Trip Layout Done

More stops were added in the form of Dubrovnik in Croatia and the Ionian Islands in Greece. I added the routing of our trip and some dates to the map. Unfortunately our 3 fixed dates (Iron Maiden in Paris on July 1st, Meeting Kelly and Conan in Barcelona on May 20th and Seeing Feist in Lille on May 25th) kinda don't fit well into the route we want to take. We want to hit the Mediterranean and get out before tourist season hits and be in Scandinavia during summer to get good weather and cheap hotels. The good news is that with the Eurail pass and overnight trains we can afford to take long hauls like that.

A few straggling parcels need to arrive, like my new glasses and our travel insurance papers (travel cuts gave us the best deal).

We've decided to take the Greyhound to Vancouver (30$ if booked 2 weeks in advance) because we can't find anywhere to park our car for 3 months. So that'll be a long haul, leaving Vernon at 10 Am then going to the airport and arriving in London at 4:40 AM the next day (Vernon time), 1:40 PM London Time.

I also did a trial run of packing my bag and it worked out quite well. It's a little tight once I put my camera bag inside my backpack. So any souvenirs will probably force me to strap my camera bag to my pack on the outside or carry it on my front like a douche bag. But it's small and light and should be no problem. I'll probably throw up some pictures of us all packed up and ready to go before we leave.

I finally caught wind of the Heathrow Terminal 5 fiasco (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7323198.stm). This scares me because we are actually due to arrive at Terminal 5 and they pretty much have a week to get stuff straightened out over there. Definitely not putting ANYTHING important in my checked luggage.

Buying Frenzy

The last week has been a small workout for my visa as I've been buying the last few things I want with me on my trip. Such as a monopod for my camera and a leatherman multi-tool.

Trip planning is going ok. We haven't finalized the smaller details like exactly what we're going to do in each town, but we have a rough outline with approximate days in each city and some more major sites planned out. We are both very excited to go to the Plitvice national park in Croatia. Beautiful: www.np-plitvicka-jezera.hr

Other than that we are pretty much just in shock that in less than 2 weeks we will be more than 7200kms from home.