Ready or not...here we go!

The past week has been busy finalising everything from laundry to travel insurance, paying bills (or setting up auto payments) to getting last minute vaccinations.

Here are some of the key things on my mind as we prepare to leave.

THE MEDICAL STUFF
Making sure we are prepared with meds to handle anything from a simple headache to an anaphylactic reaction. Might be a bit overkill but I've been caught unprepared before. It's not fun experimenting with unknown medication - especially for kids with allergies!

As well-prepared as I thought we were, there's always something that gets overlooked. You would think that after 3 trips to our local doctor and a 'medicine suitcase' that looks like a mini-pharmacy we'd be well and truly covered. Not so. We overlooked the need for travel vaccinations. Never have we had travel vaccinations but a chance reading on the Australian Smart Traveller website had me worried. Morocco is a big unknown early in our trip and I don't want to take any chances. So with 3 days to go before we leave we all have to get our needles for Hep A and Typhoid. Luckily Morocco isn't for another 4 weeks so there's still time for the vaccine to kick in my doctor assures me.

THE DIGITAL STUFF
How do we disconnect but still stay connected with our lives? How do we manage things half way around the globe by remote control? More importantly, how do we find our next destination or the nearest police station?! I'd be lost without Google - Google Maps, Google Google, and now Google Translate! Then there's the issue of making sure you have the adaptors, the chargers, the memory cards and all the million bits and pieces that go with owning a piece of technology.

And of course we want to capture and document our experiences - both in pictures and words - so we can look back on them in the years to come. From sleeping under the stars in the Sahara Desert, to sipping wine on the terrace of our Andalusian white village home, meandering through the cobblestone streets of France to singing our hearts out on an Austrian mountaintop. We want to capture it all!

So THIS is what we have to carry! More like - what Hubby will have to carry! We're going to blend in so well with the locals (not), but at least we'll have some good photos.

I, on the other hand, am happy with my phone camera. After all, it's not how big your gear is, it's what you do with it :-).

THE HOME STUFF
When you have great neighbours, this parts easy. Seriously though, the nearest and dearest will be with me and any material prized possessions will be in a box headed for my mother's place. So apart from that, it's all just replaceable 'stuff' we fill our lives with that will hopefully still be there when we get back.

Bills have been sorted and either paid or converted to paperless billing, something I plan to keep in place even upon our return. The amount of paper mail we get is out of control. Anything else that comes via snail mail will just have to wait. I'm already dreading the thought of the pile of mail that we will have waiting for us when we return!

THE FUN STUFF
February - Spain, Morocco
March - England, France
April - Italy, Germany, Austria
May - Switzerland, Spain

It doesn't look so bad when it's written down like that. It looks much simpler than the multi-tab, colour-coded Excel spreadsheet we're using to manage everything.

Inspite of all that, as I go through it with a fine-toothed comb noting down every booking, every confirmation, every downpayment, every balance due, every rental car, flight, and ferry schedule, every address and contact number for every property, I still find a few nights where we would have ended up sleeping in the streets!

Here I am thinking that maybe going to a travel agent with a list of things we wanted to see and do for the next 3.5 months within our budget may have been easier. They certainly earn their keep!

So if you ask whether we're ready for this trip, I don't think we'll ever be but time is running out. So ready or not... here we go.

A moment of panic

The countdown has begun. Only 13 days to go before we leave for our 105-day European adventure through eight countries and countless cities. I feel like that's all I've been talking about now for the past few weeks and months. Though it's still a bit hard to get excited as the fear starts creeping in.

Will the house be OK? Are the bills all sorted? Do we have the right clothes for the trip? What about shoes? Have we budgeted correctly? Which travel SIMS should we get? What adaptors do we need? Is our Travel Insurance all good? The VISAS??! Are we sure we don't need visas? What about our passports? They still have the 6 month validity, right?

All that plus the sudden realisation that we'll be living out of the two suitcases we take with us - a family of 5 - for over 3 months on the move through Europe and North Africa sparks a mild panic attack, especially for someone who is severely challenged when it comes to travelling light. Part of me thinks it would be incredibly liberating to realise how much 'stuff' we can do without, yet the other part is still worried about the life we'll be putting on hold.

With only the first 6 weeks of the itinerary through Spain, Morroco, and England locked away, it's fair to say that a large part of this nervousness I feel could be for the part that still hasn't been locked away. The part where we will be 'winging it' as we go. There are bookings for France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria to finalise. Ideally I would have liked all this to be locked away before we leave the safety of our Sydney home. I would have liked to change the colours of each box from 'yellow' to 'green' on our Excel spreadsheet indicating 'booking confirmed', but I'll have to accept that it's just not going to happen. Maybe it's for the best? Maybe it's what we need to keep some flexibility and spontaneity in our adventure? Maybe it's just enough to give me that sick feeling in my stomach?

As much as there is this adventurous streak in me, I can't deny my natural preference to have things mapped out in front of me so I know exactly what we're getting ourselves into. I'm sure this trip will challenge that preference on more than just this occassion. It feels like one of those moments where I just have to close my eyes and jump, again.

Extended Family Travel - it all starts with an idea

Three years ago, it all started with an idea. It was to be a 'family gap year'. Time out from our routine lives to travel. To see and experience the world. To expose our kids to the world and a different way of life. Inspired by other families who had done it before, we set our sights. We had never been to Europe so we decided that's were we wanted to go. Spain was to be our base - 2013 was to be the year.

We set a savings goal and a timeframe and then parked the idea. I can't even remember which came first now, the savings goal or the job opportunities. But as things turned out, it was in the middle of 2012, we were on our way to reaching our savings goal and 2013 was coming up fast. We had to decide. Are we doing this or not? How do we do this? When do we do this? How long do we go for? Will the schools approve Cat and Bee's absence? Will Hubby's work approve his leave? What about my business?

Well, here we are. It's 2013 and we're just a few weeks away from doing it!

As circumstances have it, Cat and Bee weren't willing to take a year off because of their commitment to competitive gymnastics. Hubby and I were also a bit apprehensive about the logistics involved with being 'on the road' for an entire year - so we agreed on a quarter, three and a half months.

I often get asked the two big questions of 'why' and 'how'.

There's no single reason for the 'why'. There are the 'responsible parent' reasons - there's so much out there we want our kids to see and experience. We are responsible for their education so this is it. What better way to educate than through experience? Then there are the 'selfish' reasons - we want to travel, we have kids, so we take them with us. Then there are the 'escape' reasons - life can get pretty boring getting stuck in the routine of work and home. A little adventure never goes astray. Then there's the 'family bonding' reason (although this is a double-edged sword) - what better way to bond as a family than to travel together over an extended period - just the five of us - completely dependent on each other, all outside our comfort zone, with none of the routine distractions.

There are so many reasons why someone would want to do this, so maybe the easiest way to answer it is with a 'Why not?'.

As for the 'How'.... I've always had the belief that if you set your mind on the 'What' (and even the 'Why'), then the 'How' will take care of itself. Sounds like a bit of a cliche, but it's true. We don't have an extravagant budget. In actual fact, it's quite modest for a trip of this nature with a family of five. The main thing we remind ourselves is that it's all about experiencing the real life and culture of the place as best we can. So where we can, we will try to live like a local and eat like a local.

I never would have thought we'd be able to do something like this, yet here we are, all because of an idea.