Posted by The Podcast Team

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-more-first-travel-dates

When your new partner shows up without luggage, or, worse yet, turns out to be a morning person.

Dylan Thuras: Hey, everybody, Dylan here. So at the beginning of this year, we made an episode about traveling with a significant other for the first time, and we got just a ton of stories. And so we decided to do another episode. People are very fond of talking about all the things that went wrong or maybe went right.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Stephanie: Hi, my name is Stephanie. The experience I want to tell you about happened back in August of 2000 when my boyfriend Dan and I decided to take a train trip from North Dakota to Boston before I started a new job. As a history buff and Red Sox fan, the highlight of the trip for Dan was going to be a day walking the Freedom Trail and a trip to Fenway to watch a game. When we woke up that morning, the sky was overcast and rain was predicted to start around the same time as first pitch. Trying not to let this news damper the day, we donned our rain gear and started along the Freedom Trail. It was fascinating to see the sights that we had only heard about in our history classes. Then it was on to Fenway Park. The rain had held off and the game was expected to go on as scheduled. We enjoyed hot dogs and a stroll around the ballpark while we waited for the game to start. Dan was in heaven. Then the raindrops started to fall. Soon, tarps were brought out covering the field and the wait began. Since a Red Sox game at Fenway was a bucket list item for Dan, there was no way I was going to suggest leaving unless they officially postponed the game. After four hours of waiting, the rain finally stopped and the game got underway. Since so many of the fans had left the building, Dan and I were able to make our way down to the fourth row behind the Red Sox dugout where we cheered them on to a 3-1 win over the Angels. Eight hours after we arrived, we left Fenway Park full of hot dogs, pretzels, and a story to share. The next day was the final day of our trip and on that day, Dan proposed. He said that he had planned to do this all along, but the fact that I was willing to spend eight hours at the ballpark waiting on a rain delay left no doubt in his mind that I was the woman for him. We have now been married for 23 years and have raised two amazing children. Boston will always have a special place in my heart and I would love to go back to Fenway and watch another game with Dan. Happy travels, everyone!

Guest Two: Hi Atlas Obscura, I wanted to share with you my story of the first time I traveled with my significant other. We were planning to fly to Texas to stay at a place on the beach for a week and we were not living together at the time so he had planned to come pick me up in the morning before driving to the airport. We had a fairly early flight. I had all my stuff ready to go, I was up, I was ready and waiting and the time goes by of when he’s supposed to be there, he’s not arriving and I started phoning him and phoning him and eventually woke him up and he had not packed anything yet at that point either. He had planned to do that that morning and subsequently came and picked me up with no luggage whatsoever. Not a bag, not any clothes, no toiletries, absolutely nothing. And that was the decision so that we could still make our flight. So we flew down there and had to buy everything for him. Shorts, t-shirts, underwear, socks, toothbrush, like the whole deal. That was the very first time we went anywhere together. And in the meantime, we have now been together for 24 years and we have developed quite a love of travel with one another and I still do most of the packing.

Guest Three: It was the first time I traveled with my boyfriend who is now happily my husband of 15 years. We were in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is before GPS. So we were getting around with a compass. So follow the compass to the north, follow your paper map, you know, how it was back then. And one day it’s raining, it’s November in Amsterdam, getting a blister in my boots. We are walking two, three kilometers by this point and I am done. And I look and we’ve gone in the opposite direction. So we were trying to figure this out. We’re looking at this compass, watching it turn around. Well, it turns out that my boyfriend had been keeping the compass in the pocket with his money clip, his magnetic money clip, which if you know anything about how compasses work, can very easily be demagnetized. So one of us had a good laugh about it. The other one had a giant blister on her toe for the rest of the vacation. But it is a story that we love telling now.

Randy Adams: Hi, this is Randy Adams. In 1979, fairly newly married. The band I was in got a chance to do a little European tour. And we had three nights in London, three nights in Gothenburg, Sweden, and three nights in Den Haag in the Netherlands. My wife and I enjoyed every minute of it. We got to see the town because we got basically two days off everywhere. Most importantly, maybe this is too much information, but our first daughter was conceived on that trip. We still have the key from our hotel room in Sweden. And we got to see Europe for the very first time. So now we’ve been back many times and we love going to all those cities. But that trip will always be special because of our first daughter, who is now 46, I think. And we’ve been married 53 years. Thank you very much.

Holly: Hello, Atlas Obscura. My name is Holly. I met a man who is now my husband. We met in October of 2015, just after I had moved back to the United States from living in the Caribbean for 10 years. And the way we met was through Tinder. We dated for about two weeks before I left to move down to Florida for a potential job offer. When I got down to Florida, the job offer that I had, it didn’t work out. So I had been talking to a friend of mine on the phone one day and trying to work it all out. And she had said to me, you know, why don’t you move back to New Hampshire and see how things go instead of doing the long-distance relationship? I thought that actually sounded like a great idea. And so I reached out to him and asked him what he thought. And he also loved the idea. I went out solo road tripping with my two dogs to California and then spent Christmas and New Years with my family. And he came out, flew out for New Year’s one way. And then on January 2nd, we packed up the car and the dogs and away we went. We did an eight-day road trip to get back across the United States to New Hampshire. In the end, you know, we had a lot of fun. And we learned a lot about each other in that week. And we got along pretty well. And here we are still together nearly 10 years later. What I learned about him in that time was that he was very much a morning person, the kind of person who wakes up in the morning singing and ready to tell a million stories and very happy-go-lucky, lots of morning energy. And I am more of a quiet morning person. I wouldn’t say grouchy, but I definitely like my quiet time as my brain and body wakes up in the morning. So that was a bit of a challenge to get used to road tripping. And also he has, he had this green sweater that he wore pretty much every single day. And I made him donate it after we had been around each other for about a year because I just couldn’t stand seeing it anymore. But it makes me laugh to see the pictures of him in the green sweater. What I learned about us as a couple was that we worked pretty well together and we figured out how to divide responsibilities and duties. This was just the start of many adventures for us. And I’m so glad it worked out the way it did because I’m very happy in my life with him. And we’re still up in New Hampshire, which is a fabulous place to live.

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This episode was produced by Manolo Morales. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tindall.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-more-first-travel-dates