The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Travelers

January 2, 2010

With our departure date for Italy 6080 hours away and our airline tickets and apartment rentals already booked, it would seem there wouldn’t be all that much more to do to get ready for another….oh…..4175 hours, but if you’re thinking that, then you don’t know me. D does which is why she’s already accepted that for the next 6080 hours my full-time job will be I-T-A-L-Y.

Even our Christmas was a slice of Italy. I bought her Italian wine books and she bought me Italian cook books, and we spent Christmas Day watching the Rick Steve’s DVD’s on Italy’s Country Side I bought her while I played with the anti-theft backpacks I bought for both of us.

And over the past month I’ve scoured the internet to find one-day cooking classes in Italy, corresponded with a private guide in Italy via email about a private tour to Pompeii, scored great restaurant reviews from other travelers on Slow Travel, and bookmarked tour companies that lead biking day tours in Tuscany and day hikes on the Amalfi Coast. I’ve downloaded dozens of podcasts on my iPhone including Traveling to Italy, The History of Rome, How to Tour Italy, and Rick Steve’s Italy Audio Tours and have a half dozen new travel apps loaded and tested. I’ve checked out luggage at the local travel shop, looked over walking shoes, checked out clothing at Travel Smith, purchased city and region maps and the Eyewitness Travel Books for Tuscany, Amalfi, Italy, and the Amalfi Coast, and a new camera. I’m through the first four lessons of Rosetta Stone Italian and begin taking Italian classes next week at the Berkeley extension of The Italingua Institute of San Francisco.

And now on the center of our main living room wall is our Tuscany wall calendar and map of Italy so that I can cross out each of the 253 days that remain until our departure and chart our itinerary on the map; black pins mark our three apartments, red pins are the cities and villages we most want to visit, and white pins mark all those places we hope we can get to if only distance and time will allow.

This might all seem over the top and maybe it is for normal people but I recognize and accept that when it comes to making plans I lean away from normal and toward obsessive. For this Type A girl the more I plan the more I relax, the more details I work out on our itinerary the more freedom there is to be spontaneous in the moment, and the more I research and learn and shop and plan for Italy, the more fun I have because anticipating a trip is nearly as fun as going on the trip. The operative word being nearly. And of course, while I make all these plans I do so knowing that when it comes to traveling or life in general, everything can change and the best plans can go out the window at the last moment. The airline goes on strike. The flight is delayed. One of us gets sick. We both get sick. A loved one dies. The place we intended to go see on a Tuesday is closed until Friday. The private guide is a no-show. The restaurant with all the rave reviews ends up being mediocre. The apartment toilets overflow. Traveling, like life in general, has unplanned interruptions and surprises which is why all the time I’m planning I remember everything can change. It’s also why ten minutes after I booked the airline tickets and put the deposit down on the apartment rentals, I bought travel insurance. Just in case. I only hope hope hope we don’t have to use it.

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Posted in Italy, Travel