Three more sleeps!

It's just 3 more sleeps until we jet off. Getting very, very excited now.

Bags packed, car to the airport booked, now to get through the weekend and make it to the airport.

I'll do my best to post as soon as we arrive in Italy, but not knowing what the internet access will be like in Sicily, I might be offline until we hit Positano on September 12th, so Linda, if you're reading this, that is my excuse! :)

Six more sleeps

Less than a week to go and the hiccups begin. We are due to spend 3 days in Lipari, one of the Aeolian Islands, and were planning on taking the hydrofoil from the port in Cefalu, which is only about 20 minutes from where we're staying. However, the company that runs the hydrofoils, Ustica Lines, sent me an email a couple of days ago advising that the port in Cefalu had been closed. Apparently there were some problems for larger boats there. So, how to get to Lipari now? We could get ourselves to Palermo and take the boat from there, but that adds 90 minutes to the journey before we board, and then turns the 2 hour boat trip to a 4 hour one. We could leave from Milazzo, again about 90 minutes to get to, but a very quick crossing and a timetable of up to 8 departures, a much better option. Until we get to the transfer problem, how to get to Milazzo? A one way transfer by car was quoted at 250Euro, making it an expensive journey. In fact costing more than our accommodation on the island for the whole stay!

I decided to suck it up and rent a car, drive to Milazzo. All sorted. Then. Ustica Lines sent me another email, the port in Cefalu has been reopened! Arggggghhhhhhhh!!!!! Back to plan A :)

The rest of this week will be spent packing, organising, packing, organising and then some more packing. Add to that, I have a wedding cake due on Sunday and an early birthday cake for Adam as well, seeing as he was overseas last year, and we're racking off to Italy this year, it will be two years running we haven't been able to wish him a Happy Birthday. Photos of that cake to come later.

We're on countdown, 3 weeks to go!

So is my final week working with Planet Cake. I have a couple of days with my good friend Handi, and then I'm finishing with a weekend class teaching the classic Planet Cake design, the madhatter.

I've lost count of how many of these cakes I've made since 2006, but I always love them.

The one pictured here was designed by Planet Cake designer Antony Bullimore, who is an enormously gifted artist.

I am both sad and happy at the same time. Sad because I've had so much fun working with Planet Cake and discovered that I love teaching, so I will miss that enormously, but on the other hand I am so looking forward to some of the projects David and I have been talking about for years. The first thing to do though is REALLY clean my house, which has been sorely neglected for the past couple of years and is in dire need of a seriously good de-cluttering and spring cleaning. But that will have to wait until November :)

Next week will be ALL about Italy and I will be boring you with packing details......ho-hum!

Four weeks to go

Pictured here is my dashingly handsome Papa and his beautiful sister, Maria.

I had a small visit at Zia Maria's just the other night and she is such a delightful lady. So funny and full of interesting stories about Italy.

She is very well travelled and had some wonderful suggestions for us, all of which I have now forgotten! But I will get in contact with her and pick her brain a little more before we leave.

We are now all very excited to have finally hit August, even though we have to wait until the 30th to leave, it's now under a month to go!

Today I booked us a tour in Milan so that D'arcy can see The Last Supper, she was very happy about it. I was having some serious difficulties getting hold of tickets up until now, so booking a tour seemed like the best way to go. We will catch a train from Florence in the morning and join the tour in the afternoon. We will get to see La Scala as well as the beautiful Duomo in Milan, which I think is one of the loveliest in Italy.