I cannot believe that it is more than half way through the month of May! That means it is 7 months to the day before we leave on this wonderful trip.
It is getting really exciting but there is so much to do. This past week I completed a couple of tasks taking those few steps closer to having a wonderful holiday in December 2015.
As I have mentioned before, after having been to Northern Norway to see the Aurora Borealis, we will be working our way south through Europe to Southern Spain’s Costa del Sol for a week ‘to warm up’. Well, I booked a week at the Marina del Sol in Fuengirola. My sister and I stayed in this very popular part of Spain in 2002 and I loved it so much I could not miss the opportunity of visiting there again. It will be a first time for Trevor and it will be great fun to show him what I remember and also to see some places we did not get to see due to my breaking my leg while on a tour to Ronda. Of course, Pat and I decided that it was not broken and we had a wonderful time going from Spain all the way north to Scotland.
The second step was to confirm with Bjarni, the Tour Operator in Norway, that the deposit for our trip will be paid this coming week. Once that is done then it is definitely going to happen. Over the past 3 months there have been over 25 e-mails between Bjarni and myself and, as it goes with e-mails, replying back & forth, a lot of repetition gets included so last night I copied the content of the e-mails into a MS Word file in the Northern Lights Folder that I created right at the start. I have dated each one and used different colour, size and format fonts. This has been printed out and placed into my 2-ring binder so that I have all the information in one place.
I read an interesting article the other day. Its main theme was to inform the readers on how to create a signature on to a PDF file without having to print it out, sign the paper copy, scan it back into the computer and then return to whomever had requested it. The author was bemoaning the fact that the use of computers has not brought about the paperless society it has always boasted it would. Instead, there seems to be just as much, if not more, paper used. I have to admit I am one of those who adds to that ‘use of the forests’. I am much more comfortable with pen and paper and being able to write down and mark out whatever it is that I am working with but, on the other hand, I am also an avid recycler wherever and whenever possible.
The next step in the preparation for our holiday is the one of education. We want to learn as much as we can about the different towns, cities and countries we will be visiting. Then there is also a not very exciting but very important part ot preparation and that is to ensure that all our own paperwork and financial records are up to date and accessible in case anything happens to us and someone else has to ‘pick up the pieces’.
