Traveling excites me, but since the pandemic, I’d been putting off any long-distance trip I didn’t need to take. We’ll go later, I reasoned…when we have more money, when the twins are done college, when I have more time. Then last year came along and threw a few boulders in our path. The difficult year, which included the sudden and unexpected passing of my beloved mother-in-law, served as a wake-up call: if there’s something you really want to do, don’t wait.
So beginning last fall, I started planning. Ideally, I wanted to include my entire immediate family (husband, three sons, and sons’ significant others) on a two- or three-week, multi-country trip, but not everyone had the luxury of that much time off. I planned to visit Norway, where I wanted to do research for a new novel. Norway, especially north of the Arctic Circle, had long been a bucket list destination for me. One twin asked that we visit Serbia, where he had done a semester abroad, and my husband voted for Slovenia (we had fallen in love with Lake Bled during a previous trip) and Macedonia, where he had worked for several years.
At the end of the day, finances and time dictated that we reign in our itinerary and find some budget-friendly ways to travel, especially through expensive Norway. We decided to split up the trip. One of my twenty-year-old twins and I traveled through Norway and on to Slovenia (by way of Vienna) using a combination of planes, a boat (the ferry line Havila), and trains, and we met my husband and five other family members in Lake Bled, Slovenia, where I had rented a house for a week.
It was an epic vacation and well worth the effort put into planning (and lugging around a thirty-pound backpack!).
Wendy Tyson is an author, lawyer, and former therapist whose background has inspired her thrillers and mysteries. As Ayla Rose, she writes The Hummingbird Hollow B&B Mystery series. As Liv Andersson, she writes thrillers, including Leave the Lights On and Little Red House. As Wendy Tyson, she is the author of several mystery series, including the Amazon bestselling Greenhouse Mystery Series. Wendy’s short fiction has appeared in literary journals and crime anthologies, and she has written for The Big Thrill and The Thrill Begins, International Thriller Writers’ online magazines. Wendy is a member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime. She and her husband live in the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont with their sons and three dogs.
