Athens to Rome or bust

Fabulous news, lambs: I'm doing Europe this summer!!!

I'm going with my fam, which is great since that means my sister (aka one of my BFFs) and I can hang out shopping together every day in "giant floppy sun hats" as she says. I concur. She and my mom are going to Turkey for three weeks in June, then taking a train to Athens, Greece where my dad and I will meet up with them. From there we'll explore Greece and some of the Greek islands. We're still planning an approximate route from Athens to Patras, which is where we'll cast off for Corfu, but I do know that Corfu will be our last Greek locale before taking a ferry over to Italy. 

Once we dock at the port city of Brindisi in Italy, we plan to rent a car and drive up to the Abruzzo region, which includes some of Italy's best medieval castles and villages. (The area is also where Clooney's The American was filmed.) Towns I want to see there include Castel del Monte, Sulmona, Castelvecchio, Pescara and Teramo.

From Abruzzo we'll head back down the boot and cut over to the opposite coast. Again, not sure how far south we'll go -- we might try doing Sicily, but we're not sure yet. I do know we're planning to head up the Amalfi coast where we'll rent an apartment or villa in either Naples or Sorrento for a week and use it as a base for day trips to places like Positano and Pompeii. At the end of our trip we'll fly out of Rome after spending a couple days there too (funny enough I am the only one who wants to see Rome again, everyone else is sick of it. How anyone could ever get sick of Rome eludes me.)

Anyway, mapped out our trip is going to look something like this (not counting the still-unplanned path from Athens to Patras):

One thing I love about traveling with my family is that they're a very off-the-cuff bunch, especially my mom. Making sure we know exactly where we're going to spend each night is not their style, which means advance hotel reservations aren't in their vocab. We usually pick a starting and ending location, buy our plane tickets, then plan a rough idea of where we might be every couple days. Aside from our rented apartment on the Amalfi coat and whatever hotel we book in Athens when we land, I have no idea where we'll be staying along the way and I love the spontaneity of that. I need a good adventure.

Anyway, is it weird that I've already started packing? I guess its symbolic of my near-pornographic eagerness to get this party started. The last time I went on a major trip was when I went to Rio and Buenos Aires in the summer of 09. As on that trip, J won't be coming on this one either since he has to work, but he's very happy for me (I think some of that may have to do with the fact that he can play golf the entire month of July without me getting on his case about it).

The best thing of all about this trip, over all the indigenous olive oil and pasta and wine I'll be consuming? I don't have to ask for any time off to do it. I'll be gone for three weeks and no one can tell me I can't have those days off or I can't leave for that long or any other bureacratic bs. Winning!