Sorting the Next Few Months

Dave and I are usually really, really bad about making plans. OK, we can decide to eat at X restaurant tonight, or I can make a reservation for next week at Y place I want to try. But ask us to plan something for next month, or two months out, and we both run and cover our heads with pillows while whimpering like babies. We’re just not planners. The past few years we have been taking two-week trips around the time of our birthdays/anniversary and usually you plans trips like that in advance, right? Not us. We plan them about three weeks before we leave, and usually in a panic because we realize We. Have. No. Time! This makes my current goal of sorting our spring/summer plans quite hard. 

This July will be Dave’s 5th anniversary of living in London, and in June I will hit the four-year mark. An aside – WOW! Time flies. Because of Dave being here five years we have to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain, an immigration status that will move us from a five-year visa (four year for me) to being able to live in the UK permanently assuming we don’t up and leave for a year at a time. It also means Dave doesn’t have to be employed for us to live here. There are quite a few steps to get that status and I plan to go through them here in the future. But all this matters because it means we can’t travel for up to a month between mid-June to mid-July. That may not sound terrible, oh NO! A whole month without leaving London, the HORROR, but it does mean that we are trying to fit in some trips before we get sequestered here (or possibly get kicked out if the ILR doesn’t go through, you never know!). Add to that we are trying to use BA miles to book these trips which means all this must be done pronto; those BA mileage tickets disappear faster than a piece of sausage dropped on the floor in front of Riley.

Since Dave and I travelled through Europe way back in the day, and have lived and travelled here for quite a few years we’re (very fortunate to be) searching to find places to go for the weekend. And again, the mileage tickets. So I am trying my best to plan, strategize, deal with immigration requirements, get over my aversion to making plans, pestering Dave, pestering some more, and pouring over maps, guidebooks, blogs, websites and magazines to decide where to go. Living in London can be this strange alternate universe at times, when it really hits you that a weekend trip can involve Italy! Or Spain! Or France! Or Greece! It still boggles my mind when we have a free weekend and decide to “just go to Paris.” I mean how is that possible, to “just” go to Paris? We’re trying to take advantage of all the places we can travel, places easy and worthwhile for a weekend, and hopefully, maybe, fingers crossed, free on BA.

We do have one big trip planned, a much needed trip to the beach. I am so sick of the cold. Sorry, but my California roots start showing right about now, when the cold just drags on and on and oooooonnnnnnnnn. And the gray. Oh, the gray.  So we’re heading to Thailand (via Singapore) and I couldn’t be more excited. I just saw an old NYT article that said planning vacations brings more pleasure than the actual vacation. The article said the six or seven weeks leading up to a vacation are more beneficial than the after effects, since the glow fades quickly when you get back to real life. So I am basking in the glow of our upcoming trip to Thailand. The sun, the hot temps, the food, the beach, the sand. Yippie!

Aside from Thailand, I’ve got Florence and Germany on the books, along with a quick trip back to the states. I’m also considering a little jaunt over to Amsterdam to see the tulips. And that’s our spring and early summer so far. But I am working on more. I’m not sure where we’ll go, I’m not sure when, but I do know we still have a lot of Europe to see. And I am going to start booking things without waiting for Dave to approve. Next thing he knows we’ll be spending a weekend in Moldova. Assuming BA flies there.