Planning the trip

OK, let's see how this blog thing works.

We're getting ready to travel!

Pat and I are in the early stages of planning for a trip to Italy.  We have sought the help of Becky Donaldson at Aurora Travel to help with the planning ... booking flights and excursions, and finding  housing.  Right now we have tickets on Continental to Rome and back from Milan, and we have booked apartments in Rome and Sienna for the first three weeks and hotels in Venice and Lake Como to finish our trip.  She is also booking us on a few tours.
Much of the time that we are there we will be freelancing...walking, taking the local transportation, and driving to wherever we find attractive.  For sure we will be visiting the usual tourist attractions, but we also want to feel free to wander about and see the real Italy and the real Italians.  We have been practicing our Italian, and we think we can get along OK, as long as we have a good reference book, and I look forward to talking with the natives.
Today we investigated converting the electrical power, which is 220 volts in Italy, to 110 volts that is needed to charge our computer and cameras.  The nice part is that the cameras and Pat's hair dryer will work just fine on 220 with just a plug adapter.  However, it looks like we will have to seek some professional help with the computer.  All of the conversion equipment we found so far says not to use with electronic equipment.
We also experimented with luggage.  We each took out enough clothes for seven days to see how it would fit in our suitcases.  It looks like we will be able to fit everything we think we will need into luggage we now have.  More later.