posted on Friday, August 18, 2006 7:34 AM
by
Endie
I'm off
It's off to foreign climes for me. I leave, tomorrow, for a week in the sunshine of Umbria tomorrow (06.35 flight, so up at 03.35) and, with luck and a fair wind (as well as Johnny Terrorist keeping his head down for a day or two, and no 12-year-olds sneaking onto the flight or old women having nervous breakdowns and demanding to be taken to Cuba) I should, 24 hours from now, be somewhere north of Lake Trasimeno and nearing my destination.
I don't actually know precisely where that final destination is. I know that it's half a mile from Spedalicchio, near Umbertide, and I know my way there from memory. After that, I suppose I shall just have to search every place half a mile from the village until I find an empty one that looks a bit like the pictures.
While I love nearby Florence, Cortona, Perugia and the rest, I have been lucky enough to have been there before, and intend to spend a lot of time lazing by the villa's pool. I have stacks of books, a few worthy but most pulpy classic science fiction series that I have always meant to read, suggested by the Traveller Mailing List: Falkenberg's Legion, Honor Harrington, S.M.Stirling and Peter F. Hamilton. For once, I have little urge to broaden my mind. I am all about the relaxation.
This is the first of four weeks' of holidays I am taking between now and the end of the year: I prefer to delay my gratification with the best of them. So a month from now I'm off to Boston. Makes the journey home more bearable if you know it's only a few weeks until the next one. On that note, I am considering how practical a long weekend in Athens is at some point this winter. I have been trying to visit the great Imperial capitals of Europe, and I still have Athens, St Petersburg and Berlin to go. London was easy; Paris, Istanbul, Rome and Pella are all done. Madrid doesn't really count on the basis of underachieving, and Sweden was far too localised and fleeting in its dominance to assert a candidate, be it Stockholm or Sigtuna.