Nearly holiday time

John and I have been known to leave the booking of a holiday to the last minute but this is ridiculous. Our annual leave starts 8 October for two weeks and it is now 22 September. Anyway, we've been trying to decide for weeks and weeks where to go - Athens and the Florida Keys were in the frame but due to work being done at the Parthenon, that would be a waste of time. I felt that there wasn't enough for me to do at the Keys and it was a bit far to travel for just a week. So, after looking at a few other places in Europe, we decided on Sicily. Italy has been a bit of an attraction to me since going to Rome and Venice and Sicily has a nice mix of beaches, mountains, volcanos, old towns and historical sites. The climate is ok in October and the average temperature should be around 70 degrees.

As always we booked a flight online and found a very cheap one with Ryanair from Stanstead to Palermo, although once you add on the taxes and baggage check-in fee, it bumped it up a bit but still a hell of a lot cheaper than all the other prices we'd seen. After paying, I nearly had heart failure though. A message popped up in red on the screen saying that we needed to declare our passport details if travelling to Spain, the Canary Islands or the Balearics. John and I looked at each other and gasped, thinking that maybe we'd just booked to fly to a Palermo in Spain! To some people that wouldn't have been a disaster but for us, a beach holiday in Spain is not our idea of fun. We quickly checked and double checked that PMO was Palermo in Sicily and also googled to check there was no Palermo in Spain. Phew! Panic over.

So we will be away from 9th - 17th October and we're now sorting out somewhere to stay for the first two nights and also car hire. The rest we will leave until we get there. We detest package holidays and like to make our own way around. I've already ordered a travel guide from Amazon which is vital, and once received I can roughly plan our itenarary.

This holiday is badly needed as I've had a rough year with my back problems, and I'm really looking forward to meeting the mafia (only kidding)!! lol