The Ties That Binder Us

(Honest, this is the last planning post, I’ll get to the actual trip next!) 

As I mentioned, I got a lot of my travel information from some great ideas of what to do and where to go and how to do all this from some fabulous reviews on Cruise Critic dot com.

 

But the number one, absolutely required rule is this: 

Thou must havest a Travel Binder, and thou must fillest it with Many Good Instructions and Plans!

 

Now, who am I to argue with the Travel Experts!

 

As I made plans and hotel reservations, I saved all the emails in a Traveling to Italy folder.  I also made a spreadsheet with many tabs for Itinerary, budget, packing lists, time differences, average temperatures, suggestions…. 

I then bought a 2 inch binder and page protectors.  I made a cover sheet for each day with where we were, where we were going, hotels, tours and general information.  I printed all the relevant emails and added them to each day.

 

(My binder was white, but that didn’t show up so well)

 

For our travel guidance, I relied heavily on Rick Steves Italy Tour Book.  Rick lives in Near Seattle also, and has a lot of sensible, down-to-earth advice.  He is also very generous with his time and resources.  He has a lovely Travel Center and gives free weekly classes.

 

I took that lovely guidebook and it ripped it to shreds!  Let me point out, I did this with Rick Steves’ advice and blessings!  Why carry more of the book than you need.  We were not going to Southern Italy, why drag that part along?   

I then copied all of those pages and chopped then into little bits.  I put the instructions on how to get into the next city and hotel right on the cover page.  I put each specific activity we were going to do in its own folder.  I put any eating or sleeping or general information on the town in another.  It made it very easy to just grab the information we needed  and go.  I also threw in any city maps I had from prior trips.  I added a print out from Google Maps of where our hotels and major sights were. 

After I lovingly assemble this Impressive Binder of Travel, I was understandably proud of my efforts.   

The Blog Fodder (BF) said: “Wait a minute!  You are taking that THING with us to Italy?  I thought we were packing light?”

 

 

Um, where have you been the last six months, Bub?

And as I am in charge of packing, I made it work!  We still went with just the 2 carryon bags.  And we (mostly) knew where and when we were going!

A side note on Denise and maps:  I can read a map.  I can look at it and plot a course and see where I am going.  Then I look up in the real world, and nothing makes sense.  Are we supposed to go left here?  I dunno.  The BF is the Navigation Guru, but sometimes getting him involved enough to actually look in advance was a challenge.  Fortunately, we had a disaster early on in the trip, and he stepped up better from there.

 

So here we are, all packed, all planned, all ready to go!