Pre-Europe #2: The books

Knocking another item off the preparation list: books.

Basically - one of the most prevalent pieces of advice we've been receiving from friends is that before we leave, we should really research ahead of time what events, sights, sounds and flavours we actually want to experience in each of the major city stops we make. Most people have been saying that when they just floated along with the Contiki version of the tour at every avenue, they really missed "actually" visiting most things that they wanted to. Sightseeing tours consisted more of walking up to the outside of monuments/places and "seeing" them - but never going inside or actually exploring them.

So - knowing that, Heather finally convinced me that we needed to buy a traveller's book for the area to at least find a few key things that we would plan on actually "experiencing" on our own, regardless of what the tour was doing. Once at Indigo - it took us awhile to settle on which book would be best for us - and the one we thought we wanted didn't even seem to exist (Rick Steves' version of Western Europe, which apparently, he hasn't done...)- but finally settled on "Let's Go: Western Europe". While not being an extensive descriptor, it does cover every city we're visiting and gives us a good base of things we might want to do in each plaee, as well as some great tips on food, cheap activities and things we shouldn't miss.

Besides that - Heather also reminded me that during our only one-week vacation in Cuba - I managed to finish reading two full novels, most of which occurred on our flights - so I might as well pick up reading material while we were at the bookstore. I had a little bit of a quandry at this junction as there weren't any books that were on my "need to read" list right now, and being out of distance range to call Mandy, and at a loss of a new cell number for Daena (who are both staunch sources of good reads), i had to rely heavily on book covers and inserts - very rarely a good way to pick a book.

In then end - I picked up the following three titles (there's was a Buy 3, Get 1 Free sale) after much humming and hawing and going through a ton of choices that I never really felt good about - but yeah, they are: The God of Small Things, By Arundhati Roy, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, By Michael Chabon and finally The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, By Mark Haddon. Here's to hoping they last me through the trip and that I don't fall victim to the dreaded possibility of the "unreadable" book. I've only had two or three of those in my lifetime so far - but the thought of reaching the next one still fills me with fear.

Pre-Europe #1: The buying begins

So we've got less than two weeks before we leave for our grand European adventure so all the purchases we have to make, that I was hoping to waylay, and magically forget about, are starting to pile up and need attention.

So today - we began with some of the fun stuff. Heather found a 75-300mm zoom lens on sale at Black's for our Canon digital SLR, so after work I ran to the super store at Dundas and Yonge and snatched it up. It was the only one left, and the only difference between it and the new version was that it didn't self-clean itself... whoop-de-doo.

While there - I also spent much time debating over a travel tripod and a monopod. In the end - I went with the monopod only because I found no use in the table-top size tripods and no matter how small the full-size travel tripods were, they still weren't small enough to fit comfortably in my backpack. At least with the monopod, I have stability AND I can manage to fit it in diagonally in my backpack. Plus - this particular monopod was only $25 - even though the much smaller, crappier and unstable Manfroto monopod was friggin' $84!

(Heather and I have already started playing with the new lens and monopod to get used to taking pictures quickly, as well as how things will go fi we shoot RAW for the entire trip. She's not liking that our numbers of pictures severely go down, but I LOVE what you can do to RAW to fix things that just aren't possible when the pic is already compressed.)

Oh! I guess I should backtrack a bit on our spending spree! Really - our trip shopping actually started two weeks ago when we first visited MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) to look at bags - but that day we only managed to pick up the camera case. Then last week we went and spent a fair amount of time during a lunch break to pick out my main carry-on backpack that has tons of room and space for my computer, as well as two small "purse" back-packs for each of us to take on small day trips and anywhere that I don't want to carry a big load with me. We're hoping that we really don't end up having to carry all too much during the day - though we are both worried about the security of our belongings in some parts, and/or the ability to go back and forth from the bus/hotels, etc.

Anywho - back to earlier today. When I finished with the monopod and lens - I tried finding a case for the lens and was denied! Blacks' selection was not up to par - but I talked to Mike later tonight and he said I just need to go to the downtown Henry's and there'll be something for me for sure. I want the soft-but-firm qualities of Lowe-Pro - but hopefully not get stuck with anything that's too bulky. Lowe-Pro continually fails to recognize that most of their carrying cases/bags are 99% of the time thrown into yet ANOTHER bag and are not carried around just on their own - the straps are not comfortable and they don't hold enough stuff...

Lastly - I went to the inside-the-Eaton-Centre Black's afterwards (cause the other location was closing) to pick up a lens cleaning pack, and then to best Buy to check out memory card prices. Compact Flash cards are ridiculously and non-sensically WAY more expensive than any other memory card which really pisses me off. There's no reason for it and I promptly did NOT buy any more memory. I'm hoping the cards we have will do, and I'll just have to download every night before we head to bed to make sure that we're set for the next day.

And that was the end of the day's shopping. We hope to get something bought and put away on our list each day since we have so few left. I can't believe we leave so soon!