This past Sunday, which happened to be Easter, we were enjoying an extended family dinner at at the Galloway home on Clear Lake. At one point Scott's dad Gordon asked me, "So is this the longest you've ever traveled abroad?"
In formulating my answer ("yes"), I realized that not since 2005 when we went to Siena to study Italian have Susie and I "traveled" overseas for this long: two months! (For the record, we studied in Siena for two months and then traveled for a third month afterwards. Of course, this also excludes our move to Italy and then France in 2005-2007.)
All our detailed planning and meticulous preparing for the 2022 trip began to make perfect sense.
Aside from the typical travel stuff most of us take on trips (clothes, toiletries, camera, computer), we realized the need for such novelties as a first aid kit, home supply kit (sewing stuff, etc.), office supplies and the like. If we were going to be in one or two places the duration we could undoubtedly manage to find such necessaries locally. But we'll be changing locations nearly every 4-6 days until we reach Paris where we spend our final two weeks, so having things like rubber bands and paper clips will save us unnecessary hassle while scooting around Europe.
One of our neighbors, Sandy, will get our mail (the Post Office will hold for only 30 days), another neighbor Carla will be looking on Susie's mom (we've stocked her up with those things we occasionally get for her), arrangements have been made for emergency contacts (hopefully to remain unused), Uber is scheduled to pick us up at 04:15 Wednesday morning, the CC companies informed of our planning to be overseas for some time, reefer cleaned out, house cleaned, laundry done, non-flannel sheets on the bed, and a dozen other little things to ready the condo for our absence.
We're getting there. . . piano piano as they say in Italy.
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| Carla and Bern |
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