Preparations

What do you do when two good friends end up spending several months in one of the most beautiful and artistically rich cities of the world? Take them up on their offer to stay of course! No matter that their invitation may have come in a moment of weakness over far too many bottles of Jameson's irish whiskey and hours into the night. When you get even a whisper of such an opportunity you take it my friends. Oh yes, you take it and you run with it!

Or fly with it as the case may be. Having a father-in-law in England celebrating his 80th birthday, one year after undergoing a heart double by-pass, was a perfect reason for jumping the pond in the first place. And Ryanair flights from Stansted airport fly to Rome's Ciampino airport regularly and not expensively (darn well cheaply if you don't include the myriad of taxes). So the dates were set, the flights were booked, the friends were alerted, and now the fun begins.

Now, my idea of 'fun' might well be another person's idea of 'drudgery'. I was always taught that you get what you pay for, and the way to know what something is worth is to do a little research. Or quite a bit of reasearch. Or a whacking great deal of research. For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of travel is researching where I'm going and what I might find there. Once I've read, oh, about 10 or 20 books and searched through approximately 2,000 websites and online chat about a place, then I work out a rough itinerary. Usually dividing the days by neighbourhood and type of activity (not too many art museums in one day or I go bug-eyed and my husband goes on strike) works well.

But the best part is filing that itinerary away somewhere and letting serendipity enter the playing field. Even though a huge amount of time is saved by knowing roughly what to see and how to best to see it, it's always the unexpected things and little discoveries that make a trip go beyond mere knowledge of a place's history and geography. Knowledgable exploration. Well-read vanguard. Sciential discovery. Bring it, Rome!