It’s a few hours before I go to sleep. We are getting ready to leave for our early morning flight to London. I’m hanging around the apartment with a freshly shaved and washed Yoshi. This morning we got up and packed our bags for the final time before our trip. Even though the flight any everything else is quickly approaching, I’m pretty calm.
After realizing I still was bringing too many pairs of pants and removing the ones that would have taken the longest to dry, I ended up with more space than I expected. I’m still packed solid, but I’m not bursting seams anymore. I made sure our electronics were packed, our cords were with us, and that we had a few copies of our important documents. Even after putting all my gear on it’s not even close to being as heavy as my last trip to Europe. I think the new bags are going to work out well.
My wife was trying to get all the laundry done today. She wanted to do a wardrobe “reset”, washing all our summer clothes one last time before putting them away for the rest of the year. That way when we got back we wouldn’t have had to do more laundry. I applaud her effort, but in typical Korean fashion this all came down to the wire. The weather, up until yesterday, had not been participating in her little plan. We had two loads of laundry and only a few hours of sun to work with. Everything is “mostly dry”.
While the laundry dried, we got everything else ready. She’s been working on hand made gifts for my family. Right now she’s off trying to get some art done for my brother before the bead store closes.
My brother in law is supposed to arrive soon. He’s going to be hanging out in our apartment for the month we are away. He is looking for work, and is going to use our apartment as a place to study for raising his English skills for his resume. I set up a login account for him on my machine, so he can get used to using Linux, or keep using Windows XP that I set up virtualized. Either way, when he’s done with the computer, there will be no mess to clean up, just an account to delete. He won’t go messing up anything I can’t undo I hope.
He’s also going to be watching Yoshi for us while we are away. We’ve got all his food and everything ready. Yoshi’s a pretty low maintenance sort of dog anyway. The occasional walk and some attention is all he needs.
The rough plan, as of now, is that we will go to Incheon airport and catch a flight to Hong Kong. From Hong Kong, we go to London, arrive in the evening, and head to our booked hostel. My parents arrive the next day. We will do touristy things, then meet up with them no later than dinner. We’ll spend September 12th with some friends in Southampton, England.
After that reunion, we’ll take a quick jet to the Czech Republic. From there, we return to Prague. After showing my wife where I had fun on the trip last time, we’ll then head to Vienna, Austria. This is basically a travel hub for our Eurorail passes, so we’ll need to visit there no matter what. From there, we go to Italy. We hope to see, at the minimum, Venice, Florence, Rome, and possibly Pompeii. Then, we head north, and, time allowing, go to Switzerland. If not, we’ll head to Paris, France. We have lots of days on our Eurorail pass, so covering ground won’t be a problem at all. No matter what we do, we still have to end up in Paris, as we have a flight leaving there. From Paris, it’s back to Hong Kong with a nice long layover, then Korea again.
My wife and I usually do alright traveling. Our longest trip together so far was last year’s trip to the United States to meet my family. We did fine with tours in China, and our backpacking trip to Cambodia too. I just want to get going already!
