A twenty year adventure and more

Well this happened quickly! Here we are a week away from departure, and I am a bit overwhelmed with what is left to do (happily, most of it is just tucking in our work for our time away, and getting the last bits of travel related necessities organized).

We are lucky to live in a somewhat tiny home (400sq ft) for much of the year, while using a modest but comfortable home in town as a glorified storage locker. Unfortunately the tiny home has to be closed up for the winter as it is built roughshod cottage style on cinder blocks, and the floor and blocks don’t like the frost (the cabin moves like a bowl of jelly when the frost comes and goes, but seems to be happy enough standing year after year with little more than cracked drywall joints).

This does mean however, that we will be moving home a month early, so everything from the past six months of residence needs to be cleared out of the tiny home, and relocated to our house in Town. Then the tiny home also needs to be winterized (pipes drained, food removed, power off and etc). It’s a job, but doable in the few days we have left.

I have to pack myself and the kids as well, but that should be reasonably easy assuming our backpacks are a suitable size… Eeek. Lastly I plan to get a European data plan, and figure out how to add that onto my cell phone (EU plan is about 50 Euro for 28 days of almost unlimited voice, text and data vs 16$CAD per day if we use data roaming with our home plan. Seems like a no brainer. I debated on if we would need our phones, but the reality is a strong yes. Train tickets, walking directions, touristy stuff (at this point we only have formal plans for a walk up ticket to the second story of the Eiffel Tower – 674 steps, no problem – the Louvre and the castle Versailles) is all based off of a cell phone with e-tickets and the like, so it seems just as easy to get a plan… I hope.

There are lots of other small things to do, like put our “Canada” patches on our backpacks. I got these beauties for a song on the Black Maple Trading Co website. They have a slew of great vintage Canadiana items (including CBC and Hockey Night in Canada gear), and they were delivered fast! I had planned to get small Canada Flag patches, but try to find one on the internet that is correct! Hey world: our leaf is a Sugar Maple, NOT a Red Maple! Yeesh! Arboriculture noobs.

But largely the plan is pretty basic, and we booked almost every place with a washer/dryer (or an all-in-one as Europe is prone to do), so we should be good enough with a few socks, undies, pants and shirts right? ….Let’s see what happens next.