Preface: Kathy and I are doing another Semester at Sea voyage. It’s a study abroad program for undergraduate students. Instead of them living in one country for a semester, they visit a bunch of countries. Every day on the ship is classes. Every day in port is exploration. The program is run by the Institute for Shipboard Education (https://www.semesteratsea.org/. This time Kathy won’t be teaching. She will be part of the leadership team. During previous voyages I provided IT support. This time I an solely traveling as a companion.
Welcome. So, December 18th. (HBD Georgia!). We embark in Naples Jan 2nd. But we didn’t want to travel too close to that date. Can’t afford to miss the ship eh? SO we decided to go a week ahead and … … do some skiing in the Dolomites. So, packing for a 1 week ski trip followed by a 4 month voyage. They recommend we bring less than we think we’ll need. We will be renting ski equipment, so that lightens the load considerably.
So packing, and putting the condo to sleep. Cars, motorcycles, mail, refrigerator, plants. Turn off TV package and internet. Reprogram thermostats. Put timers on lights.
And then, there’s all the new stuff you have to deal with in these covid times.
The rules for travel are complicated, and they change, and they are different for each country, and different sources say different things. I believe for travel to Italy we need either a PCR test w/i 72 hours of arrival, OR an antigen test w/i 24 hours of arriving (it was a 48 hour window until this week). We have scheduled proctored take-home antigen tests for Sunday morning. This may get us to Italy if everything goes on schedule. Kathy had a PCR test yesterday. That may get her there if the results come in time. We may need to get an additional test in the Frankfurt airport.
And, there is the EU Passenger Locator Form. Pretty complicated and confusing.
Then the airlines (United and Lufthansa for this trip) want you to upload these documents, along with passport info) to their sites. And of course we need our CDC vaccination cards. Which are accepted in Europe in place of their digital certificate.
I have “test packed” my bags twice and weighed them. A “backpack” duffle for mostly ski stuff, and a new Patagonia rolling bag for everything else, and a sling bag for laptops and travel papers. I will bring my old macbookpro and a brand-spankin new one too. We are very dependent on these for planning our in-country time.
I bought a new phone. A Google Pixel 4A. It is supposed to do all the protocols and frequencies, so should work in most places. I also bought a second phone and plan to buy a sim card (Vodafone?) in Italy. I’ll use that for most calls over there.
I will pack my ski jacket rather than wear it for travel. I find it a pain to drag a heavy coat through airports. BTV => EWR => FRA => VCE. I can dig it out when we land in Venice. Newark to Frankfurt is our overnight flight. Board, put on eye mask, and go directly to sleep. Get as much sleep as possible.
Clothes mostly, also bag of soaps etc, bag of electronics, bag of toiletries with the very valuable bottles of Pepto, bag of card games, travel guides for the 13 countries we will be visiting.
