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.
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