With the sale of our home and the purchase of our new flat in the hands of the solicitors, we decided to get a trip to Italy in before we had to get serious about moving.
We went through our London home from top to bottom classifying all furniture into three categories:
- Take to our new flat
- Ship to Italy
- Rehome
We identified a van’s worth of stuff to take to Italy and got quotes from a bunch of companies. We settled on a courier recommended by others who had shipped stuff from the UK to Italy. They were cheaper than some of the larger companies with the added benefit that all our stuff would stay on a single van throughout the entire process (rather than loading and unloading as a part container shipment).
We arranged for a pickup on Friday 18 March after which Martin would drive the car (with more stuff) to Colle di Compito in order to be there to receive the shipment and help with unloading it. Fenella would follow by plane on Wednesday 23 March as she had a family funeral to attend.
Then Martin caught COVID-19 having dodged it for two years. We rearranged the van for a week later and spent a week avoiding each other and wearing masks in the house to hopefully make sure that Fenella didn’t catch it too.
Today Martin dropped Fenella at Golders Green where she caught the bus to Stanstead and then the plane to Pisa. There are a couple more days to get stuff ready for loading into van and car. On Friday the van comes and on Saturday Martin heads off to the Channel Tunnel (no P&O this year).