Exciting news!

08 June 2017

We are flying to Europe tomorrow evening!

When I say ‘we’, I mean me and my dear friends Reggie and Richard. They had asked me a month or two ago, when they were booking their flights, whether I felt like an overseas adventure. Well, of course I did!

At first I thought they meant that I would be tucked into an airmail envelope again and shipped off on my own to meet new friends on the far side of the world. As you may recall, traveling by airmail takes a long, long time, particularly if you are departing from the southern tip of Africa. The Post Office in South Africa has been on strike on-and-off for a few years, and they ran out of stamps, would you believe it, in the months before Christmas last year! As a result, Reggie has been very nervous about sending me off by airmail, in case I get lost or abducted or misplaced…

So I was delighted, when Reggie sat me down and said, “I realise that you have had cabin fever for a while, Flat Kathy. I know how much you love traveling and visiting new countries and meeting new people. I was wondering whether you felt like flying to Europe with us. We would all be traveling together. Are you up to it?”

“What a question! Of course I am!” I replied, beaming from ear to ear.

We share a cup of tea with toasted hot cross buns – perfect for reading through two exciting travel guides, and using sticky post-it notes to mark the places we want to visit

Over the last weeks, I have been helping my friends to plan our trip. We have been to various bookshops and have come home with two wonderful books, jam-packed with helpful information. And we have spent countless hours on the internet, reading up on all the places we might want to visit and trying to identify places where we could stay for a night or two.

Oh! There is just soo much to see and do! How do you choose?!

We have prepared a rough itinerary of our route, but as I told Reggie, “It is good not to plan for every single minute of the day. You need to be flexible too. Perhaps the weather is not good in one place, so you end up going somewhere else. Or perhaps the place you wanted to go to is closed, or there are too many people and you can’t get in. Or perhaps you drive past a sign that looks interesting, so you make a detour to somewhere unexpected. And when you speak to the locals, you must ask them what places they like to visit…”

“Wow, Flat Kathy,” said Reggie, looking at me in surprise. “That is very insightful. I can tell that you are an experienced traveler.”

So are you curious to hear where we are going? Did you figure it out from the books on the chair?