Arrivederci Amici!

One week from today I will be on my way to Italy. I will be traveling with my daughter and her husband and three kids and my son and his wife. We will be gone from June 13 to July 1. I am excited and terrified. I am not packed, but I have been refining a list of stuff to pack. It must all fit in one bag (21 inch expandble upright) small enough to take on board and fit into the overhead compartment of the plane. I have been practicing rolling each item of clothing into a tight little ball. I can't imagine how I'm going to get everything into that teensy bag. I keep telling myself that it doesn't matter what I wear or how it looks, because no one will be looking at me anyway. I'll just be one old broad in a sea of tourists. One tiny speck in an infinite universe. Who the hell cares if my clothes are wrinkled and/or sweaty and dirty? There! I feel better already.

So! We'll fly into Venice, spend two days there and head for Florence. Two days there and down to Rome (after a stop in Pisa). Then two days in Sorrento and then it's a night on the ferry and finally arrive in Sicily on June 23, where we'll spend the next 7 days. Whoa! I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it!

I'm going to try to set up a "travel blog" to chronicle our adventures. Believe it or not, even though I'm the oldest of our band of vagabonds, I'm the only one who maintains a blog. So I was elected to be the official diarist. Now it remains to be seen if I actually get this done in time. Maybe tomorrow...