it's about time

I've been a little (a lot) lax about updating this blog lately. I could blame it on being busy, or a rough mental health patch, or any number of things, but the truth is I just haven't had anything much to say (and a bit of everything else too).

Airfares are booked and paid for, accommodation in each of the three cities is booked and the deposits paid, I haven't tracked down my birth certificate yet so I haven't done my new passport application (we have a public holiday tomorrow - no more excuses on that one!), and I can't start booking the trains just yet. So I'm just in a bit of a holding pattern on the travel front.

There have been a few travel-related purchases however. I bought a Pacsafe bag (the CitySafe 200):

Actually, I bought the CitySafe 100 first, and decided it wasn't big enough, but kept it for Miss Tizz to use.

They're both in basic black, and have wire mesh through the fabric and cables through the strap to prevent slashing, plenty of zips and Velcro and clips to make it difficult for sneaky hands to get in, and are worn cross-body to make snatching them difficult.

And now I'm going to stop reading horror stories about pickpockets.

I also bought a travel wallet from the same place, to keep passports and tickets together.

And a universal adaptor (in cobalt blue), so we can plug things in in both the UK and Europe. And two sets of packing cubes (in pink and blue).

And books: Eyewitness Travel Guides to Paris, London and Rome. And pocket phrasebooks in French and Italian.

And a netbook. I've been thinking about this for a while, and last week was a 'spend up big' week, and I now have an ASUS netbook with an Atom N450 processor (I think that's the terminology), a six-cell battery (so it should do about 10-11 hours on one charge), and a 250GB hard drive. So far the kids have used it more than me. The plan is to use it to Skype home while we're away, load information and bookmark relevant websites, and store photos as we go.

And it's very shiny :)