Vacation Plans

Another Wednesday off for me... another blog.

I feel as if time is not just passing me by, but RACING past me. Since getting home I've fallen into a routine (of sorts) which isn't necessarily a routine of doing things... but an emotional routine. At home, soak up love from Josh and the cats, run around feeling crazy while trying to get as much done as possible, pack up, leave for work, work my tail off, stay with Jimmy, work, go home..... The days are passing by way to fast. Which is probably better than if time was crawling by.

One of the reasons time is passing me by so quickly (aside from working 4 days a week and commuting) is because I'm trying to prep for our upcoming trip. I had mentioned it earlier... At the moment I'm trying to not just finish my current homework, but get ahead so everything is done/posted for my teachers before we leave on our trip so I don't have to worry about it. On a side note, school is going fabulous. Thus far I've been doing very well on my papers. Smile. But the extra homework time is mostly what is making my spare time (days off) fly by. And as our vacation creeps closer, the things I need to do for prep work keeps growing.

What are the details of this vacation, you may be asking... Back in the summer when I was spending most of my time researching travel ideas, I asked Josh to look into signing up for some leave time. Beings that he was the new guy in the shop, it was the middle of summer... well, there was zero leave time for him to take. Zero. Summer was booked, fall was full, the holidays... forget it. Which left February. February has two great, blessed events. My birthday, and our anniversary. Josh signed up for two weeks of leave time for the first part of February (why two weeks, I don't know. I didn't ask. I'll take what I get). We had talked about a variety of travel options... and had thought about be-bopping around to a few different places... but after looking around at different things we decided to just spend the full two weeks in one country, soaking up all that we could. So we are going for two weeks to... drum roll please... Italy.

Neither of us have been to Italy before. It would stupid of us to be in Europe and not see some of the major sites Italy has to offer. The nice thing about two weeks... there's a lot we will be able to do. On New Years Day (at 4:30 AM as I was having fun with jet-lag) I found two round trip plane tickets on Ryan Air to Milan for 48 euro... which is about $60. HA! Ha ha ha. Awesome. I booked the tickets for us, and figured we would plan to use the train system to get around Italy from there. While on my shopping excursion back home I had bought an Italy travel book. Last night was the first real chance I've had to flip through it. I already had ideas of things I for sure wanted to see, and I have gotten a lot of suggestions from friends... but the book also helped give me ideas and it's helping me to map out our "tentative" travel route. For the first time our trip is starting to feel like a reality and I'm getting excited about it.

A few things will be different about this trip from our other trips. We're flying, not driving, so we won't have our car. I'm glad. I don't want to have to think about the nightmare of figuring out parking... or paying for gas in Italy. This is going to be a much longer trip than the others. And the major difference of this trip, which is a bit of a conundrum in itself, is that this trip will be minimalistic while at the same time overboard. Let me explain. Ryan Air (like so many airlines) charges you to check a bag. However, what they charge for your checked bag is 1). expensive, 2). based upon the weight of your bag. Unlike other airlines which charge you to check a bag, Ryan Air only allows one carry on bag, which also has a weight restriction, and a size restriction. This can make packing interesting. SO. That being said... Josh and I have agreed that we will only be traveling with carry on luggage, that luggage is going to be a backpack for each of us, and we are going to have to pack/travel lightly. If you know anything about me, you know that I do not travel lightly (hence coming home with two giant suitcases from the states). We're also running on the assumption that we're not going to be able to pack/fit two weeks worth of clothing in our bags, so we'll have to either find a laundromat or wash some clothes in a hotel sink. This could be an adventure... however, I'm up for it. At the end of the day I'm by no means a fashionista, and I could give a hoot what the Italians think of what I'm wearing... so bring it on. I will wash my socks in a hotel sink. The nice thing about this, however, is if we want to, we can basically just be carrying all of our "stuff" with us at all times without actually having a lot of stuff to lug around. This is the minimalistic part. The overboard part... well... Josh and I aren't necessarily overboard people. We have the potential to do it like any other person, and sometimes we do, but for the most part we like to be smart with our money, shopping sales/clearance/rocking coupons, and we are savers. We save like crazy. When we've gone on trips in the past we've done lots of things and seen all that we wanted without really spending all that much money. However, we're in Italy for two full weeks. That is two weeks of hotels, food, and transportation. That's a good chunk of money. AND. Really... when are we ever going to do this again? I would hope I could say there will be another time in our lives where we can take two weeks to travel Italy... but really? This is probably going to be our shot at it. So let's make it worth while. Let's go there, do what we want to do, see all that we can... and just know that our total bill at the end of it is going to add up. Oh well. It will be worth it.

In addition to completing homework, planning our route, figuring out hotels, one of our steps of prep work is the cats. I will be the first one to say that my cats are divas. They demand a lot of attention, and they need a lot of attention.  There is a young girl Josh works with who came to our house on Christmas. She is new to Germany, fresh out of high school and new to the military. I thought she was sweet, and she said she liked cats. We asked her to watch the cats for us. She's suppose to come over on Sunday for dinner so we can show her where everything is. I'm hoping we can entice her to stay a few nights at the house with the cats while we're gone so they don't get too stressed out.... Fingers crossed. Laugh if you want. You have children, I have cats.