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Wednesday, October 5, 2011

I loathe monasteries and castles

Berlin - Reichstag
I do things much more slowly and carefully these days because I have been responsible for some colossal cock ups  - some of which I have admitted to in my blogs – and a couple of which were so awful that I have never confessed to anyone - simply because they were so FUBAR as to defy the imagination. 

I will only say that it is not possible to leave a place before you have arrived in it - and to try to do so can be expensive in terms of air fares and pre-paid hotels - and that if you get the checking out date of your hotel wrong you may find your belongings in Glad bags in the hotel cellar when you try to return to your room late at night.

So now I do spreadsheets and work slowly and carefully  through the issues – which does not always guarantee success because Cate gives me some significant challenges.

These will usually involve tacking a seemingly impossible task onto an already difficult problem – but the trap will not be sprung until I am well into the planning stages and she will say – ‘and by the way I want to go to the Benedictine Monastery in Plob’.

Plob of course will be nowhere near where we are going so I will need to develop a cunning plan to get us to Plob and back on track – bearing in mind that there are planes, trains and automobiles already involved – and that bookings have already been made.

And when we get to the Benedictine Monastery at Plob it will look – to me – like every other Benedictine Monastery I have ever seen in my life – and I have seen possibly 10,000 – just as every castle looks much the same to me – but Cate will savour every morsel of it and will take lots of pictures – and that’s all that really matters. I loathe castles.
Kirkenes Snow Hotel

However – Norway has proved to particularly tricky as we are taking a series of planes, trains and then a boat up the coast to Kirkenes where it will be very dark and where we will be staying overnight in the Snow Hotel.

We may also see the Northern Lights which we missed out on last year in Lapland. We will be much further North than we were last year – which hardly seems possible – but I have checked Google maps – which would not lie about something like this. 

7 comments:

  1. I'm so jealous!!
    The snow hotel???
    Awesome.
    The northern lights???
    Awesome.
    I think you're right - it's coz we come from a sizzly part of the world.

    No 1 on my travel wish list.

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  2. So ... Plob ... "Plob"? ... Plob doesn't appear to be near anywhere, and about 5 miles east and 4 south of Nowhere.

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  3. I think you'd better include some padding for your ribs when you're in that Snow Hotel, ice is slippery. Hopefully you will see those lights, sounds fantastic.

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  4. freefalling: Although every time we are in the freezing bits I think we are crazy.

    esbboston: Actually it's quite near Blik -just below Blok

    Sandy: I am planning on being well padded all over.

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  5. The Fifth Law of Thermodynamics states that if you are going to die an icky death where there should have been mo' therms, be sure to take along a fifth of your favorite alcoholic beverage to ease the pain and make sense of your vacation choice to calm that chattering inner voice. (Hah! I just now noticed that I ended my law with the three letters 'ice')

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  6. I want to go! Cate and I will take photos, you can stay at the hotel making Hot Toddies.

    I hope you get to see the Northern Lights. They were faint when I was in Iceland, but still stunning.

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  7. esbboston: I agree; See blog

    Smedette: You can come. You can buy the wine on the boat.

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