One Week To Go

With one week to go, all of the detailed planning is now done for our train trip and all of the advanced reservations have been made. I have a 30+ page Word document containing the details of our itinerary, of course including a lot of extra information like ideas for restaurants, train schedules, museum hours, etc. No guide book necessary here. This is of course “over” planning and we generally drop some of the ideas as we go along, but I find things go more smoothly if we start with a plan and still work in spontaneous things as they come up.

The only things left to do now are the little bits of fine tuning. I decided it would be better to take a 25” suitcase instead of a carry-on and a small duffle, so I had to do a trial packing to make sure everything would fit. I read on-line that this size suitcase still fits in the overhead luggage racks on trains so hopefully that is correct. We have loaded up our phones with audio books to listen to on the long train rides (mostly “train” themed) and local maps of the cities that we can use off-line. The tablets are carrying several guidebooks (more that we could ever read), but they weigh nothing. And we also have a few movies for the down times.

So now I am just looking forward to the simple pleasures of travelling and having new experiences. For me, that is trying to live like a native in whatever country I’m in. An impromptu gelato in Milan, eating authentic Czech food in a local restaurant, riding the rails or going to a hip-hop ballet in Slovakia are going to have to do this trip. Because of time and language barrier pressures, we have made some compromises that will keep us partly in the “tourist” realm. By that I mean taking city tours instead of just wandering through a city on our own. I’m sure that it will all be fine and we will still find some “off the beaten path” memories.