quattro giorni prima (four days before)

The worst case...if you are going to the moon for a couple of weeks what is the worst case? It's what you have to think about in a trip like this - you plan to be back right after the vacation, but with both spouses travelling by air, multiple hops, through international terminals and to countries where there are incidences of strife or terrorism, the risk factor is higher and you really have to make sure you have everything covered. Is your will up to date? Do you even have a will? If not, then you should...or at least a very clear letter of intent about what you want to do about the stuff and the people (and in our case, cats) you leave behind. If you don't have time to meet a lawyer before you go, there are some self-service or self-counsel resources out there. I like theSelf Counsel Press materials because they focus on Canadian Law and related resources.

Insurance is another thing that you need to check on for the second worse case: getting sick or injured while travelling. In our case, the college's provider Johnson Insurance offers a really inexpensive package to employees called MEDOC travel insurance. I think it is only available for employee groups they manage, but there are other options out there. One of the best private rates we saw was TD Bank Travel insurance via Meloche Monnex. It is hard to believe just how expensive it is to get medical treatment in a foreign country, and some countries are just absolutely insane. Makes us appreciate how great our country is: the Canadian Medicare program is the envy of most countries in this world.

Trip cancellation and Trip interruption is also a nuisance that is worth looking into covering. In some cases your Visa or MasterCard credit cards may cover this - if you paid for the trip on your cards. In our case we used Aeroplan points for the main ticket coverage. But since the travel fees and taxes were about the same as the retail price of the tickets, we are expecting that our credit cards will cover some portion of interruption should we need to cut it short.

Well, I am going to get past the worst case stuff now and think about the BEST case - four more sleeps!

Buona notte e sogni d'oro!