Italy Prologue: Packing

First installment from my journals from our trip to Italy. Note that in my journals, I've used the Italian names for cities and towns (Rome is Roma, Florence is Firenze)

September 13, 2008

We're all packed up and ready to go. In the four big black suitcases are the tandem bikes, dismantled by Wayne and packed away neatly. He spent this week sewing little flannel cases for all the tubes so they don't get all bashed up, and packing his "MacGyver kit" with duct tape, quick ties, vecro, tools, spokes, tubes, etc. for fixing any mishaps on the road.

In the two small carry-on suitcases are all of the clothes and necessities for all four of us for three weeks. I'm very impressed that we managed to pare down our packing to half of a carry-on apiece. Rick Steves with his one carry-on used to look downright spartan to me, but the more we've traveled over the years, the more we've appreciated that the lighter you travel, the easier it is. So we've tried to get as much quick-drying ultra-light clothing as possible and we will plan on rewashing everything from underwear to shirts on a near-daily basis. Since we already have the big and heavy (50 pounds apiece) suitcases carrying the bikes and bike trailers, paring everything else down to a minimum is a necessity. In my backpack are my Italian dictionary, my camera and lens, a book to read on the plane, my MP3 player, and this journal.

This week, the to-do list has been never-ending. Trying to hand over our household and the care of its 15 animals is not an easy task. Fortunately, my friend's parents are visiting and will be staying in our house, that should make our kitties much happier. I'm worried about Patches, the cat everyone calls "my dog" because she follows me around like a puppy. She's so attached to me, I worry that she'll run away. So I took her to get micro-chipped this week. The kittens are already chipped and Noggin my old guy is a veteran of our travels and has never disappeared on us. Still, he took to sitting on our luggage, in the house and in the car, I know he knows we're going. I will miss all of our critters so much!



Our flight leaves tomorrow morning from Portland at 7:15 am. We've been planning this for so long, and now the time has come to go and do it. Andiamo! (let's go).

Do We Have Enough Underwear, Can I Conjugate the Verb Avere, Do I Know How To Get From Cortona to Arezzo?

We have just over four weeks until we leave for Italy and the details are endless. It's more or less like planning a wedding for two hundred guests, or an invasion of Britain, or any other minor such task. Wayne and Mackenzie are not the world's best linguists. Asa is fabulous, but a bit too young to want to sit down and do dedicated study (although she's so fast at acquiring language, I think she will pick up the most of any of us while we're there). But that leaves me as the sole communicator of la famiglia in the many parts of Italy we'll be traveling through that are likely to have few fluent English speakers. Rome and Florence I have no worries about, but what if we need to get directions or buy food in Rigutino or Fontiano (both on the way from Cortona to Arezzo)? I don't want to be one of those Americans who assumes everyone will speak English, so I've been studying and studying hard.

Funnily enough, I took four years of French in college, and while I did learn it passably well I had no real incentive to do so. Now, I have a burning desire to be able to communicate competently in Italian, so that's fueling my aggressive Italian learning spree. I have Italian on my MP3 player, my computer, my car stereo, my DVD and VCR, and in books and workbooks scattered across my kitchen table.

Besides that, I just need to make sure we have a compact and lightweight wardrobe for all kinds of weather, the biking gear we need, enough training on the bikes to climb the hill towns of Tuscany, cell phones, cameras, adapters for Italian power outlets, maps, routes, train tickets and schedules, and oh yes, enough clean underwear.

Ho mólto fare! I have a lot to do.