Preparation

So this is the final weekend before Jarrett and I leave for our two-week European vacation. For those of you who don't know -- though I'm sure you've ALL heard us talking about it -- we're spending a week in Southern France and a week in Tuscany. We're meeting our best friends, Kate and Tim, at the airport in Nice, will pick up our rental car, and drive to St. Remy, where we will spend a week here with them. Then Jarrett and I will drop Tim and Kate back at the airport and continue to make our way to San Gimignano, Italy, and will spend our remaining week here, which conveniently lies between Florence and Siena, both of which we'll visit. I also hope to make it to Pisa... maybe just a quick stop on our way into Italy. You know, I've at least got to see the leaning tower in person.

So we've spent months and months dreaming about our first encounter with Europe... we've attempted to learn some Italian (and are still working on that), we've agonized over what camera equipment we should buy and take on the trip (twice, I might add -- once before the burglary, and then again afterward), replaced our stolen Nano iPod with a 30 GB video iPod (because, you know, it's a long flight -- we've got to at least be able to listen to good tunes and watch a few Lost episodes), discussed the must-sees and the balance between seeing those and spending a fair amount of time being as lazy as humanly possible, and have pondered over what lies ahead in terms of our gastronomical explorations. And now, after all of this, we're only six days away from jumping on that plane... we're working a half-day Friday and heading to the airport via MARTA around 4:30. I think our flight leaves around 8:00 p.m. and is a nonstop flight to Nice, where we arrive around 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning, Nice time.

So we'll spend this weekend running last-minute errands, doing a trial packing (we're attempting to fit a week's worth of clothes for both of us into one suitcase... we'll do laundry at the gite in St. Remy), and trying to do some work from home to get us caught up at our respective jobs before we ditch them all for two weeks (sadly, though, I can't get connected to the stupid network from here at the moment!).

Anyway, this is where we'll try to keep all of you who are actually interested up to date on our adventures, hopefully including photos as well.

Arrivederci per ora.