A 'To Do' List

With just 8 weeks to go before we leave, it's time to work on a 'to do' list. I find that working through one of these helps relieve any anxiety about things I might forget.

Flights (with Emirates) are booked.

Hotel in Madrid is booked.

Our tour is booked. I much prefer to do my own thing, but I don't usually travel so far away for such a short time, but my daughters have to get back to work so a measly four weeks it is. We decided to go with Cosmos tours (a member of the Globus family) because they offer the most flexibility. There are some easy excursions included, but there are many more one can choose to do. These are more physically demanding and probably not for me, although I'm sure Ilana and Michelle will take a couple of them. ( can't see me, for instance, riding a camel into the desert for a dinner in an oasis, nice as it sounds.

We found a lovely Airbnb apartment in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where we will stay for the last week of our holiday. It overlooks the grounds of a castle, has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and there's a lift! A bonus. Joe assures us that it's in a safe and nice spot (Sanlúcar is his home town), and right next door to a brewhouse. Ilana and Michelle, being beer drinkers, are happy about that. The beach is just 10 minutes away, and the major shopping area is at the same distance.

We still have trains to book, for travel between Sanlúcar and Madrid. That will involve the need for us to take a bus so I have to research that aspect, especially as our first trip down there will be on a Sunday. We also need to reserve rooms in a hotel for our last night, but that can wait until we are in Madrid.

Passports have been checked, to make sure we will have a minimum of six months remaining on our last day of travel. Australian passports are valid up to expiry, but some countries demand that six months window. While Australian will allow you back in right up to the day of expiry, some airlines will refuse to allow you to board a flight if that six months minimum of time is not there. If you travel a lot and you are running out of pages, you may need to apply for another passport. It's not possible to add extra pages.

While we were all checking our passports to be sure they would comply with this rule, my sister discovered that hers expired back in December! A replacement has been ordered and should arrive in 6 weeks. Whew!

Should we buy a Spanish SIM card? Will we need a power adapter for our devices? Perhaps we should include one with a number of USB charging ports. What other travel accessories will we need? And there's access to funds we need to consider. Morocco has a closed currency so how will that work?

So much to research but we've allowed ourselves plenty of time.

To wed or not to wed

My granddaughter phoned me to tell me that she and Joe have decided not to marry after all. My first concern was for them. Was everything okay? She assured me it was all good, but they had decided that they didn't need to formalise their relationship - they are not planning on children in the immediate future (she is still studying and working part-time, and he has just commenced a full-time job with Qantas). Her concern was for us and some others who had booked and paid for their trips.

Wedding or no wedding, I'm still going, I told her. When I asked Ilana and Michelle they said they are still keen to go, so we have kept on with our plans.

Thank you, Alexandra and Joe, for considering a wedding in Spain. Even if it's not to go ahead, we are!

New Trip

Since my last post (was it that long ago!) I've moved house and am living in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

After a year here, I was ready to think about some more long-distance travel. I'm always up for a trip to Italy (I still have to explore the south of that country) but while I was thinking about that, my granddaughter rang me. She and her Spanish boyfriend decided that they would marry - in Spain, where his family live. (He lives and works in Sydney.) They would have a major wedding in Spain, and a later celebration here in Australia.

What a great excuse to plan a trip to Spain! My daughters, Ilana and Michelle, were also keen. They said they were not going all that way just for a few days (they are like their mother in that respect) and so we're extending our stay to see as much of Spain as possible, along with Portugal and Morocco.

Plans are well underway. In the meantime, we're busy, with the help of Google Earth, checking out all the places we want to see while we are in that part of the world.

Revisiting my blog posts

Reading through my posts as I work towards publishing a diary of this trip, I realise that I should point out the best way to read this blog.

For a sequential reading of the journey, the reader needs to work backwards, beginning at the end. If you are looking at just one locality, then the post titles will help there.

Happy reading.

WrapUp

It’s coming up to six months since my sister, Lindy, and I returned from our Grand Tour. I’ve had every intention since then of adding this last post as a sort of wrap up of the entire trip.

If you’ve read the posts on this blog, you will see that a few things went wrong. They weren’t disasters – were quite funny in fact – but some serve to illustrate that when booking online, you can’t always be sure of what you will receive. This applied more to the short stay accommodation – the apartments for our long stays were perfect.

Basically, when you organise a trip yourself, you have to be prepared for little things to go awry. As long as you can laugh about it, as we did (side-splittingly at times), everything will be memorable.

Here’s a summary

Flights
Apart from a long delay in Melbourne, everything went well with our Qantas/British Airways flights. We didn’t miss any connections and managed to rest quite well on the outbound journey. (Lindy was coming down with a bad cold on the return trip, so she didn’t fare so well that time, but that had nothing to do with the airline.) The flight from London to Rome was also excellent.

Hire Car
Our hire car was upgraded to one with a built-in GPS because the company didn’t have a spare hand GPS for our use. Unfortunately, the GPS in the car we were given had outdated maps, which resulted in some hilarious adventures. We didn’t mind because it was fun getting lost in England. We met some lovely people and went to places we might otherwise not have seen – Wales for instance!

Accommodation
Apart from a couple of laughable short stays, our accommodations were perfect. Air BnB delivered as promised, with apartments in Venice, Florence and Rome that were as described and hosts who were accommodating (and absent!). Booking.com, used for short stay bookings, didn’t do so well. We were disappointed in the hotel for our last night in Rome, which was nothing like the room advertised on their site.

Tours and event tickets
We booked a few local tours and tickets, with varying results. Some were not clear about what was included and what wasn’t. In hindsight, we should have asked. One of these was a tour of the Academy of Art, where we paid for a guide, who we never did find! Others were apparent, especially the Food Tour and Cooking School, and our Tuscan Tour and also the tours of Sorrento and Capri.  These were well organised, with experienced and enthusiastic guides. The latter included a two-night stay in a five-star hotel (which we reckoned deserved more stars).

Local Travel in Italy
Although my Italian was up to most of these, I did have some difficulty buying bus tickets from a couple at a little local newsstand in Le Cure, Florence. He understood me quite well, she didn’t. But then, I understood him but not her! Most people in the larger centres speak English, which is a pity as I wanted to practice my Italian.

We had booked our train travel before we left Australia, all that remained was for us to go online and select our seats. Trains in Italy are luxury compared to ours, and they generally left on time. If they didn’t, there were constant updates about times.

Twice we used a taxi and found these quite reasonable and the drivers pleasant and helpful. We were aware that one needs to take care because some of them are not ‘official’. When you phone for a taxi, you are given the driver’s name and number so you can check when it arrives that it is the one you ordered.

Food
We only ate out now and again, preferring to prepare our own meals. When we did eat out, the food was plentiful, delicious and served by pleasant people. We didn’t have one bad experience with food.

Buying food in Italy is easy. You can go to the markets (which market is the big decision - they are everywhere), or else the supermarkets. There was a little Co-op in Le Cure, not far from our apartment. They didn’t speak English there, so that was fun. Of course, you help yourself to items and don’t need to know the language, except when it came to the cash register. There they ask a couple of questions that might throw you, but they are the same questions asked in our supermarkets, like, ‘Do you have a loyalty card?’ It’s also good to know that they don’t supply bags in the supermarkets – you need to take your own.

Review of what we packed
After having to heave a largish suitcase around a few times, Lindy decided that next time she would pack like me, in a small roll-along bag. She took twice as much as I did and although I was thoroughly sick of some of my clothing by the end of the trip, I was glad I had packed light. I ditched a few things just before we came home, to fit in the few souvenirs I had bought. I never buy many, just little things to aid my memory.

All up, we both agree that our trip was memorable. We’d both be willing to do it again and, having learned a few things, would do it better! 

Arrivederci Italia.

Our coach had dropped us at our hotel at 8:30 pm. It wasn't anything flash, especially after our experience in Sorrento. It was really just a place to sleep before we checked out in the morning, and caught the train to the airport.

The hotel room was nothing like the one pictured on their website, with a small room, lumpy beds and a minuscule bathroom, but it did have tea making facilities. We were ecstatic, until we tried the tea. As usual, the water was hard and did the flavour of the tea no good. The wifi was hopeless so we had to go down to the lobby to send our email.

We weren't hungry and it was late. We had to be up early so went to bed.

Next morning, our last in Rome and in Italy, we re-sorted and re-packed our bags. The water was hot for our shower but Rome water is very hard so didn't lather very well. Then we went down for breakfast, which was included in the cost. It was a typical continental breakfast except the coffee and hot water for the tea came from a push-button machine. I had coffee and it was foul - very bitter. Lindy got a tea bag and a cup of hot water. Once she'd taken the tea bag out a scum formed on top of the water.

We checked out but remained in the foyer until 11 am rather than wait at busy Roma Termini. While there, two ladies came in, one younger one older. They were booking in but had to wait until the rooms were ready. We chatted for awhile. It was their first visit to Rome and they asked us questions about our experiences. They were from America, but the older lady (her mother) originally came from Spain I think it was. The trip was a birthday gift. We worked out that we covered 4 decades - the older lady was 80, I was 70, Lindy 60 (soon) and the younger woman was 50.

The trip to the airport was uneventful. Lindy wasn't feeling too well - fighting a cold - and we were both feeling that it was a bit anti-climax, sorry it was over but keen now to get back home to family.

It had been a wonderful trip, one that we will both remember. We had some fun times, and some funny adventures. We' were good keeping our diaries in Trip Rider, and when we return home I will tidy mine up and publish it, to keep with my other journals so when I am old and grey, no longer able to travel and with a failing memory, I will have a record of where I went and what I saw.

Sorrento

The skies were a little clearer when we woke, but rain was threatening. We had a free day, to explore Sorrento or take a train or bus to the Amalfi Coast.

We had a late and long breakfast, enjoying the wonderful views of Naples across the bay from the dining room balcony of the Hotel Ambascatori, before checking out at 11 am. We left our luggage in the hotel luggage room. By this time, the clouds had rolled in again (the weather here is as changeable as Melbourne in Australia!) and we decided not to risk going to Positano but to stay in Sorrento - the weather was not kind enough for views of the coast.

We walked into and through a couple of piazza's, people and traffic watching. The drivers here are a bit better than in Rome or Florence, but the roads are so narrow, they don't have any choice. However, they do stop anywhere, putting their flashers on to indicate that they will be back shortly.

Just as we got to the main Piazza, the rain began in earnest, bucketing down and we, along with many other tourists, huddled under dripping awnings or umbrellas. We thought it might be a good idea to sit in a bar but everyone else had the same idea. We eventually found a spare table and two chairs at reasonable looking one, where we sat for an hour and enjoyed a late morning tea - or an unhealthy lunch!

When the rain had stopped, we wandered back to the hotel to wait for the coach back to Pompeii, where we had to change to another to return to Rome.