Being that I have officially entered my last week in London, for now, I start to take note of every time I do something and it’s the last time I’m doing it. Of course, that’s not official as nobody knows what the future holds, so these “lasts” are the “known lasts”. As in, this morning was the last Sunday I’ll wake up in London. There’s a good chance that there will be another Sunday that I wake up in London, but this is the last time for the foreseeable future. Pretty deep, I know.

I have been informed that at 2pm on Saturday, the “key warden” will be here to boot me out of the place. It sounds a bit scary, the key warden, but it will signify a changeover, ending my run as a resident of London and beginning my holiday as a Chicagoan touring Europe. It’s tough to say whether I considered myself to be a “Chicagoan temporarily living in London” or a “Londoner who normally lives in Chicago”. Given how quickly things felt like home here, I’ll go with the latter.

Fortunately I’ve had a great run of weather for my last days in London. Most days have been sun soaked and in the low 80’s. Hopefully it continues. On the flip side, I’m bummed to admit that I spent my last Saturday night in London in my flat, with a developing chest cold. I was out and about for the majority of the day, seeing the National Gallery (fascinating art gallery and free), hiking through parks, and shopping for some additional luggage, so I spent the late evening resting, researching, and packing. The tricky thing is that I have to do two types of packing over the next couple of days, packing for 4 weeks of travelling and packing to return home. The former requires being pretty lean, since I’ll be moving from place to place quite often. I picked up another backpack yesterday, one more suitable for a 4 week trip.

Getting down to exactly what I should pack has been difficult, as I’ve never done a trip like this. I’m pretty sure I’ll have laundry access in a couple places. I leave on Saturday and believe I’ll be able to do laundry in Budapest, which I arrive in on the following Friday and stay until Sunday. Then I believe I will have the same option to clean my clothes in the first two days I’m in Chania, a week after Budapest. So realistically, I just need a week’s worth of clean clothes. Given that it’s going to be quite warm most places I go, it seems easy to throw together some t-shirts and shorts and not take up so much space. After that, I’ve debated the other items.

I’ve gone back and forth on whether I should bring my laptop. The arguments for are that it gives me the opportunity to document things on the train and a great place to organize my travel plans. Along with that, I can catch a dvd during some of the longer rides and, on some trains that have wireless, stay in touch with things over email. I did pick up a newer laptop before I came out here, so it’s pretty compact and easy to carry along. The case against bringing it includes the fact that most Euro cities and places I’ll be staying will have connections, more packing room, no risk of it being stolen, and it might just generally be nice to not be all that connected for a month.

Anyway, I’m sure the details of my packing are thrilling, so I’ll move on to my travels. I think I’ve figured out what to do with my 54 hours between when I get into Venice early one morning and need to fly from Milan to Athens at noon two days later. Ideally I wanted to get up to Como, a nice lakeside town about an hour north of Milan. However, it would take about 4 hours to get there from Venice and no trains leave for Milan early enough in the morning to get me to my flight on time. I had been advised by many people not to bother with either Venice or Milan. Venice is “packed with tourists this time of year, and that combined with the heat makes it rough” and Milan is “just a regular city, nothing too special”. Many people suggested a bunch of other options, like Como, Verona, Florence, and a host of others. So what am I going with? A night in Venice and a night in Milan, of course.

I really did research every option and they all had some drawbacks, whether it be long train rides, expensive housing, or the inability to catch a train early enough to Milan to catch my flight. Then I came across a great looking hostel in Venice, which is actually on an island away from the main areas of Venice. Since I get in so early in the morning, I can see the city while most of the tourists are sleeping, then take a boat out to the hostel. The island sounds nice and peaceful, and after 4 consecutive days of travelling, sounds more appealing than training to Florence for a couple of hours. The next afternoon, I’ll take the quick train ride over to Milan where I’ve found a couple good options of somewhere to stay. It’s a Friday night in a major city, so I’m sure there’s plenty to do. Plus it gives me the opportunity to be properly rested before my flight to Athens, since I’m only going to have a few hours to see the sights around Athens, before heading to Piraeus to catch my overnight boat down to Chania.

Anyway, I’m off to enjoy my last Sunday of market wandering before heading off to Regents Park, Primrose Hill, or Greenwich for my last Sunday afternoon of reading a book in one of London’s many amazing parks.