It’s two weeks until we finally start our 3 months in Italy. In my list of What’s Next it’s been an ever present. It’s been the subject of a number of posts over the last three years and now it’s actually within touching distance. Is have to say I’m getting excited.

It’s a new experience slow travel, daytime flights with a number of stopovers before we get to Milan where our time in Italy begins. It will be a completely different approach to travel. Much less planned than in the past. We have a couple of weeks to get from Milan to Sicily where we plan to spend 7 weeks before another couple of weeks to get back to Rome for the trip home. But before we get to Italy we have a couple of days in Sri Lanka which at no point until the travel agent suggested it had been on our places to go list.

We are looking forward to seeing elephants! Source: travelfest.in

Apart from booking the airfares through a travel agent we have arranged everything ourselves. 

Accommodation will be a combination of hotels and Airbnb all sourced online. The level of choice is almost overwhelming.  It’s so different from our first big trip away at Christams 1998, where the complete extent of our online bookings was to email the New York Ballet to book for their New Year’s Eve performance of The Nutcracker. The tickets came back by post!

Source. www.nytimes.com

We have also been able to get a good idea of what to do in many of the places we are visiting by simply googling “One Day in Colombo” or “2 Days in Milan” etc,  it’s just all there. It means our bags won’t be weighed down with travel guides, just iPads and a laptop! 

However, before we get on the plane I have my thesis to finish (almost done), assignments to mark (not started) and a consulting job (underway) to complete!