Where In the World...

I like counting down. It's weird, I know, but anticipation is what keeps me going. Take, for instance, my annual, 4 month Christmas and Birthday (December 20, for the record) countdown clock. Whoever it was that sat next to me in AP Calculus and/or English will attest to my frantic scribbling of numbers from 150 to 0 in the top right corner of my planner, but I digress. Because this whole Europe trip has been heavy on my mind since March, a countdown has been a work in progress for some time. For the record, there are just about 5 days until I leave the US. For those keeping score at home...here's the itinerary:





August 20: Venice
August 21-23: Rome
August 24-26: Florence
August 27: Milan
August 28- Sept. 1: Barcelona
Sept. 2 - Dec. 20: Edinburgh





It's a world tour. I feel like the Beatles.

Downsizing.

Major breakthrough today on the packing front. Per a friend's suggestion, I will be traveling, living, surviving out of a carry-on bag for the first 2 to 3 weeks after I leave the states. In a word: streamlining. American Airlines (those greedy bastards) would charge me for a check-in anyway...and this way things won't get lost on the way from Los Angeles to Zurich. There's just too much that could go wrong. Needless to say, I will be cutting down on the crap that I thought I needed to bring. And taking lots of tiny bottles in ziplocs along. (One of many reasons I dislike terrorists. Why couldn't they have planned to blow up planes with 10th grade bio teachers or bowling coaches instead?) But I guess it's not all that bad...carry-on size is actually pretty big. According to American, that would be 45"measured linearly (height+width+depth < 45"). It also means, though, I will be FedEx-ing most of my crap over to Edinburgh, which is pretty pricey. A 10 kg (yeah, the metric begins already) box costs just about $200, or shall I say £100.