You’ll Find Out at the Gate…Maybe
This summer, I stood at our gate in Atlanta with three kids who still had no idea where we were going.
I had almost been caught.
A few weeks earlier, Lucas had apparently seen me texting Delta about our flights. Not long after, he announced that he thought we were going to “Nice.” As in, That’s nice.
I thought for sure the jig was up.
I told him I was working on a trip for a client, redirected the conversation, and somehow got away with it.
So there we were at the airport, everyone appropriately packed but still guessing, until we stopped at the gate and they finally saw our destination.
Nice.
Although even that did not tell them very much. We were not staying in Nice. We were driving a couple of hours away to begin a trip through the South of France, Bordeaux and Paris.
They knew where the plane was landing. The rest was still a surprise.
We are a family that really loves a surprise.
We did not find out the gender of any of our kids. I never searched for hidden Christmas presents as a child. My engagement was a complete surprise. If there is an opportunity to genuinely not know something fun ahead of time, I would much rather not know.
So maybe it was inevitable that we would start surprising each other with entire trips.
It began because Mike and I wanted to travel to too many places and could never decide which one to choose for our anniversary.
Eventually, we came up with a solution over brunch.
We each independently wrote down ten places we wanted to go, compared our lists, vetoed anything one of us was not genuinely excited about and put the remaining destinations into a hat.
The person being surprised drew the destination.
So technically, you picked your own trip.
You just had absolutely no idea what you had picked.
From there, one person planned everything. The other knew the dates because, unfortunately, work schedules still exist even in my ideal world, but that was about it.
Our first surprise was not international at all.
Around 2009, when our kids were little, Mike unexpectedly came home when he was supposed to be at work and told me to pack a bag. Quickly.
Years earlier, we had discovered Pink Martini while wasting time in the music section at Barnes & Noble. This was the mid-2000s, when you still wandered around listening to random CDs through headphones, and we were convinced we might be the only two people in Birmingham who knew who they were.
Mike found out they were playing at Chastain Park in Atlanta and thought, Natalie would love this!
He arranged for my parents to keep the kids, bought tickets, made reservations at Bacchanalia, packed a picnic for the concert and worked in a visit to the Monet exhibit at the High Museum.
I had not arranged the babysitter. I had not made a reservation. I had not researched a single thing.
I just got to go.
It was only two nights in Atlanta, but all these years and many farther-flung trips later, it is still one of the surprises I appreciate most.
He had thought of everything. And that in and of itself was a gift.
The trips got a little more ambitious from there.
One year, Mike told me what to pack, got me to the airport and gave absolutely nothing away until we were standing at our gate in Atlanta.
I looked up at the monitor.
Santiago.
Chile.
That was all I knew.
I certainly did not know we would end up drinking wine in Mendoza or hiking through Patagonia, including the Valle del Francés in winds so strong we could barely stand and our sunglasses were literally ripped off our heads.
I had not spent months looking at pictures or reading everyone's list of what I absolutely had to do.
I just got to experience it as it came.
For years, Mike was definitely better at these trips than I was.
Then I became a travel advisor.
I would like to think the playing field has leveled a bit.
Having trusted partners and resources around the world certainly makes it easier to secretly put together a pretty spectacular trip.
Although no amount of resources can protect you from your husband announcing, completely out of the blue and after you have already planned Spain and Morocco, the three things he does not want to do on vacation:
Ride a motorcycle.
Ride a horse.
Ride in a hot-air balloon.
The motorcycle and horse comments were not entirely new.
The hot-air balloon was.
Unfortunately, I had already booked a hot-air-balloon ride over the Agafay Desert outside Marrakech.
I also had a sidecar tour planned.
And a camel ride.
In my defense, a sidecar is not exactly riding a motorcycle and a camel is not exactly a horse.
The hot-air balloon... I was pushing my luck.
Thankfully, he was a good sport. He did all three, had an amazing time and would happily do them again.
Considering this is the same man who once convinced me to jump over a crevasse on Mont Blanc, something I assure you I would never have planned on my own, I was happy to make him a bit uncomfortable.
That became another thing I loved about our surprise trips. We tried things we might not have chosen for ourselves.
There is a certain freedom on both sides. The person being surprised gets to hand over the decisions. No comparing twelve hotels. No wondering if you are missing something or if the restaurant everyone on Instagram says you have to visit really deserves one of your precious dinners.
You just go.
And the planner gets to think about someone they love and what will make them happy, what will surprise them and where to push them just enough outside of their comfort zone.
Then you get to watch it happen.
I recognize that same feeling in my work now, especially when a client comes home loving something they never would have picked for themselves.
Sometimes you can give someone something they did not know to ask for.
Which brings me back to our kids.
There are five opinions in our family these days, and they are not always particularly similar. But this time there were no Instagram posts telling them what they needed to see in France. No preconceived ideas. No boxes they felt they needed to check.
I just had to know my people.
I knew they would love the boating days. I knew how to keep everyone engaged through wine country. I even made sure Lucas had his own “tastings” while the rest of us had ours.
They simply got to experience the trip as it came.
Maybe that is what I still love most about a surprise trip. There is something freeing about trusting someone who knows you to take care of the details and occasionally push you beyond what you might have chosen for yourself.
Life gives us plenty of surprises we would rather know about ahead of time.
I am going to keep the fun ones.
Watching our kids standing in Atlanta this summer, finally seeing Nice on that monitor after weeks of guessing, I got to experience both sides of the gift at once.
They finally knew where the plane was taking us.
I knew something they did not.
Nice was only the beginning.
