As some of you may know already, I enjoy researching and thinking about blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Next to that I am fascinated by personal time & life management. So I guess it is not surprising that I have a life document with things I want to experience, ways in which I want to develop myself and ways in which I want to contribute in life.

Last year I decided to take action on two things I wanted to experience:

• ‘Take my mother to a city in a country where she has never been’
• ‘Take my father to a city in a country where he has never been’.

Even though my parents are together, I wanted to experience a ‘longer’ period of being with each of them seperately.

The box with two letters

In March I gave my father a little box that he was only allowed to open once he was home and together with my mother.

In the box were two letters; one for my mother and one for my father. The letters were practically identical and what I wrote was this:

“Dear mom,

In the first 18 years of my life I saw you practically every day. This has become a lot less nowadays. Therefore I think it would be very nice to go away with you for a few days. Will you pick a European city?

Ohyeah, some rules:

• We’ll go for four days
• You cannot pick a city in The Netherlands and no city allowed where one of us has already been
• You have until the 1st of April to pick
• We’ll go this year

Will you let me know?

Nick”

After they opened the box and read the letters they called me and told me they thought it was a very cool idea and told me that they would come back to me with some suggestions.

Picking a City

A few days later I got a text from my mom: “I will go for Bruges or Ghent.”

I texted back: “Those are very humble choices and quite close by. I’ve also already been in Bruges. Think bigger, further or even warmer ;-)”

Two days later I got another text from her: “Florence”. So Florence it was!

My dad had to think about it a bit longer and came back with Berlin and Triers. Also a bit close by and I had been there before. So he had to go back to the drawing board.

On the 31st of March I got a text from him: “Nick, Lisbon or Stockholm can be interesting.” Followed by “Lisbon.” So, Lisbon it was!

In the following weeks I booked the flight to Florence and chose a nice hotel. My mom and I decided to go in the beginning on June which turned out to be very good timing.

The trip to Florence with my mom

The flight was fine, my 58-year old mother has flown a few times before. We flew from Amsterdam to Rome to Florence and landed a bit after lunchtime. When we arrived it was around 27 degrees, perfect!

Our hotel was a 10 minute walk from the city center so we checked in and went out to get something to eat.

Some pictures of our trip

It was an amazing trip and the weather was awesome. We saw a lot of things and walked a lot around the city. We were able to catch up on a lot of things and my mom even told me a few things about my childhood that I didn’t know before!

The trip to Lisbon with my dad

We decided that October was a good month to go. Relatively less tourists (like us), still warm. Eventually we went the last few days of the month.

It was actually my dad’s second time in an airplane ever. The previous time was 30 years ago to Dubrovnik with my mom. So he didn’t really know how it all worked with our baggage, the checking in and the security checks. It was fun :-P Luckily the flight went as planned and we arrived just in time for lunch.

My dad has been long distance running all his life, so even though he is 66, he is perfectly capable of walking for hours!

Some pictures of our trip

My dad really loved the trip. After we were back he talked about it a lot with other people I heard. Now that his pension is around the corner, I expect my dad will want to go on more trips. This trip was also nice to practice a bit for New-Zealand, where he will go next year.

That was it...

Both trips were very special in their own way and I would recommend it to everybody. I like the fact that my parents both picked warm locations :-)

I think I will definitely do this again in a few years!

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