Decisions, decisions, decisions

It has been a long time since my last post...since this is a blog about home swapping it is difficult to write about anything else in between exchanges. We arrived last August from our exchange in Portugal and Spain and almost immediately, we were receiving offers for the summer of 2010!!!

This is the time when we really wish we had more time and money to travel. Too many offers come our way, many from places we have not visited yet. We settle early on two offers: one in Amsterdam and one in Southern Italy. Then the fun of planning begins as well as the not so fun part of fishing for airfares. This year airfares have been higher than usual so landing a "good" deal has been challenging.

What is new this year...is that David and I will travel before James to spend time visiting friends in France. We will be staying mainly in Paris although we will visit friends in Mayenne and hopefully travel throughout Normandy. Although 3 weeks seems like a long time it never really is. We will make do with what we have! We realize we are very fortunate to be able to take this month long (and this case almost two months) trips every summer. So we should not complain but we will any way!

One of the challenging things about coordinating two exchanges is the logistics of it. James will fly to Paris to meet us and will spend a couple of days there. Coincidentally we will be in Paris for the last stage of the Tour de France so James, being and avid cycler, wants to attend. We will take the train to Amsterdam and spend a week there. Afterwards we will fly into Rome for the second exchange. The family is from Arezzo but will fly to Chicago from Rome. We will fetch their car then travel to their house. There are many details to be worked but I will not go into them.

Getting ready for a 7 week trip is lots of work! I have 10 days left and still have so much to do. I will try to post more often and add more pictures this time.