Italy is getting closer

Today we printed out a whole lot of stuff that we shouldn't have to print - but just in case -- e-tickets for trains, planes, etcetera.

Also we've started committing to particular times and places: 7pm on the 9th report to the vatican museum; 9am on the 27th, see you at the uffizi - all in the interests of jumping some queues.  The colosseum is much more relaxed - we are welcome any time before the end of 2014.  Cool, see you there.

Actually, we have a limited appetite for this sort of thing.  The urge for certainty wars with notions of holiday freedom.

I've resorted to chasing dopey, late summer flies with the battery powered zapping racquet (Sal one, flies nil).  Geoff is on the phone and online picking fights with Westpac and Telecom and I say -- why not?

I've attempted a packing list.  Also at war with comfort and a light bag.  Nothing stuffs a day of train travel like dragging an oversized suitcase over cobblestones and up and down escalators.

13 sleeps til we go. It feels like there's quite a bit we have to do before then - and that doesn't include any of the topics canvassed above...

at home and why travel

Yesterday found me biking down the Porirua track with Hamish, and then around the Whitireia park coastline, stopping for a picnic at Onehunga (Shelly) Bay. Thanks for bringing the picnic, Julia.

Looking south towards Porirua

Hamish checks out the view

counting sleeps

right then, by my careful calculations it's a mere 33 sleeps til we take off for Italy. 

33! 

In honour of this I've decided to start my new blog - Italy 2014 - and also started re-reading previous ones (May 2012 and Spain).  The titles are so evocative...

It's all very uplifting and helped me realise I'm really cut out to be a traveller (not a gypsy) - I suppose I mean a tourist.  Yes, people, my vocation is vacation.

Am getting in the spirit by staying at a Napier B and B while up here for work.  Compulsory chit chat with hosts and other guest (singular).  Weirdly she is over from Canada to explore restorative practices.  We were able to educate our startled host about all this over a glass of wine earlier this evening. I guarantee it's not her usual line of conversation.

Before arriving in Napier on her tour round the NI my fellow guest was at a conference in Whanganui.  Apparently Whanganui hopes to be NZ's first restorative town - all of which meant that Jocelyn (the Canadian) and her fellow conference-goers workshopped the guts out of the function and significance of the letter 'H' - ain't life spooky?

Anyway, it's late - I should be sleeping, but instead I'm reminiscing about past trips and plotting and scheming about the next one - and also trying to ignore the birds crashing about in the roof, or gutters, or some such.  Shouldn't they be asleep too?