Have you ever done a house exchange? Well imagine staging your house to put is up for sale, and then imagine selling your house and having to move. Because getting a house ready for a house exchange is like having to stage a house and then move all in one. My one week "vacation" in between my China vacation and Italy vacation was consumed pretty much 100% with helping Sonya get her house ready for the Italians to move in - fixing stuff, painting, assembling and general lugging. When you do a house exchange you are acting as a hotelier (essentially) at one end, so don't underestimate the amount of work involved!
We had a nice trip today (or today and yesterday, I should say - it took us about 24 hours to get here, including a 7 hour layover in Rome). It was an uneventful set of flights - Victoria/Toronto/Rome/Pisa, with the usual poor airplane food. We had a long layover in Rome so we took a train downtown, had a nice lunch, and went for a short walk. We had a few adventures with our taxi driver trying to find our house, but found it eventually and we're settling in tonight. I'll post pictures tomorrow, it is a very nice little villa in the Tuscan hills!
I'm suffering a little sticker shock after 3 months in China. We picked up a phone card for 78 Euros (15 for the SIM card, 50 pre-paid and some tax) - for the same price my phone was covered for 3 months in China, and that included the cost of my Chinese phone! Lunch for 3 was 50 Euros, which would have fed me for almost a week in China. We have a nice kitchen so will be cooking some of our own meals, but we also have trips planned to Venice, Florence, Spain et al, so it will be interesting to compare our Europe budget for 2 months with what I spent in China.
I will post some pictures tomorrow! Jet lag is catching up with me tonight :-S
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