Mediterranean Sea Ya

 Wow. That was terrible. I won’t be offended if you close this window immediately.

Le sigh. 

What can I say. I’m down to the wire here, hence my lack of effort.

 When you plan a big trip, or any exciting event really, you usually have a long period of delicious agony to endure before you actually get to it. Sometimes it’s months, sometimes it’s a whole year, but whatever it is, the length always, always, no matter what seems doubled, nay tripled. Quadrupled. The time is INFINITE.  

 Except this time.

 Oh em gee, how in the hell am I leaving on Saturday for THREE WEEKS?

I am so indescribably (mostly because I’m not that good of a writer) excited for this trip, but I don’t actually believe that I’m going. I haven’t had to endure enough waiting period hardship to feel like it’s really happening. John and I have been talking about this particular trip for awhile, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that tickets were actually booked, and it’s not really real until that happens. He left for Germany yesterday, so I guess that officially gets the ball rolling . . . either that or he’s been deported, which would not be totally unlikely.

I’m semi-freaking out because I don’t feel I’ve done enough prep work. There are a lot of people who are perfectly fine with just going somewhere and doing things by the seat of their pants but I, unfortunately, am not one of these people. I don’t like things planned to a T, but I do need basic structure and enough information before I can relax. Luckily we have a semi-loose itinerary and have not worried about booking any hotels so that we can be flexible when it comes to where we stop along our drive. Inconveniently, one thing I’ve found throughout my traveling is that I am not a fan of guidebooks. That doesn’t mean that I’m against them, no, no. I would LOVE one book that I could just buy and be done with everything, but I haven’t found one brand that is encompassing of everything I need. So what does this mean?

It means that I put it upon myself to make my very own guidebook.

Now that I’ve become officially more OCD (ahem, German) than John you can understand my reiseangst. And I only have four more days to get this sucker completed to 100% perfection if I want to avoid worrying my whole flight. Hey, I never claimed to be sane.  

Luckily, we both agreed that this trip should laidback: taking in the beautiful scenery, eating lots of delicious Mediterranean food, and drinking lots of wine. Museums and sites aren’t necessarily the priority. I realize that planning out a laidback vacation is seemingly contradictory, but we are super serious about our hedonism, and so for the past few weeks I’ve been scouring all sorts of resources for the best places to do those things at the lowest prices possible.

My strategy looks something like this in most of these situations:  grab a huge stack of books & magazines and a big coffee at Barnes & Noble and type notes into my phone (yeah, I’m one of those), crouch over the keyboard and do copious internet research, and reach out to my network (which is Manhattanese for “friends”), and put everything into one big Word document. John also printed out a ton of Google maps so we’ve saved the $20 in legitimate maps necessary for such a road trip. Hey, that’s at minimum $20 more that we can spend on jamon. Totally worth it.

The problem is, I have A LOT left to do. I agree, this isn’t the worst task in the world to have, so I’m not complaining so much as fretting that we’ll be in some little town in Provence and won’t have any idea what to do first. Aren’t your knees shaking in terror just thinking of that horrifying picture?

Yeah, you’re right, I know.  Boo hoo. So this will probably be the last post before I leave, but I’m taking a SUPER AMAZING, ULTRA-CHIC, ENORMOUSLY SEXY, UNBELIEVABLY PERFECT IN EVERY WAY Flip (hey, Flip, hot stuff, you wanna sponsor my next trip?) along to document all of the hi-jinks that are sure to ensue along the way. My hope is to do a bit of quick video/photo blogging throughout the trip; for example, I’m banking on our little European car breaking down on the side of the road at some point because hey, it happens in most movies when an American is driving through Europe, so stay tuned for that one.

And if anyone has any tips that should be added to my silly little “guidebook”, please comment away! We’ll be in Berlin, Madrid, Lisbon, the Algarve, Andalucia & the Costa del Sol, Gibraltar, Tangier, Valencia, Barcelona, Provence & the Cote d’Azur, all the way to San Remo.

Maybe I should start drinking now. See you on the Continent!