The Big Trip Is Dead, Long Live The BIg Trip

The Big Trip is something we've had brewing for about three years now. A trip to take the kids back to their countries of birth, Guatemala and Colombia. It had always been planned for the Christmas holidays 2011-12 to coincide with Will finishing primary school.

There were a few other friends interested so it was always going to be a difficult thing to wrangle into submission. The main reason we have knocked it on the head is that the Christmas holidays is just a super expensive time to fly to the US. Basically our flights would cost more or less twice the price of going at some other time. Not to mention all the flights to Colombia and Guatemala from our base in Miami. It's just hard to justify throwing away that sort of money, not when I can be spending it on Spencer & Rutherford handbags or Thermomix accessories.

So while it's hard to let go of a dream we'd been holding onto for quite a few years now we are happy that we'll still do the trip but just a few months later, possibly around Easter 2012.

The Big Trip lives, it just needs a few extra months to gestate.

It's 4 pm London time. I'm writing this from the lobby of the Novotel at Heathrow Airport.

I am really really tired. Mum and I have just come back from Soho where we had lunch with Jules. It was great to see her but to be honest I am too tired to appreciate anything much right now.

Things will only be worse tomorrow when we get a 3 am wake up call and a 3:45 am taxi to the airport for flight to Odessa via Vienna. Mum's story about her previous flight with Ukranian Airlines does not inspire great confidence in me. Wish us luck!

I hope to be feeling better on day two in Odessa and to have some internet time so I can do a full update on the trip so far.

Come back in a couple of days.

Just a quick note to say this will be my last one before I post (hopefully) from London.

Tomorrow is Marianna's birthday party which will keep my occupied and then exhausted.

Sunday morning I'll pack before heading to the airport around noon. Mum and I fly out at 2:35pm on a Virgin Altantic flight bound for London via Bangkok.

We arrive in London at some horrific hour (about 6:00 am) on Monday (London time) morning. If we're not too wrecked we'll spend the day in the city, meeting up with Jules for lunch and then all of us heading to the Airport Novotel for dinner and an early night before our flight to Odessa, via Vienna, very early Tuesday morning.

I will keep posting here because I am too damned lazy to set up a new travel blog and I don't want to use the old one I set up for the Colombia trip.

See ya!

So it's two weeks until the BIG TRIP. I'm getting excited now. I'm too busy day to day to think about it that much but once in a while it sneaks up on me and I think "WOW, I'm going overseas by myself in [now less than] TWO WEEKS! Holy Shit!". I think it's the by myself part which is most exciting and most frightening.

The thought of sitting on a plane with only adult company and only having to worry about my own meal and my own toileting needs and being able to choose and watch an entire movie (or two) of my own choosing is enough to blow my mind. But I also know that I'm going to miss by babies and Big Jay so much. Absence makes the heart grown fonder and all that, it's SO true.

It's going to be an adventure and I can't wait to see my gorgeous sister and spend some quality time with my mum and see for myself the place I was born. Did I mention eat at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant and see a play with some famous people in it (whose names escape me right now - help me out JB) in London?

I'm not sure if I'll set up a seperate blog or just keep blogging here so stay tuned for that tantalising bit of non-information. I fly out on Sunday 31 May.