We've spoken of visiting the fjords of Norway, and Scandinavia in general, for years, and while we knew we'd get there someday, we just weren't sure when. Nearly a year ago I saw a good airfare offer on SAS for the non-stop flight linking Dulles and Copenhagen. Working from there, we looked at two trips on our bucket list, for which Copenhagen was a good launching point. We broke it down and chose between two cruises -- at the time, both of which were to depart from Copenhagen. One went to Poland, the Baltic countries, and St. Petersburg, and the other visited the Norwegian fjords and Sweden. For various reasons we opted for Norway. Just before we booked, however, the port of departure was switched from Copenhagen to Kiel, in Germany. Not looking too distant on a map, we bit the bullet, secured the air tickets, and then went about getting the cruise itself booked.

Timing had us locked into the last week of August, and thus the last week of summer break, before Anna was to start high school . We were concerned about being away so close to school -- and visions were still fresh of our return from Germany two years ago, when a delayed flight meant we almost missed the first day of school. At the time we booked the tickets, ground had not even been broken on Anna's new school. We contacted the new principal, explained the situation. As he had no idea at the time how the schedule might look, or even if the school would be ready in time, he encouraged us to "enjoy the family time," and he pledged to work with us to get Anna into the school for a tour, (if at all possible), get her schedule, etc. Following a short family meeting, we agreed to go forward, and the countdown began.