There are 2 types of people...

Nigella Lawson once said in her tv program, "There are 2 types of people: those that make lists and those that manage to get through life" or at least it was something like that. This was when my love for Nigella was cemented because she is so right. She carried on to say that she was definitely the former and I am too.

My Jim is quite the opposite to me and is definitely a winger, he somehow manages to get through life without planning anything. He finds my planning instinct (which is obviously a result of my job where organising myself and others is key) very weird and totally out of control.

For The Trip, I have understandably made a number of lists. I have never flown long haul (so I am planning in detail what to take on the plane) and I have never been travelling or on holiday for longer than 2 weeks. Jim on the other hand has done both, frequently, and usually just turns up! Very different to my approach.

I thought I'd document the lists/spreadsheets I've made to see if anyone thought I was going over the top:

1. Places to visit in Oz - to decide where to go.
2. Airlines that travel to Australia.
3. Seat width, height and leg room, inflight meal, cost and reviews for each airline.
4. Flight times.
5. Numbers 4 and 5 for internal flights (of which there are 6)
6. Hotels: cost, location, facilities and ratings for each town we visit.
7. Cost from 7 different discount hotel websites for the chosen hotels.
8. Transfers from the airports.
9. Things to do in each town.
10. Restaurants in each town which had good reviews, nice looking food and at a reasonable cost.
11. Breakfast cafes.

12. Things to take on the plane to make long haul travel easier.
13. Clothes to take (sub-sectioned by weather, time of day and activity) and which items pair together to make a full outift (including co-ordinating bag and shoes).
14. Things to buy.
15. Toiletries needed (and those supplied by the hotel)
16. iPod updates.
17. Snacks to take.
18. Things to do at home to before we go eg washing, tidying up etc.
19. People to notify (eg mobile operator, banks)
20. Remaining to-do list before we go.
21. A list of the lists so as to not forget anything.

Now I don't think that's excessive, do you?

Image from Sydney on Sunday

Giving blogging another go

So I thought I'd give this blogging thing a go ... again.

A slight confession - I actually had a blog before. It was a long time ago and I can't even remember the name of it. It was about my latest diet of the time and the blog, very much like most of my diets, had great intentions initially but after a few days petered out to nothing.

I've decided to try keeping a blog again because we're off to Australia in a few weeks and I want to capture everything so that I can look back in future years and remember what an amazing time we had. This is our holiday of a lifetime, we're unlikely to ever have a holiday like this again and I've been researching and planning it in one way or another for about a year!

I've also noticed that my memory is rubbish. I can hardly remember any of my school years, nothing from my childhood and even my uni time is pretty vague! Now I'm not sure if it's just an age thing or whether I've just never really tried to remember but I want to make sure I keep a record of our trip.

So this blog will begin around the planning of the trip - and there's been a lot of that, the holiday itself and then hopefully I'll catch the writing bug and will carry on after we get back.
I want to write about things I love. Now that is mainly food. I follow Nigella Lawson on Twitter (if you don't follow her I highly recommend it @nigella_lawson) and I love the way she posts pictures of the food she's cooked. I also found a wonderful blog on breakfast cafes in Sydney as part of my research. The writer and her family visit a different place for breakfast every Sunday and write a review with pictures, Sydney on Sunday. It was great.

Now Jim and I cannot go out for breakfast every Sunday. Firstly because we don't have the money, secondly because we don't live in a city so local options are limited, thirdly because most Sundays we don't get out of our PJs until lunch time but mainly because our weight watchers leader would not approve! But I like the idea of taking pictures and describing the food we eat, so who knows, I might stick with it in some fashion.

So, please be patient with me whilst I get into this and waffle on a bit!