*Updated* Travel!

*Update*

The Europe itinerary (square brackets denote places I am visiting for the day from the preceeding city, but not staying in) is:

Italy (Naples, Palermo [Syracuse, Agrigento], Rome, Verona, Milan [Genoa, Turin]), Switzerland (Zurich), Germany (Fussen, Munich, Dresden, Berlin, Bremen, Cologne, Heidelberg, Freiburg), France (Strasbourg, Le Mans [Rouen, Blois, Vitre, Mont St Michael], Bordeaux [Sarlate a Caneda], Lourdes [Carcassone]), Spain (Bilbao, Olviedo, A Coruna [Santiago de Compostela, Leon], Cordoba [Granada, Seville, Cadiz])

Then William comes over for six weeks and we go to:

Spain (Madrid [Toledo], Valencia [Mallorca], Barcelona [Girona]), France (Toulouse, Marseille [Nimes], Nice [Monaco], Paris [Versailles, Carentan, D-Day Beaches), Belgium (Brussels), Germany (Frankfurt), Czech Republic (Prague), Austria (Vienna), Italy (Venice, Florence [Siena, Pisa], Rome [Vatican City], Naples) and then back to Spain to fly out from Madrid.

So basically, I'm landing in Italy and doing a circuit through to Spain, then William comes over and we reverse the circuit back to Italy, but are visiting the more well known places. Should be a good trip, I think. I'm particularly looking forward to the 2 weeks I have in Cordoba to just relax, walk around, see the city, and pretend I'm a local. Hopefully by that stage, after 3 months in SA and 4 weeks in other parts of Spain, my Spanish will be up to scratch! I'm conversational at the moment, but not fluent. I really hope I develop my skills more while I'm over there.

So, any more tips? I've had a look at that couch surfing site, Kiki, and I think I will give it a shot. If it doesn't work out, then I haven't really lost anything, have I? So thanks for the tip! That will certainly cut down on my costs.

*****

After a productive week of having my nose buried in travel guides and travel sites, I have completed the first 3 months of my travel itinerary.

Chile (Santiago, La Serena, San Pedro de Atacama, Arica), Peru (Arequipa, Cuzco, Nazca, Lima, Trujillo), Ecuador (Cuenca, Guayquil, Quito [Esmeraldas]), Costa Rica (San Jose), Nicaragua (Granada, Managua), Honduras (Tegucigalpa, Copan Ruinas), Guatemala (Antigua, Panajachel [Chichicastenango], Flores), Mexico (Playa del Carmen, Merida, Palenque, Oaxaca, Mexico City).

If any of you have been to any of those countries or cities/towns, I'd appreciate any tips!

After Mexico City, I fly to Italy, then travel through there, Germany, France and Spain for an additional 4 months. I haven't finished that itinerary yet. I'd love to more extensive travel throughout Europe and visit Russia, Croatia, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, etc, but I just don't have enough time. I'll just have to go back another time!

I've also worked out that with flights, travel insurance, accomodation in SA, land travel in SA, spending money in SA (calculated on the "cost per day" in the Lonely Planet guides) and spending money in Europe, the trip is currently at $25,000. To that needs to be added accomodation and land travel in Europe, plus the cost of the gear I'll have to buy before I leave, and another $1600 to hire a storage facility to store all my stuff while I'm gone (so William can lease out my study for rent, and so all my stuff is packed up if we have to move when the lease ends while I'm gone).

All up, I'm estimating it will cost me about $40,000 for the 7.5 months I'm gone. Has anyone else travelled for this long through similar countries? Is this estimate correct? I think the Lonely Planet estimate of daily costs must include a large hunk for alcohol, because I really can't see myself spending over $100 a day in Europe, when my accomodation is already paid for and land travel accounted for separately. But I'm going to plan for that much just in case I do need it. I suspect I may get out of it cheaper, however.

The accomodation I'm booking is all Single Private Ensuite rooms. Slightly more expensive (mostly around the $10 - $20 a night mark in SA, and it looks to be around the $50 - $80 mark in Europe), but I think I will enjoy myself more that way. There's no way I could deal with sleeping in a room with 7 strangers who are drinking, farting, snoring and having sex, and possibly vomitting into the toilet/missing the toilet while drunk, etc. If I want to join the revelry, I'd rather do it in the common areas than in my sleeping area. So yeah. I don't care what the rooms look like or anything, as long as I have my own room and my own bathroom, I'm happy.

So, any tips? I'll post the Europe itinerary when I've finished it.

Stressed!

Assignment due last night. Group assignment due tonight (which, as usual, no one else has done anything on). Exam Friday. Exam Saturday. 3 day external attendance school Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Work full time.

I can't be in so many places at once. I've had to defer one exam already. I have no idea what to do about the assignment due tonight since the other group members are useless.

And I'm just so tired. I've been staying up to at least midnight this whole week trying to study and finish assignments. This would be ok if I started at a normal time, like 8.30 or 9.00. Starting at 6.30 means I'm only getting 5 hours' sleep.

And I'm going to have to start organising my overseas trip myself. I really wouldn't think it would be so difficult for a travel agent to work out. I gave them a list of the places I wanted to go, said I needed airfares, inter-country transport (train, bus, etc) and accomodation sorted out. I said I didn't know how long it took to get to each place or how long to spend in each place to see the things I wanted to see, so if they needed to take some small towns out along the way, that was fine. The travel agent keeps emailing saying she needs exact dates. I can't give exact dates. I don't know how long it takes to get from Santiago to Lima, for example. I'm not a travel agent. I don't know the options. You're a travel agent. You know the options. You tell me! You tell me how long it will take and then tell me the dates! It's no good me saying to you, "I want to be in Lima 2 days after I land in Santiago" if that's not even possible!

Anyway, I bought some Lonely Planet guides, and it appears everything is written in those (transport, accomodation, things to see, daily cost, etc), so I might just do up my own itinerary, then show the travel agent and say, "I think you need to get a Lonely Planet. This took me 2 weeks. You've had my plans since October and you still haven't sorted anything out."

*sigh* I need sleep.

Waste of a weekend

For someone so organised, I sure screwed my weekend up!

I was supposed to go and watch Miss Giggles' performance on Friday night, but after all my work that day I had hurt my neck (bringing boxes of old files up from the basement, where the lift doesn't go, to reconcile information). I had dinner and went to lie down for a few minutes before getting ready and leaving. Next thing I know, I wake up and it's 11.30pm! Oh no! I looked at my phone and sure enough, there was a message from Miss Giggles saying the performance had gone really well. Damnit. I really wanted to see their routine (shut up! It was not all about Supermodel in lingerie!).

Saturday morning I had decided I was going to go to the library at uni after getting my nails done to work on an assignment I have due in a couple of weeks. I got my books together and then looked through the material. The assignment is due 7 April (today), not 17 April! Oh no! I had only a vague idea of what I was going to write about, and hadn't even started researching it yet!

So the entire weekend was spent at the library, trying to write an entire assignment from scratch. And to make it worse, it's only a 1000 word assignment. I hate those. It is impossible to write about something in-depth in 1000 words and form a complete argument. I can write a 10,000 word assignment no worries, but 1,000 word ones? I'm screwed. My strengths lie in my ability to babble and explain things i n - d e p t h! I initially wrote 5000, then cut it back to 3,000, then 2,000, and finally down to 1,400. I have to continue to edit it today so I can get it to the word limit and hand it in. In this course, they are very strict on word limits, and penalise heavily for going over them. I have no idea how I'm going to cut out another 400 words and still make the assignment a cohesive argument. Ugh.

Tonight won't be any better. I have an assignment that needs to have its progress signed off by the tutor tomorrow night. I haven't actually written anything since the last sign off. I was going to work on it over the weekend, but obviously that didn't happen. So I suspect I'll be up late tonight, trying to make it look as though I've done a lot more work than I have.

*sigh* I am so far behind this semester. Sometimes, I really hate my decision to work full time and try to study 3 degrees at once. What was I thinking?!