Thursday Thoughts Part 1:- our travel plans

Did I tell you we are off overseas at the end of this month? Well we are... we leave here on Tuesday 25th and fly out of Australia on Thursday 27th. We have given ourselves a day extra in case something goes wrong on our drive to Brisbane. Its 900km and we regularly do it in a day and rarely have we had anything go wrong... but, since we are retired and have the time we have decided to have the extra day just in case. So... we leave in 12 days time.

We fly to Japan first off for a week to visit with Sho, our host son from 2004. He lived with us for a year and this will be our 3rd visit to see him. This time we get to meet his wife and baby daughter so its very special. We will also get to visit with his parents and perhaps see some of his siblings.

From Japan we fly to Frankfurt (via Dubai and a 5 hour lay over at 3 AM... blergh) and from there catch a train to Prague where we will be joining our week long Barge Bike tour. Then its back to Germany (by train) and 4 days with our host daughter from 2006 Lena and then train to Amsterdam for a long weekend. From there we will fly to Norway and have a week with our host son Joergen (from 2005) and will attend his wedding whilst we are there. Then we fly to Scotland, hire a car and have 12 days driving about UK (well Scotland and England) catching up with some of Fixit Guy's cousins and his aunty Joyce. We arrive back in Australia on the 12th September. 

We won't be coming straight home though. We have volunteered to help out at a conference in Brisbane - serving on the Handmade With Love stall for Our Rainbow House at the Australian Pricipals Association conference. Our group has been making lots of items out of the fabric from Zambia especially for the conference. 

The Brisbane Comic Con is only a week after that - the one that I am hoping to share a stall with my son's partner Earthyyu of Earthyyu Drawstuff  I say hoping to, as we have applied but have to be selected and we don't hear until the day we leave Emerald... so we are assuming we are in and I will take all the stuff down with me. Its too far to come home and then drive back down for the conference so we will stay down. (well I will anyway. Fixit Guy is still debating)

Then my daughter is going to be heading down to Sydney Comic Con the following week. She is going to be driving down for it and I have decided to go with her. It will give me a chance to see my mum again (she turns 95 the day we fly out of the UK) and also my sister who has been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. It will also give Fangirl company on the drive and I will be her off sider at the convention. 

So I won't be home till early October... and then we are planning a trip down to Melbourne in November to catch up with our son down there for his 30th birthday.....

Its all very exciting and hard to get my head around.