Disaster!

Well, it's less than 2 weeks until I fly out and disaster has struck!

When I booked all of my flights back in January, I asked my travel agent if I would need a visa. To which she replied that I wouldn't need one as I could spend up to 90 days in each European country. That sounded fine to me and I completely forgot all about it until last week when I was on the DFAT website looking at travel warnings for Egypt. I spotted a link for visas, so decided to have a look.

The information on their website was pretty hopeless, but from what I could gather, it said that a visa wasn't necessary if you were going to be travelling in the Schengen area (Western Europe) for less than 90 days in a 6 month period. Now this contradicted what my travel agent had told me, which was that I could spend up to 90 days in each country, not overall.

So, getting a little worried, I contacted my travel agent again and voiced my concerns. Once again she said no, you don't need to worry, that the information regarding the Schengen countries was difficult to understand and that I could stay in each country for up to 90 days. I was relieved and started to relax and then on ANZAC Day the disaster struck!

My travel agent sent me an urgent email saying that a client of hers had just come back from spending over 6 months in Europe and she had needed a visa, because you could only stay in the Schengen area for UP TO 90 DAYS!!!! It wasn't 90 days in each country, but rather 90 days overall in Western Europe.

Now, with less than 2 weeks until I fly out I have to go to the Italian consulate in Perth first thing Monday morning and throw myself at their feet and beg for a visa and hope that it can be processed before I go. The problem of course is that a visa can take anywhere between 3 weeks and 3 months to process - time that I don't have. They also send your passport to Canberra to process the visa application, and if my passport doesn't come back before I fly out then I will be staying in Perth a while longer!

If the visa can't be approved in time then I just have to make sure that I don't stay in Western Europe for more than 90 days which significantly curtails my plans. I will still be able to do the Roman dig, the Spanish dig and my tour in Greece, but I won't be able to do all the other things I was wanting to - Paris, Nimes, Madrid, Barcelona, Florence, Venice, Milan and anything else that took my fancy. Instead, between the digs and the tour I have to keep flying back to England, which is an expense I wasn't expecting.

I am seriously irritated with my travel agent right now!