My husband and I have done short overnights or weekend getaways while our two kids were growing up. Since we didn’t have ANY family closer than 10 hours (except for the two wonderful years my sister lived 3 hours away – so close!), we never had grandmas or aunties to come and stay with the kiddos for a week while we were whisked off to a Caribbean Island. I did dream of it often though.
If you have wonderful family or friends to help you escape for longer than a weekend without children, my hat is off to you. What a blessing!
Diving in to travel for two
Our youngest stayed with us for one more year after graduating high school, so we took the opportunity to get our feet wet. We took a cruise (yes, to the Caribbean) for a week while our son stayed at home and went about his college / work life.
I managed not to call him from every port.
We were blessed to have friends and some great neighbors looking out for him, but otherwise, it was not dramatic at all. Okay, it was slightly dramatic, but we had a great time and couldn’t wait to do it again. Here are a few things we learned about the planning of our first trip …
Travel Planning Tips
- Decide who is planning. In most couples, one of you is the big time planner. Sometimes neither enjoys it, but one takes on the task. Either way, it’s usually one who is driving the ship. In our case, that is me. I love being the travel agent exclusively for our family – and now for just the two of us. I’m also comfortable making decisions about all the little details.
- Agree on the basics. After some preliminary investigating, determine the important parameters of your trip. These three little decisions help make the rest of your planning and your trip so much easier.
- Where you are going
- When you are going
- How much you can spend
- Get your partner to buy in at each step. In the past, I’ve learned that if I plan the whole trip and expect my husband to simply come along for the ride, he gets frustrated quickly. Understandably because he hasn’t invested his ideas or thoughts into the process. He’s super busy so it’s difficult to nail him down for long discussions. I try to focus on one aspect of the trip to get his buy-in. For example, if I’m trying to decide between the location of two different hotels, I’ll share a little about each property during dinner and ask him which one he would prefer.
- Learn to work with what’s important to your partner. My husband likes to have the details of the trip close at hand – especially with a budget. For our cruise, I created a simple spreadsheet listing the date, what were doing, and what were spending. This was a great overview of the trip for him as well as assuring him we were staying within our budget.
In the past, our travel plans were a family affair. We talked about what each family member would like to do. Our focus was on making memories with and for our children.
Now we’re traveling with just the two of us and our focus has morphed into having fun with the two of us. It’s an adjustment, but well worth the effort.
What changed for you when you began planning travel for two?
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