The Great Debate

Spending many thousands of pounds on a holiday is a big decision.

When all your previous holidays have been spent lying beside a pool under the blazing sun (Rhodes, Crete, Fuerteventura, Cala d'Or), or walking round a city in relatively mild weather (Paris, New York - well, OK, the Big Apple was a bit chilly in March, but still...) that decision requires a big debate.

So we went round and round the subject from several angles.

We're used to a big bed. 

Even in Greece the hotel beds are at least six feet wide, and some are seven. The rooms large enough to spread out in. But this is a ship. Assuming we didn't go completely gung-ho and book a suite, the cabins are... basic. And small. With single beds. That have to do double duty as sofas. The bathrooms? Imagine the smallest space you could possibly fit a shower, basin, and WC in. And then halve it ;o)

But: how much time do you spend in your cabin, really? Sleep, wash, dress and undress. And that's pretty much it. So we figured it wasn't that big of a deal for 17 days, and certainly not enough to warrant the massive cost uplift of a suite (even though, you know, that would've been lovely).

We don't do yomping.

Neither of us are what you'd call active. Even on walking holidays with our mates we stopped doing any actual walking three or four years ago, and now stay in and read. Those holidays usually happen in October or February when it's cold & rainy outside and we long for comfy chairs and log fires. When we're at home, the most we do is walk around the block. Occasionally.

In contrast, there's potentially a lot of yomping on this trip. Dog-sledding. Mountainous trekking. Snow shoes required for some of it. Fortunately, all of it is optional, so let's park that for now.

We don't (usually) do cold.

I'm planning a whole post on this, so for now let's say we usually avoid ice, snow, and anything approaching 0°C where possible. My only recollection of really cold weather was running from the car to a shopping mall in Toronto one very cold day in February. It might have been in the region of -20 including windchill. Norway starts at -20 in places, and you can subtract the windchill on top of that. Oof.

We don't (or at least Nikki doesn't) do heights.

There's at least one excursion on this trip that involves a cable-car, and another with a funicular railway. Both of those end up in "high places" with one or more "edges". That's a lot of nope as far as Nikki is concerned. Hence the URL I chose for this blog. Although, as that URL suggests, it's "good nope", if there is such a thing. It's the kind of nope you can face, if there's something worth it at the end. And there is. So she's declared she's gonna give it a go. Which believe me, is a first.

Anyway, as you know from the opening entry in this blog, the decision was a "yes." In the end, we were driven by two very famous and oft-quoted aphorisms:

"You only regret the things you don't do."
and
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."