Travel Retail Therapy

After my day at work Monday, I was running errands on Tuesday and decided to indulge in some retail therapy to perk myself up. I'm not a huge shopper under normal circumstances, but I do have times where I "feel the urge," so to speak. It doesn't happen too frequently. But when I was on base on Tuesday, I indulged a bit. And man it felt good.

A few weeks ago I bought a plane ticket home for my best friend's August wedding. I had been dreading buying this ticket because it was going to be at the height of summer/European travel and would be more than I wanted to pay. I tend to pride myself on my internet travel shopping abilities... but with all of my hunting the cheapest ticket I could find was around $1500, but that was with terrible connections and ridiculous layovers (12 hours in Atlanta). To find a ticket which didn't involve weird connections or long layovers was around $1750. Ugh. Way more than I wanted to pay. I've heard of people buying tickets through the base at a cheap price. I've never done it because I've been able to find cheap tickets on my own. But in this instance, I was willing to give it a shot. It took less than ten minutes for the travel person to find me a ticket with good connections, short layover times, on the dates I wanted for $1200. Holy bananas. Yes. I was impressed.

My parents have been talking about coming out to visit again. Originally they were talking about sometime in October. Then they changed their minds and said they wanted to come for Thanksgiving. After telling my parents about my experience getting my ticket on base, they asked me to look for them. The travel office was my first spot on my shopping spree. Like my experience before, in a matter of minutes I was able to buy tickets for my parents on the dates they wanted for $800 a piece. A price I've come close to finding before online (but only with a LOT of finagling and fiddling) but never that cheap. So. My parents are officially coming for Thanksgiving.

While the travel lady was finishing up the details of my parent's plane tickets, I started flipping through the brochures for upcoming bus tours for the base. Josh and I have done a few of these (such as our wine tasting trip last weekend), but we usually do things on our own. However there were two trips which jumped out at me. One was to Lucerne, Switzerland, and the other was for Reims, France. I've wanted to go to Switzerland, but it is about a six hour drive away. Six hours is do-able, but it can make for a short weekend. There are also road tolls/taxes you have to pay to drive in Switzerland. They aren't horribly priced because when you purchase your "road sticker" it is good for 14 months, so if you think about the price per use it's not bad. But... well, I don't know how often we're really planning to drive in Switzerland. It's a cost we've been trying to put off or avoid. Not to mention Switzerland is just expensive in general. I've looked at hotels before trying to plan a trip and was completely unsuccessful in finding something reasonable in price. However, a bus trip would avoid all of this. Josh wouldn't have to drive, someone else is taking care of the road tax costs, no hotel... I'm sold. I signed us up. Reims, France isn't too far from us - I think it's around a three hour drive. I recently read a fictional World War Two novel which took place around Reims. It made me curious, so I did a bit of research on the city. I thought it looked beautiful and I added it to my list of places I wanted to see. The trip through base included transportation to and from Reims and a champagne tour/tasting as Reims is in the heart of the champagne region of France. Again, the appeal of not having to drive... well, sold. In less than half an hour I purchased two plane tickets and two weekend tours. Needless to say, I was feeling better.

My therapy continued when I got home. Josh and I had talked about going to Normandy for Memorial Day weekend (we can drive there, but it is a long enough distance we really need a long weekend to do it). Originally I thought that trip wasn't going to happen because of things going on at Josh's work. But things worked out in our favor, and our trip was back on - as long as I could find a reasonable hotel. I set my online super skills to work and found us a hotel. BOOM. Trip back on.

After all of my shopping, I felt great. Each time I think about our upcoming trips or plan a bit for them, I feel even better. I am looking forward to having some stories and pictures to share!