Whirlwind med - flashpacking - Mark and Jess

Well Im one of those people who beleives half the fun of doing something is planning it. I never stick to the plans I make but I still enjoy writing lists and schedules and planning routes and rerouting routes and generally annoying the people around me.

So the trip is planned for May 08. Ive just started getting the outline sorted.

The purpose of the trip is to attend my brother's wedding just outside of London in some castle.  The wedding is on May 30th 08.

This trip is also so that my boyfriend will return to the UK to see his family - who he hasnt seen in 3.5 years.

So to make sure that we see all his family and get enough wedding action we will spend half of our month long trip in and around London. With a side trip to the Isle of Wight to see Grandad.

Since we are Australians and the other side of the world is such a long and expensive plane flight away we decided while we were there we may as well use up all our leave from work - and all the space on our credit cards and fit in Spain, the south of France and Italy in the last two weeks of our holdiay.

Our budget is questionable - at this stage we dont have any money but we are both optimists.  We dont need room service or newspapers every morning but the idea of sharing a room with a bunch of strangers would really freak me out. Plus when travelling to romantic countries with my lover, single sex dorms wont really cut it.

So im thinking we stay somewhere quaint and clean. With fresh sheets, our own room with ensuite,  thats in the very centre of town on a quiet side street with a beautiful view and a marvelously cheap cafe just downstairs that serves the best breakfast in the city.  somewhere thats like this but under 50 euros a night.

I said i was an optimist.

So we are thinking - fly to london from perth., While in london stay in Croyden with Marks Dad, pop to the Ilse to stay with his grandad. Pop to oxford for the wedding.

then say adios to the family and fly (one one of those rediculously cheap £2 flights) to barcelona. Then Fly/Train to Nice - from where we will see cannes and Monaco and Mark promises he will only spend one hour in the casino. From nice we will train to Rome - possibly stopping at one of those beautiful little italian villages along the way.

I want to see a city and a village in each country, just so that even though we only have 5 days in each country we do get a pretty good idea of what that side of the world is like.

And i want to see a bullfight

and i want to eat tapas from a tapas bar

and i want to go to montserrat even though i dont care what colour the virgin is

and i want to look out of the window of a train and be so amazed at how unaustralian everything is that i cant breathe.

I want to stand on a mountain

I want to  stand on one of the most famous and beautiful coasts in the world and smile smugly because i know home is better...

I want to see really old stuff, and really modern stuff, andreally artistic stuff and ......yeah