Hotel hunting

Currently watching a ski-doo skirt from snow patch to snow patch until it can make it to the sea ice. I'm trying to recall, but I think it's gotten a lot warmer, a lot quicker this year. It's funny, it feels like we went from -30 to 0 with very little time spent on temperatures in-between. The result has been the snow taking quite the beating, at least down where we live. We live in a low lying part of town, which tends to be a few degrees warmer than some of the higher areas. It means the snow disappears here quicker than other places. Although I have to say, there's no danger of the sea ice breaking up anytime in the next couple of weeks. It's still pretty solid looking and there's no lack of people going out. It's also no problem to spot the people around town who have been out on the land a lot....they're the ones who are very, very tanned.

Cathy's off to scrap booking shortly, so I might grab my camera and the truck and take a zip around town. Assuming giant potholes don't eat me.

As for the slight gap in blogging, most of the time has been spent scouring the Internet looking for places to stay in Italy. We're got two travel guides, plus we've been using Lonely Planet's online guide to hotels along with Wikitravel. It's nearly two months until we go there, but we're already hitting a lot of places that are booked.

Cathy's wondering how you do this sort of thing before the Internet. Travel agents, I'm assuming. On the one hand, it does make life a lot easier. On the other hand, you can go quite mad hitting site after site trying to find just the right place. You know, not too expensive, but not a hole. It doesn't have to be in the centre of things, but not in the boonies. And because it's Italy in summer, air conditioning is kind of mandatory. We're also staying away from hostels, after being warned by several people we might want to give them a miss in Italy.

We've got a place booked in Rome and a line on a place in Venice. And there are a couple of places we're looking at in Florence. We've yet to decide on the fourth place we're going to visit, but we should know in the next 24 hours. I'm trying very hard not to think about the money. It's probably best that way.

The only other news is that since the temperature is hovering near 0, and that's as good as spring around here, we did some spring cleaning yesterday. It's amazing we can clean out so much garbage or have so many items to donate to local groups and the place is still cluttered. Ah well, it's a small apartment, but we still love it. Even if the warm temperatures are bringing out the noisy people yelling and, no kidding, yodeling, outside our window at late hours.

Last Five
1. Extraordinary - Joel Plaskett Emergency*
2. Sleep - The Dandy Warhols
3. Disappearing world - David Gray
4. Letter to God - Sheryl Crow
5. Blush - The Raveonettes