Home again!

What a trip! For once I had a holiday I wanted to go on and on and on! None of this, "I'm ready to go home now". It surpassed all my dreams and expectations, leaving me thirsting for more. Roll on the next one.

Trying to work out how to add photos so you can all see why I loved it so much. Will be back when I work it out.

So we have a picture of steamy, sultry Singapore. This is the area known as Chinatown, lots of market stalls, pagoda temples etc. fascinating if you can resist all the demands to part with your dollars! Hubby haggled with a trader for a watch. Saved S$5! The Pagoda Temple was lovely. We had to remove our shoes to enter. I was perturbed by the way people showed little respect for the holy place. (Saw more examples of this in Rome later on.) Not easy to find a cup of tea, lol.

Then we have part of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. The palace is still standing but part of the chapel is in ruins. This palace is now only used in July when the Queen presents awards. It is a fascinating example of middle ages living, dark timberlined walls, heavy tapestries, etc.

Thirdly we have a fascinating, if strange little village called New Lanark. This was an old mill town, reconstructed by Robert Owen, as a project intended to create better living standards for the people, to provide education for their children etc. He had some strong beliefs and today this would be seen as a sort of cult, but he certainly did improve the lives of those who lived in the town he created. Lovely spot though.

English Stately Homes

After the sultry, steamy-ness of Singapore, the weather in England has been refreshing. Not quite summerish, more like Autumn or Spring, but enjoyable really. It has been really ideal for touring the gorgeous stately homes and castles. To date we have visited Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace, Whitby Abbey, Castle Howard, Chirk Castle and today was the turn of Chatsworth House, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. What a fabulous house it is, too, with the most amazing painted ceilings, sculptures and colossal chandeliers. The best one to date.

Just have to tell you this, though. I was in a public loo the other day and saw a notice saying: help us help the environment; use both sides of the sheets of paper. Well, I was trying to get my head around this one, and imagining trying to use both sides of a sheet of toilet paper, before deciding I would give this request the flick. I was told later that this notice actually refers to writing paper. My question, why then is it posted on the toilet wall??????????????????

Doing What I was Born to Do!

Wow, the Holiday Inn Atrium in Singapore is fabulous. 200 dollars a night including buffet brekky to die for and airport transfers. Fabulous accommodation. Chinatown is wonderful. Very colourful and vibrant. The Pagoda Temple was awesome and inspiring. Flight from Singapore to London was interesting. We were accompanied by 30 16 yr old Hormonal Catholic School girls on way home from sports tour of Oz. Made an interesting journey.

Picked up our hire car at Edinburgh Airport. Vauxhall Corsair. Very nice. Auchterarder is lovely. Allendale House was outstanding B&B. Edinburgh is a fabulous city filled with amazing architecture, and the Military Tattoo was awesome. I will definitely visit Scotland again.

The satnav is the best thing we ever bought. "Emily" is very patient when we make wrong turns. In fact I have decided I want to be Emily. My hubby does everything she tells him to!

Windermere was lovely but I was very weary so didn't make it to Wordsworth's home and Hilltop was closed so missed Beatrix Potter too. All more reason to return one day. Moved on to Whitby and was sad that the accom was not up to our usual standard. However we had two lovely days seeing Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay, and eating yummy fish and chips.

Visited Castle Howard near York on the way to family in Maltby. Yay! got to cuddle my grandsons for the first time in 16 months. Gorgeous! Grown so much.

Several daytrips over the next few days to Magna Centre in Sheffield, Clifton Park in Rotherham, Langold Lake in Notts. Visits to family members each day too. Exhausting but worth it. Arrrggghhh, I hve left my most important medication behind in Melbourne and need to see a doctor here to get a script. Hopefully I will still be alive and kicking later this week. If so I will come back online to continue this update and hopefully be able to post some photos. Bye for now...

Taking to the air.

This is it! We are actually doing this at last. Funny, I read my horoscope today, (I know, don't laugh) and it said "you are about to travel widely, which is what you were born to do." I laughed my head off. Yes, this is what I was born for and am going to fulfil that mission now. This is just the beginning. The diet has worked (9 kilos gone!!!), the legs are waxed, the eyebrows waxed and tinted, the hair is done, the nails are manicured, the cat is cared for (thanks Jac, Annette and Tommy!) and the bills are paid (well, next month's anyway) so we can lock the door behind us and just go. First stop Singapore. Yay!!! See you all there!!!

Taking to the air.

Taking to the air.

7 sleeps!

OMG, I can't believe it is only 1 week away. Just bought a laptop bag, only $19 in Kmart. Strong, and plenty of room for a few extra bits and pieces. Booked a 3 hour tour with Viator, to see the Vatican Museums, St Peters, the Cistene Chapel. Very reasonable, too at less than $90 for 2 of us. It is hard to believe we are actually going to be seeing these amazing structures and creations. Dreams are certainly coming true.

Another dream came true today, too. For many years I wanted to write a memoir of my father-in-law. He was a very interesting and eccentric man, who had the ability to frustrate and yet endear you at the same time. Fascinating. Well, I finally finished it and collected it from the printer today. It took much wheedling and threatening to get some of the family members to cough up their memories, and some never did, of course, but it was worth the hassle, and I am very happy with the end result. All 20 copies will be going into the bottom of the suitcase to be distributed among his children and grandchildren in England. I think they will be pleasantly surprised...

Of course, hubby and I will be travelling together most of the time but while in the UK, our son and daughter, pictured here, and their families will be joining us for the family reunion (s). It will be the first time we have all been in England at the same time since our son's wedding in 2002.

By the way, the necklace I am wearing belonged to my step-grandmother, who was given it by her husband over 70 years ago. It is Spanish and was bought during the Spanish Civil War. I feel privileged to be wearing it.

The clock is running down

Well, only 8 more sleeps! After nearly 5 years of dreaming, wishing, saving, planning and hoping, it is almost here! Gosh, there doesn't seem enough time to finish all the last minute jobs. There is so much to do when planning on being away from home for such a long time.

This week I have been tying up loose ends: medical checkups, transferring money between accounts, setting up the email accounts on the new laptop so we can keep in touch with reality while we are travelling; then there has been the last minute shopping, you know, tiny packets of tissues for the handbag and pocket, tiny bottle of hand sanitiser; socks and undies. Not to mention the cleaning. And another gong for my Simple Savings friends: acting on a hint I picked up on the website (see top of page) I contacted our pay TV supplier and asked if payments could be suspended and they agreed for a small fee; hubby did the same with his gym membership. I also discovered that if we change phone carriers (which we intended doing) we can ask them to suspend the service until we return, saving more money! All up about $450 saved in bill payments.

On top of all that I have been finishing my writing project, my father-in-law's memoirs. That went to the printer on Friday and is ready to be picked up tomorrow. That was the result of several years of frustration: waiting for family members to send their memories. Hah! Like waiting for paint to dry! Some followed through but most didn't, so much of it is my own memories of an interesting and eccentric man of whom I was alternately very fond, and very frustrated with. But it gives me great pleasure to know it is finally finished and I will be taking copies with me to the family in England.

Of course, the boogie man tried to scare me by getting into my head when I had a couple of angina attacks over the last two weeks. But I put paid to that. No one and nothing is stopping me from getting on that plane.

So now I have only to photocopy some travel documents and sort through them all in the folder to make sure all are present and correct; to pack the BIG bag; to email everyone and ask them NOT to email ME for the duration; have my legs waxed, my hair coloured and my nails made beautiful, and then I am set to go.

Am I really? Set to go? Seems surreal somehow...

Travel Insurance that doesn't insure you.

So the insurance company said no. They will cover me for my migraine, which I haven't had for 7 years! IF I pay an extra $55 premium. Really? Well don't bother. We will just have to go on faith and make do with the standard insurance cover. I have been really looking after myself recently, lots of long walks, eating very healthily, too, so I am thinking I am quite fit anyway. Who needs 'em.

The passports have arrived! Yay! Well, at least I think so as I had a card to pick up a registered package but was too late to get it today. Can't think it could be anything else.

I have always wanted to travel light. I made my mind up for this trip that we would take carry-on baggage only. A Simple Savings member (see above banner) gave me some tips and I did a practice run packing 7 outfits, all light clothing, undies, socks, PJ's and an evening outfit. Plus a pair of evening shoes. It was exactly 7k in weight. Woohoo! Then I did the same for my hubby. It worked really well. I decided I could manage the digital camera. my make up and toiletries and medication in my handbag, and he could take the video camera, his meds, and toiletries in a small backpack. Perfect! We would travel in jeans, jumper, walking shoes and jacket. I was so pleased with the results!

Then DH told me this week he wants to take his golf shoes and his gym gear! He also thinks we will need more clothing than I have allowed for. So he is insisting on taking a suitcase. Grrr... Now we will spend half our holiday standing around baggage carousels. I am so annoyed. I will get my own back, though! Haha! I will take everything now, so the case will be so heavy, he will be wishing we hadn't. Hmph...

Another cloud on the horizon. We had been told we were covered by Visa Gold Card for travel insurance. Yippee! More $$$ saved! But then we realised my pre-existing heart condition might not be covered. And after doing a check of the policy, we found it wasn't. So a phone call, an emailed form and the condition is being assessed as I write. One good thing is that both the UK and Italy have reciprocal agreements with Australia so they are not really a concern. However, Singapore hasn't, so there was the need to have the policy extended to include extra cover.

The Silver Lining in the Recession Cloud

When the recession first hit I panicked. It was the last thing I needed when I was trying to gather the dollars for the trip. Hubby being self employed didn't help as the trade dropped right off. However, I soon discovered that the recession being global was working in my favour. Suddenly the dollar went from being worth 45 British pence to 58, then 59, and even went over 61 pence at one stage. So I decided I would pay for as much as I could in advance. Much of the accommodation I booked, being B&B's didn't have card or Paypal facilities and preferred payment on arrival. So I researched the cost of admission into the myriad castles, stately homes and museums only to find their prices exorbitant. So I turned back to my fellow forum members at Simple Savings (see banner at top of page) and asked for their suggestions. It turned out I could purchase a card for each of us that would get us into almost every British Heritage site, and another advantage was that with the card you don't have to queue for tickets. Yay! When I went over the attractions that we would definitely be visiting I found the cost for the two of us was approaching $1,200! The GB Heritage pass was only $700 for two. So naturally I ordered them online. Then another Simple Savings member told me about the London Pass and London Transport card. These were purchased for around $240 all up, making another estimated saving of around $200 on the London attractions. This includes Thames river cruises to Windsor Castle plus entry; places like St Paul's Cathedral, Tower of London, all the museums, etc were included. Plus I was able to buy tickets for a tour of Buckingham Palace for only $12 each.

We were intending to stay in London for four days but accommodation in the city was prohibitive. That is until a Simple Savings member told me about the London Universities taking in visitors. I found accommodation at Imperial College for $100 a night for the two of us. This was half the cost of everywhere else I had tried. Plus it has its own cafes and restaurant, gym etc, which we can access. The gym is free.

The best saving due to the recession was car hire. Booking online directly with Hertz saved us a fortune. We were quoted less than 1000 pounds for 56 days hire, all inclusive. That is around $1,800. Booking a Brit Rail pass would be $1,300 each for 2 months access, and you still need to be able to get to the stations. Even a Navman GPS unit was only $120 bought from a UK website, complete with UK maps. (This was the $350 model, if bought here in Australia.) Hertz wanted $400 to hire one from them for 56 days! We will pay the $80 to download the Aussie maps when we return.

Everything I checked out was much cheaper than it would have been prior to the recession. So I was more than happy. The next thing to do was check out the currency exchange rate and we found we could get around 120 pounds more per $1000 than the same time a year earlier. This was going to make our holiday so much more affordable. It was even better when the Euro fell, too. Italy was looking really good!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder???

Sorry folks. I have had trouble logging in, had to change passwords twice, etc, etc. Anyway, sorted now so will be updating soon. Not right now though, as it is a bit late in the evening. Enough to say we have only 39 sleeps (who's counting?) now, so I will have to get busy to get this up to real time. Will be back tomorrow. Goodnight! And thanks for reading.

The REAL Trip of a Lifetime!

So it was decided we would still go to Italy. France will be on the itinerary for the next trip to Europe, possibly in 2012/13. I bought an Italian language CD from Aldi, cost $12. Hubby and I have had a couple of sessions with it but always end up in fits of giggles, at the mispronunciations we make. We will persevere.

Another dimension had been added to the plan. I had to include a visit to Oxford, or Banbury, to be precise, in order to meet up with my newly-found sister and her family. Yes, folks, I had discovered a whole family of people I had never met before and was dying to spend some time with them. I had been searching for my natural father for many years and had given up in the end. Then one day, late in 2008, my daughter was doing family tree research and decided to put out a request for information on the Trip Advisor notice board, of all places! She had seen there was a forum in the area in which I was born. Within two weeks she had emails asking why she was looking for the writer's father! This turned out to be only surviving daughter of my real father. The other two sisters had died, as had my Dad. It turned out my sister was living in the USA, along with 3 of her adult children, but has a son living in Banbury, Oxfordshire. There was also a niece and nephew from a deceased sister to meet with in Nottingham, which is the town where I was born.

After much shock, excitement, etc., my new sister agreed to travel to her son's home so we could meet up on my trip. This was now a huge priority for me and was really going to be perfect, as all my kids and grandkids would be in England at the same time, so we could have a full reunion. As she is now 72, I was worried about anything happening to my sister before we could meet and had decided that if she couldn't in fact make the journey I would do a side trip to Ohio to see here in her own home.

Life throws some biggies at you sometimes, and I now had a sister, brother-in-law, several nieces and nephews and their children to fit into my itinerary. This really was turning out to be the trip of a lifetime in more ways than one.

It's all set! We are going to Italy. I can hardly believe it. I did so want to see Paris, but have made a promise to myself I will be back in Europe in a few years, and nothing will stop me from visiting France then. And anyway, hubby now has his sights set on the Excavations tour beneath the streets of Rome, among other things while I am desperate to see Michaelangelo's ceiling in the Cistine chapel. Then another bubble bursts. After having talked us into changing our plans, hubby's brother decides to pull out. First he asked us to go to Spain with them, then changed that to Rome, now he had booked a cruise with some friends instead. Grrr...

Rome or Paris, how to choose?

Did I tell you I had booked in for French lessons? Close to where we live is a French restaurant in the Mont de Lancy estate. Here was where the classes were being held. I signed up for the term, $150 which included supper. What a blast it was! My daughter and her friend attended, too, and we had a ball. My schooldays French was a bit rusty but I was one of the handful who actually had any knowledge of the language. The restaurant owner served us French bubbly and platters of French cheeses and crackers during the break and it made for some very friendly chitchat. I learned how to ask for provisions in a French shop, and to buy a meal in a restaurant. It was one of the best things I have done and I was so looking forward to travelling to Paris and practicing my newly-learned phrases...

It was not to be. C'est la vie. When I went over what we wanted to do and how much we would be able to afford I had to decide between France and Italy. My first choice was Paris of course, but my hubby's brother in England told us that he and his wife had always wanted to visit Rome and would be happy to go with us. So, rather begrudgingly, I opted for Italy. We decided on 5 days in Rome, rather than the 3 in Paris and 3 in Rome we had initially hoped for. Early research of costs was rather daunting as it became pretty obvious Rome was not cheap! I was looking at a minimum $200 a night for accommodation, no breaky included. But then, as always, Simple Savings came to my rescue.

I had been reading travel threads on the forum and one was begun for members travelling to Italy. One or two were recommending an eco-friendly backpacker place in the heart of Rome, called the Beehive. At first I was uninterested as backpacking accommodation conjures up ghastly images of shared dorms, snoring in chorus and the smell of sweaty feet. However, after reading on I was assured this was not the case in this instance. There were double rooms with shared facilities, the owners were English speaking, and the costs were unbelievably low for Rome. I went to the website to check it out and was impressed. Clean, bright, decently furnished rooms with lovely gardens, an in-house cafe and best of all, close to Termini, Rome's main railway station. The final clincher was the cost, 80 Euros a night, or around $125. The only downside was they don't accept bookings any earlier than 6 months ahead and book out very quickly. But I knew I would be on the ball for that when the time came. Italy, here we come!!!!

Okay, so I needed to concentrate on hubby's early retirement. We don't have much superannuation as hubby is self employed and we had withdrawn mine in the 90's when you still could. We had a mortgage with supposedly 8 years to go, and not a lot in savings. DON'T touch the SAVINGS! No way was I going to use the money for the holiday! I started to look at subdividing again. We had played around with the idea of selling off half of our 26oo sqm a few years before but decided it was all too hard. But now it suddenly looked like it could be the answer to the dilemma. If we could sell that, it would clear the mortgage and one or two small debts and hubby could either retire or go part time.

I have always thought there must be a good reason why we bought this place, with the huge back yard that we do nothing with. Now I was beginning to realise it was all a part of the bigger picture. That extra area was ideal for someone to build a house on and it wouldn't really affect the sale of the house when we eventually move into something smaller. I mean, 1300 sqm is still a very good sized block, even in a semi-rural area. Many of the blocks around us had been carved up into 1000 sqm lots, so ours was still a fair size in comparison. It took me a while to convince hubby that it was a good idea but in the end he went along with it and we hired a surveyor for the job.

Were we mad, or what? In the middle of a recession we start spending money on surveyors, tree lopping, council fees and the like. But I knew in my heart it was right. The only trouble is, these things take time. Boy, do they ever. Now it was less than a year before our holiday was meant to be happening and we had all this going on. Hubby's joint and muscle pain, the recession slowing down the income, the sale of the block, and I still needed to get on with making all the holiday bookings. I was starting to get a tad nervous. Was hubby right? had I bitten off more than I could chew???

It is not easy to plan for something 5 years in advance. When I told family and friends in 2005 that we were going on this big holiday in 2010 they looked at me vaguely. Even my husband didn't take me seriously at first. In fact, when I talked about it and mentioned the projected costs he became worried I was overstepping the mark. But I ignored this and plodded on with my once a month shopping, petrol savings, shopping around for cheaper utilities providers and insurance policies. Anything that would increase the level of our savings. The growth was slow and sometimes wore me down. But I kept at it and over the next few years began to see some progress. I already had an itinerary in my head and knew what I was expecting from all this but then life began to get in the way.

Hubby's physical condition was not helping my plans. His busy working day doing manual labour was now beginning to affect his health. He was experiencing a lot of pain in his achilles tendon, his neck and in the tendons in his forearms. Our GP was prescribing more and more ant-inflammatories and other drugs to help him continue to work. I slowly began to see that it would be very difficult for him to continue to work full time until he reached retirement age. I knew I needed to work on a new plan, one that would enable my husband to retire at 60, in 2010. It was not going to be easy, I was giving myself only 2 or 3 years to pay off a mortgage that was scheduled to finish in 8. For a scary few months it looked as though my holiday plans might go all aglay as the poet once said, but I was having none of it. I could do both, I was sure I could. No-one else was though. Looked as though I was on my own with this...

So I knew I wasn't going to get to Antarctica this time, nor the Caribbean but I was determined to see as many of the places on my dream list as I could. The icebergs and sexy Jamaican men could wait! A stroll down the Champs Elysees watching the beautiful people of Paris and a wander around St Peters and the amazing Coliseum in Rome was every bit as exciting to me. So I set my sights on these beautiful cities, along with the excitement and history of London and Edinburgh. I could hardly believe this was really going to happen. I prayed that life wouldn't get in the way.

Now where will we get $15,000?

Before I could really get into researching fares, accommodation costs etc, I needed to convince myself and hubby this was not going to be a wasted exercise. So the calculators came out.

When I was working full time we just spent as we earned it. There were never any savings, nothing left at the end of each week. We had holidays every year, Whitsunday islands, Surfers Paradise, Tasmania and went back and forth to England a few times but mainly to be with sick or dying parents. When I gave up working after I became ill, holidays were more difficult to afford but we still managed to get away for long weekends down the Great Ocean Road. This new challenge was a tad bigger, though, and even I felt a bit daunted by the numbers.

I had already begun to put into practice some of the hints I had picked up as a member of Simple Savings. It started with the grocery shopping. I was spending around $150 a week for the two of us but by changing from weekly to monthly shopping I found I was saving quite a lot of money. No more making several trips a week to the supermarkets meant much less impulse buying. This also meant less driving so less money spent on petrol and less wear and tear on the car. Other tips I found useful were creating a stockpile so that eventually I would have enough food in the house so that I could just shop for specials and never have to pay full price for the things we used most. Within a few months I had cut my grocery bill in half and my petrol almost in half, too. Wow, the savings were enormous! Over a year this amounted to $3,750 saved on food and $750 on petrol. $4,500 saved just like that! The $34 I had spent on my Simple Savings membership was looking like the best investment I had ever made.

Once I realised this I knew we could do it. I had five years to save the money and at that rate it was definitely possible. We were on our way! Now to get down to some serious research...

I am a list writer, so it was a pleasure for me to sit down with pen and paper and make a list of all the places I wanted to visit and work out how many we could fit in to our 12 weeks. On the Simple Savings forum I had picked up a tip about making Scotland the arrival point in the UK, to avoid travelling up and down, thereby saving on travel costs. So I made Edinburgh our starting point and mentally clicked that this might be the opportunity to fulfill one of my dreams, to see the Edinburgh tattoo. I made a note on my check list. From there we would visit the Lake District and visit Beatrix Potter' house and the home of one of my favourite poets, William Wordsworth. The lakes scenery is among the best in the world, so this was a definite. From here across country, west to east to the coastal town of Whitby. I had visited here as a young child and had my first encounter with a real life seahorse (funny the things that stick in your head). The ancient cobbled tiny lanes and underground rooms in this town are amazing and resonate with its history of secrets and smugglers. Near to Whitby is the home of the TV show, Heartbeat, so I would visit there to take photos for all the fans at home.

From here we would head further into Yorkshire, which is the home of 4 of my sisters and Tom's brother and sister. We would make this our base, staying with my second youngest sister and put up our feet for a wee while. I also wanted to head across to Wales so I put this on my checklist as I know my second eldest sister is familiar with the area and might be able to go with me for a day or two. I knew hubby wanted to visit Germany with his eldest sister, too, so this could be an opportunity for him to go while I visit Wales.

London, Stonehenge, Bath, Devon and Cornwall were also added to the list and then I turned my thoughts to Europe.

I have always wanted to see Paris and Rome, so these were my obvious choices. I knew my daughter and her family had these two cities in their plans and thought maybe we could do at least one of them together. I decided I would learn the basics of the Italian language as I already had a smattering of French from school, so I put languages on my list.

I could see now that I was going to have to draw the line soon as this could turn into an exhausting experience and not the enjoyable one I wanted it to be. Hubby's brother had asked if we could accompany them on their annual visit to Spain, so I needed to include this somehow, too. By now I had my list of more than a dozen official stopping off points and knew there were many more than that with all the family members we wanted to catch up with. Plus the daytrips we would inevitably be doing along the way. So I put down the pen and turned to the computer to begin researching places and costs. This was the fun bit...

Where should we go, when should we go, and how the heck are we going to get there? Well, lots of talking, debating, arguing finally brought us to a decision. Our daughter's plan to visit UK and Europe in 2010 had a bit to do with it, as hubby wanted to be there when his UK brother and sisters met our granddaughters for the first time. Daughter had a 5 year plan (had to be put off once or twice because of other priorities) to get the 5 of them to Europe for a 6 week holiday. After a lot of thought I came to the conclusion we could make it our "Bigtrip". 2009 would be the year of our 40th wedding anniversary, (yep, we actually managed to stay together that long!) and hubby's 60th birthday. Then 2010 would see me turning 60, too. What better way to celebrate these huge milestones than with a nice long holiday.

So the decision was made in 2005. We would travel to Europe in 2010 for 3 months. Yes, 3 months. Next step was to work out the budget.

I have to say at this point that hubby was never really convinced it would happen. Especially when I told him we would need between $14,000 and $17,000 for the 12 weeks we would be away. He almost laughed at me. I almost laughed at me, too. How the heck was I going to do this? It was only 4 years since I had been seriously ill and since I had finished work. It had taken me to this point to begin getting the finances in order. Now I was expecting the tight budget to tighten itself into frugality of the first order! This was going to be fun...

It took me a few years to get into the swing of living on hubby's income. There were two credit cards to pay off and bad habits to break so I was very interested when on A Current Affair one night I saw Fiona Lippey on the launch of the Simple Savings website. (See my header for the web address.) Everything she talked about rang bells with me and I decided to check it out. At first I didn't want to pay the (back then) $34 membership but curiousity got the better of me in the end and I joined up. Within 2 years I had cut my grocery spend in half and had learned lots of other ways to cut the bills. Then I won $200 in one of the Simple Savings competitions and also won a few months free membership and suddenly my savings were starting to grow.

I stopped and looked at our new budget and new spending habits and for the first time I began to realise that travelling wasn't so impossible after all. I sat down and thought about all the places I wanted to see. I had lived most of my life in England but hadn't seen a lot of it, so that was one priority. France and italy came to mind, too, but the main draws were the Caribbean and (don't laugh!) Antarctica. I have dreams of icebergs and glaciers. Extremes, I know.

My late father-in-law used to tell me a tale of his trip to Jamaica. He had forged his date of birth and joined the merchant navy in his teens. The way he spoke about the island and its people had me dreaming again. Those stories had put the Caribbean firmly back on my itinerary.

Then my long-held desire to see Antarctica peaked about 7 years ago when a friend of ours made a 2 month long expedition. His videos held me in absolute awe. I came home that evening telling my hubby that was where I was going to go as soon as I had saved up the $10,000 I would need. He was not amused but didn't really take me seriously.

I had some decisions to make. Where to go first, and when...

The Crossroads.

So, now let's get down to it. In 2001 I suffered a heart attack. I nearly died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital but got there alive and was very blessed in the fact my friend was on duty that day and she signed off, telling the staff this was her friend and making sure I received the best drugs and treatment available that night. I lost 40% of my heart muscle and was a very sick girl for a while. However my life changed right then and there. It was one of those crossroads moments we all reach at some point. Some make good decisions for the rest of their lives, some don't. I was determined mine would be the best.

I had been a smoker on and off, mostly on, for 34 years. I had also worked all my life, often in stressful jobs and raised a family at the same time. I decided to quit smoking and quit work. To me, this was my wake up call and I was wide awake. No more smoking, or drinking coffee or clocking in and out. Instead I changed my lifestyle, ate much better, exercised more and became a full time wife and mum. It wasn't easy to adjust to one income and I will get to that later but I was determined to manage. Anyway, our income dropped by around $30,000 a year. And on top of that I had this huge desire. Not only had I woken up but the gypsy in me had been reawakened and this time was not about to be ignored. I began devising my plan.

I recently discovered that my father loved to travel, too, and in the 1950's, when not too many working class families enjoyed foreign holidays, he was cruising Eastern Europe and sunning himself in Spain. Is this where the gypsy gene comes from? I also remember when I was young that two of my mum's brothers were in the armed forces and when home on leave would bring me gifts, a leather purse, a watch with a velvet strap, all bought in the countries in which they had served. I would look at the gifts and try to imagine the countries of origin.

No wonder then, with this background, I had my itinerary all worked out in my head from the age of 10. Gosh, it has taken me a long time to finally get my act together and get this trip underway. Mind you, life did get in the way for a very long time but not any more...

When I was born I was taken from England to Ireland to live with my Gran. After 4 years I was back in England. Then every year after that Mum would take us back across the sea to visit Dublin. The journey wasn't luxurious, no first class for us! But I loved the train from Yorkshire to Liverpool or Holyhead and the sound of the wheels clacking along the rails would take me off into my own world. Our transport across the water was a hulking big ship from the B&I line and access from the quay was via a shaky old walkway, or gangway as it was known then. My God, I hated stepping onto that thing and looking over the sides of it into the murky harbour water. My fear of walking on swing bridges, pedestrian flyovers, even opencast metal stairways must originate in that experience. I know I would hold my breath as I struggled up it and would let out a hugely relieved sigh when at last my foot landed safely on the ship's deck.

You've all seen Titanic, right? It is even on my list of all-time favourite movies. Gotta love Jack, AKA Leonardo DiCaprio! Remember the barred entrance/exit between First Class and Steerage? It was real. Believe me. We had one, too. We had no steerage class, well not for the humans anyway, but the ship did carry cattle in it's hulk. We just had first and second. Yeah, great being defined as second class. At least today it is called economy! I would stand at the rail on the deck and could see through the bars along a carpeted passageway, where stewards in white shirts and red vests were carrying trays of food and drinks to the unseen passengers in First Class. Meanwhile we second-class citizens of open wooden Deckland were freezing and wet from the relentless lashing of the wonderfully bracing cold wet wind coming off the grey, rolling Irish Sea.

Sounds awful, doesn't it? Yet this is where my love for travel was born. As soon as I could persuade my mother I was old enough to take care of myself, I would spend the 8 hours travel time to Dublin wandering the deck, watching the couples smooching, listening to the duos and trios playing their Irish music on fiddles and guitars, steering clear of rolling drunks stinking of Irish whiskey, and gazing out over the black sea, loving the sight of the whitecaps on the waves and the silver sheen on the water from the moon's reflection. Yes, we always travelled overnight. Can you imagine a young girl being allowed to do that nowadays? Funnily enough, in all those overnight journeys, and there must have been at least 14 of them over the years, I was never in any danger. Well, not until much later, when I was about 16, but that's another story for another day which I may never tell anyway.

So this is where it all began. Looking through those segregation bars I was determined to one day be on the other side of them; that I would one day cruise the high seas and visit foreign lands with exotic sounding names. I had not even thought of flying as that was still outside my own experience but I had found the gypsy in me.

Beginning the journey.

We all have dreams. Some are unrealistic. Others unattainable. Most, I find, are possible. All need some effort to realise. This is what my blog is about: turning the dreams into reality. What is your dream? Or should that be dreams? Maybe you have many or maybe just one. Whatever your situation I hope you can get some inspiration from reading about my own dreams, my plans and my pro-active efforts to reach my own rainbow's end.

Dreams can be about many things: love, friendship, money, property, beauty, career, the list is endless. I have had many over the years but one has stayed with me throughout my (almost) 60 years. It is the dream of travel. The desire to travel the world, visit exotic destinations and see the wonders I have only read about has consumed me and is now my number one goal. Why now, after so many years? There is more than one answer to that question and all will be revealed as I visit this new place each day and reveal to you my dreams and my steps towards realising them.