Friday Things Considered: The Peru–What?–Edition

Some days you wake up with plans to meet a few work deadlines, maybe figure out a new recipe for the rapidly ripening tomatoes on the counter and then somehow, by the time you’ve fallen into bed that night, you’ve bought plane tickets to Peru. Yesterday was one of those days.

I’ve never been to Latin America, but our girls spent several summers volunteering there for Amigos de las Americas and our son spent two years in Peru serving as a Mormon missionary. Families often pick up the missionaries at the end of their stints and travel around the country with them.  But when our son finished his mission in January he needed to scoot right back to start a new semester. We made plans to go back later. Someday.

Then late yesterday afternoon I found an exceptional promotional fare from SFO to Lima in my mailbox and before the day was done we’d purchased tickets to travel there after the first of the year.  Estupendo!

My mother-in-law always says there are 3 phases to experiencing travel — the anticipation, the actual trip, and the memories you enjoy later on.  Already I’m well into Phase 1.

Here are a few other things that surprised and delighted me this week:

Wouldn’t it be romantic to fill a wall with one of these giant peony paintings?

Now here’s a helpful To Do list.

And this video made me want to go visit Beatrix Ost’s magical country estate. After I go to Peru.

Happy Weekend!