The final countdown

Hello all visitors and welcome to our France 2009 travel blog.

With only 9 days to go before we leave, here is the first post on our blog. As we have no idea of how to do it, this is an experiment.

It was a big decision to make to move to another country for 6 months. Lots of things we value have to be sacrificed to do it. We will miss our friends and family, particularly seeing our grandchildren regularly at a time when they are growing up so quickly. But we hope the experiences we will have, and the people we will meet, will make it worthwhile and enrich our lives for many years to come.

We have been planning this trip for many years and have now booked most of our accommodation, organised car leases and paid various fares, etc. Fran has finished work and we are now doing the final things on our "to do" list, like selling the Commodore, getting some Euros, advising various people that we're leaving the country, and preparing to hand over our house to Kylie and Tom for 6 months. All that's left is to pack our bags (plus get a haircut, plus a new toothbrush, a hat, some sox and some swimmers, plus throw out the mouldy stuff in the fridge, plus swap over the car insurance, plus get some new tyres for Bobbie, plus get a netbook computer, plus check the locks for the suitcases, plus .... Yikes!. Are there only 9 days left?).

We always enjoy hearing of our friends' travel experiences and, in the past, have been pretty good at sending back emails about our own experience when we go overseas. This time, we thought that a blog would be a better option as you can choose to read it, or not, as you wish. However, we will use it to document our trip and hope that it will be interesting to others as well. So we hope to keep it up to date and recount expreiences that you will find interesting and, perhaps, inspiring.

Of course, we also hope to get feedback and to hear back from our friends and family about their doings and news as I'm sure we are going to miss everyone.

Now, let's see whether this experiment worked.

Fran and Adrian