Why I Don’t Normally Travel Alone or My Italian Adventure

Today marks the first day (well, almost – officially, my cross-state travel begins tomorrow) of my independent travelling experience. While I have travelled to many exotic (Sri Lanka) and not so exotic (Buffalo, NY anyone) places in my life, most of the time these adventures were with someone – be it my mom, a friend, a boyfriend, a husband. Even in those instances where I made the journey alone, someone was always waiting for me at my destination. For the first time, I am venturing out on my own. I am cheating a little bit to be fair. I will be going to a conference and staying with friends. And, yes, I am going to a fabulous wedding as well. But for all intents and purposes, I will be trying to find everything by myself and will, most likely, get desperately lost.

The trip itinerary looks as following. Feel free to laugh at my valiant hopes for finishing my conference presentation at the airport in Amsterdam.

Date	Location	Details
July 23	Land in Rome; Drive to Bled	Finish presentation in Amsterdam Start editing the chapter section related to that 7 hour journey with tolls and 11 hours without tolls
July 24	Morning in Bled – Bled Island Bled Castle; Drive to Ljubljana in the afternoon; check into hotel and get ready for presentation (40 minutes with tolls on roads, and 1.5 hours with no tolls)	1.5 hour journey between Bled and Ljubljana Present paper today
July 25	Conference	Conference Write Defining corruption, Intro and Conclusion sections Enter data
July 26	Conference; Drive from Ljubljana to Trieste	1 hour journey between Trieste and Ljubljana
July 27	Take train to Venice	Venice – 2 hour trip on train
July 28	Venice-Trieste	Take train to Trieste; Spend night in Trieste
July 29	Trieste	Trieste
July 30	Trieste-Pescara	8 hour journey to Pescara; Rehearsal dinner
July 31	Pescara - wedding	Wedding
August 1	Leave at 1am to get to airport	Flying and Amsterdam

As I am not really keen on surprises, I have armed myself to the teeth with maps, reservation vouchers, telephone numbers and an hour-by-hour itinerary. While I do tend to be somewhat organised, this is ridiculous even by my standards. In fact, I haven't even started my vacation and I am already stressing out. Before I go and stuff some more summer clothes into my tiny carry-on, I would like to share my completely insane plan of driving from Rome to Lake Bled... through the night. I tried to be cheeky and looked at non-toll road options. I've decided that it was worth to take the toll roads if it was going to save me 7 hours of night-time journeying. If all goes to plan, I should be in Bled for a sunrise over the Bled Island... and not in a ditch somewhere in rural Italy.