Day 0 minus 1
And Good to Go!
Our sea voyage home is booked. We are now planning the trip to Europe. Roughly calculating how much time we want to visit the various places on our list we settle for September 18th to fly to Singapore. “That’s odd” I announce one morning when I was checking out flights and hotels for Singapore, “everything is booked for 18th, 19th and 20th and it is six months away.” Our travel dates clash with the Formula 1.
So we book our flight to Singapore for September 14th and begin booking for hotels or Airbnb that I have already checked out and noted in the holiday notebook.
Just when we are sure that everything is set, we hear from Gray’s brother that he and his wife have moved to Umbria, Italy. We really cannot spend time in Europe without visiting them, can we? Italy hadn’t been on our itinerary this time.
Once more back to the drawing board, or more accurately the little notebook. We really have to think long and hard about how we are going to fit everything in. We cannot lengthen our stay as we have a ship to board and we cannot leave home any earlier, either. It is tricky, but eventually we manage to slot everything in.
Planning the packing is another challenge. There will be seasonal changes. We anticipate that Italy and the south of France will still be quite warm, but Edinburgh in October is bound to be cold. But these seasonal changes are only part of the ‘what to pack’ dilemma. Mostly we will need casual clothes for hopping on and off trains, but on the ship coming home there’ll be formal nights requiring suits , jackets and evening dresses. And we really don’t want to be lugging huge suitcases around Europe. Problem solved. We’ll buy new clothes in London and store our 2 large suitcases in London whilst we train up to Scotland to visit friends.
There are no luggage restrictions on a ship, so we’ll collect our cases on the way back from Scotland and head for Tilbury.
It’s all in the planning!!