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A "Trip of a Lifetime" all starts Friday!

Friday afternoon we leave work early and go to Spokane. Saturday we're on our way to Southern California and stay 2 nights with Sandy. Sunday is an abbreviated Thanksgiving with Sandy and her husband. She's doing all the cooking and Sean and his wife are coming up for the day from San Diego.
Monday the trip really begins! 11 hour flight from San Fransisco gets us in Frankfurt on Tuesday morning. When there Sandy has us on an itinerary of mostly 2 nights in several cities across the country, with 3 nights in Berlin. Back to Frankfurt and 10 hours to get back.

Sandy says she thinks I'll be watching Germany through a viewfinder as we travel, I don't think so, but it also isn't likely I'd be back there anytime soon so I'm planning on lots of photos and video. Along that goal it works out perfect that Google recently has made it possible to add 20 GB of photo storage to their already allocated 1 GB on their Picasa Web Albums for only $5.00 a year. So I signed up since I have almost 1 GB on-line already but now I can really post the trip photos now! When we get back and I'm posting the new photos, those readers that have the link can check, but I'll also send out the invites.

In other pre-trip prep, we got international "SIM cards" and 'unlocked' our older Motorola "Razr" phones to be able to use them while in Germany. Saves a bunch of money over the per call cost even with a AT&T Travel plan. These cards are supposed to never expire and work almost all over the world, so should we make the trip to Australia I'd like to make we're already covered for that trip as far as cell phones go.
Stacy and I are both down to a manageable load and that one carry on each goal. We're taking a checked bag to Sandy's and back so we can take clothes for the much warmer weather, compared to here, of Southern Calif. Stacy and I both have extra batteries for our cameras and I have the ability to take well over 2,500 photos with my Nikon. We've got the plug adapters for the different voltages of Europe and made sure all the chargers we're taking cover all the voltages. I got a long life battery for the new camcorder too. We got the itinerary from Sandy, the tour books Stacy's been studying, we've watched the videos, on DVD and on-line, of things to see and how to speak the language. Although from people we know that have been there and from the stuff we saw, that apparently isn't going to be a big deal anymore as many people speak English and the signs are in English and German.

So I guess we're as ready as we're going to be!

I guess we'll write again on the 'flip side' of this trip! We might be able drop a note while there, we'll see how it goes. Tad

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