When A Surprise Trip Isn’t A Surprise

Noooooooooooo!!!

I’d been planning a surprise trip for Shae’s birthday in August with a couple of friends and had managed to keep all the details a secret.

Until two nights ago 🙁

She’s known for several months that we were going away for the week, but didn’t know where or what we were doing. I’d almost let slip the destination a couple of times, but had managed to keep quiet. She also had no clue that there’d be four of us on the trip.

Before we get to how the plan was spoiled, here’s more details about the plan.

The Destination

We started planning a trip to Australia and New Zealand a couple of years ago. The original plan was to use American Airlines miles, but there was no award availability when it came time to book those flights at the end of last year.

Fast forward a couple of months and our friends Mark and Megan suggested we meet up somewhere in the US. They moved back to Ohio a couple of years ago, so we don’t get to see each other as much as we’d like.

We’d taken a trip with them to Scotland and England back in 2015 and had a great time.

Seeing as we had so many American Airlines miles, I figured we could do one better than meeting up in the US. We could all take a trip to Ireland and fly for free!

The Planning

I won’t go into too much detail here because the plans for what we’re doing in Ireland are still a secret.

I’d booked a couple of places for us to stay on Airbnb though and made sure the confirmation emails were hidden away in my Gmail account.

The Surprise Spoiled

So on Monday night, Shae and I sat down to plan out some of our Australia and New Zealand trip. We’d found a great apartment to stay at in Melbourne and wanted to get booked in ASAP.

Having reached the payment confirmation page, Airbnb then took me to the “Your Trips” page.

Which said CORK at the top.

While Shae’s sitting there.

Also looking at the laptop screen.

I threw my hands up over the screen, hoping that she might have blinked for three full seconds and missed that screen.

Apprehensively turning my head, the look on her face said “I know.”

Is It A Saga Holiday?

After it was obvious that she knew where we were going, the first thing Shae asked was “Is it a Saga holiday?”

A bit of context…

When we went to Scotland and England with Mark and Megan, we flew from Heathrow to Edinburgh. At the airport, we got chatting to an older couple who were off on vacation with some friends they’d met on a Saga holiday years ago. (For all our US readers, Saga’s the UK version of AARP and they also organize vacations.) Apparently that couple now travel overseas with those friends all the time.

The four of us have therefore decided that we want to take ‘Saga’ holidays together as frequently as possible.

Ireland Baby!

So that’s what we’re up to next month. We have lots of fun stuff planned, so stay tuned for all our adventures.