We are in the home stretch for our overseas trip. Most things are booked and I think the only outstanding concern is lodgings along Hadrian’s Wall. I’m sure we’ll figure out something with Keith’s input.

This weekend our house sitter moves in. this will give the sitter the chance to learn the house (read cat) routines and learn where everything is.

I also wanted to ensure the sitter had a good video collection on hand so I spent some time this week moving all out movies into iTunes with the help of Handbreak and MetaX. It was kind of fun and now our AppleTV displays them all. I was somewhat worried about leaving the movies in their old location (a hard drive attached to the hacked AppleTV) as sometime the connection is lost and I wouldn’t be there to fix it.

I’ve got our iPad ready to go for the trip as well. We have the camera connection kit and the international adapter set. So we should have connectivity in most places and the ability to post, e-mail, and upload some photos.

As for the trip itself we fly into Edinburgh on the 7th. Keith will be picking us up at the airport. We get to stay with Keith and Alice (and their new grandson and granddogs!) just south of Edinburgh for about four days. We hope to hit some local castles (which I think will really appeal to Aleksander) and Edinburgh. We hope to walk some of the country side as well and I may even try the walk up Ben Nevis. Then it is off to walk three days along Hadrian’s Wall. This is where I’m nervous about lodgings. We left it too late and now I had to leave it in Keith’s hands to book places as he will have a much better idea of the area than I do. We end off with a night in Newcastle-upon-Tyne for a night before we fly out to London, where we will immediately take a train to Oxford.

We have four days in Oxford and I hope to walk the old section of the city (looking for inspector Morse/Lewis landmarks), have tea with a cousin of a friend’s landlady, and hopefully stop in the Wychwood Brewery. I also hope to go punting, hit a few riverside pubs and walk the wilds a bit.

Then we train to London for a few nights where we have little plans. We will play this more by ear. Sandy is looking forward to the Tate and the Imperial War Museum and I’m looking forward to perhaps seeing the British Library. There is also a map in the library that Sandy wants to see. We will, of course, do the 221BN Baker street visit because there is some sort of law about that. I think Kieran is hoping to get a sense of the London Vibe and to meet some friends with which he is pen pals. Hmm, is it really pen pals anymore? It seems even e-mail is too much of a chore of the teens and IM is what it is about. IM Pals? Bleh.

From London we take a train through the Chunnel to Hamburg and then a local train to Schwerin where we will settle in for a visit with Kelly and Klaus and explore for seven days. I’m sure that it’ll be nice to slow things down after the whirlwind travel of the two previous weeks. Finally we will train to Berlin and spend three days exploring what we missed on our last visit. I may even meet up with Danny and Birgit! I haven’t seen them since walking the Camino in Spain and seeing them would be great!

Counting the days to our departure…