11 sleeps to go!

Almost everything is organised and now we're just waiting to go...oh yeah, we have to wait for our mortgage refinance to come through...it's only three weeks later than expected, but it'll happen, it'll happen!

We leave Adelaide at 7.30 am on Friday 17 August. If, after 35 hours of hell we have still not killed each other, we will arrive in London at around 8.30 am on 18 August. My sister Amy will meet us at the airport and take us to our accommodation (thank god) and we'll probably spend the rest of that day wandering the streets of London looking like zombies.

The following day is Amy's birthday and we'll go to her place for a BBQ. She has some other typical tourist type activities planned for us for the next few days, and we have some other friends to catch up with, but nothing is set in stone. After four nights in London we're getting a train to Edinburgh where we'll be doing plenty of Fringe type activities and meeting George's dad there to see the military tattoo.

After three days in Edinburgh we're going to hire a car and drive to Ladykirk, where George's ancestors are from, and then down to Leeds, where my dad was born. We're going to find the house my dad was born in, take the requisite photo, then drop the car off and get a train back to London.

On Sunday 26 August we're going to the Reading Music Festival (for free thanks to Amy!), which will be headlined by the Smashing Pumpkins, George's all time favourite band. To say he's wetting his pants with excitement is an understatement.

After London we'll be heading over to Paris for four days, where we'll do all the usual touristy stuff and try to walk for several hours a day to make up for all the great food we'll be eating! Other possible activities will include a day tour to Champagne and a show at the Moulin Rouge. After this we'll meet up with George's dad again and hop on the train to Bordeaux for three days of wine tasting fun.

After Bordeaux we head down to San Sebastian in Spain for two days, then onto Zaragoza for another two days, followed by three days in Barcelona. From there George's dad goes home and we fly to Rome for four days. We hope to do a day trip to Pompeii or the Amalfi Coast or something similar while we're there. Then we go on to Florence, where we'll do a one day cycling tour through Tuscany, including wine and olive oil tasting and plenty of food. After three days in Florence we head to Venice where we will hopefully be staying in an apartment and cooking our own meals in an effort to save a bit of money for another three days.

From Venice we travel to Salzburg, Sound of Music country, for two days, followed by another two days in Vienna, where we'll see a performance at the Spanish Riding School. Then we go onto Prague for lots of cheap beer and dumplings. And as if three days of drinking beer in Prague wasn't enough, we then go to Munich for three days during the Oktoberfest, where we'll be staying 100 metres from the biggest beer garden in Europe!

We then go onto Berlin for three days, then we head for our final stop in Europe in Amsterdam for three days, where we'll go to see Anne Frank's house. After this we'll probably be quite glad to fly out and spend our last five days relaxing in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam before coming back to Adelaide.

For more detail about the places we're visiting, check out our calendar.

This is going to be the longest week and a half ever...