation. We probably should trust our kids a bit more—it could take at least an hour off our travel! 

Just a quick note on our shower situation at our latest hotel in Stalheim.  After winning the latest game of “Guess Where the Hotel Has Hidden the Blowdryer?,” I got ready to take my shower and saw that the bathtub not only had a bar for you to grab as you vaulted over the once again, too high bathtub but it had a shower curtain!  It made my day!  Granted, I still had to wash my hair while leaning my head against the wall for fear that the shower head would go awry (which it did and hit me in the head). I was however, able to embrace the eco-friendliness of all modern hotels by keeping the water flow outside the shower to a minimum. It was a good thing, because we were only given two towels and I would have had none to use for cleanup!

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