[Zig]

Huzzah!
Absolute meat and drink of a thread; thank you so much for this Toad! I'll assume Matthew is salivating as much as I am.

First, the kit: this about as good as it gets. My, I'm seriously thinking of crash/burning and going all Leica...I won't have the cojones though, to forego my ultrawise and tele ends. Blistering, Toad, just blistering....!
And yet...as soon as I was nodding along with enthusiasm for your choice of kit on grounds of IQ(!) and weight-saving...I began to see the pounds gain(weight, not cash) and am thinking that you are actually taking along such a faff of weighty accessories, that my IDs mammoth is becoming lightweight by comparison. Now, this is only my gut response not to your decisions, but as if I myself were in role and doing the same trip(and how I wish I were!). Mind you, I appreciate that all the accompanying caravans of baggage will not actually be deployed from your shoulder out in the field...your actual daily shoulder-weight should be stonkingly light.
To pod or not to pod: again, my own subjective decision on these is to ditch the pod in Italy certainly, unless one wishes to uses ND filters to capture crowd-free and apocalyptically empty exterior spaces: with the amount of leeway in these sensors and the amount of light bouncing around...and the software upon our return, I've found the tripod can be largely made redundant if one chooses this path. Now, I'm not quite sure about the Gorillapod: after investigation, I decided not to get one of these as the combined weights upon it would not work for me...whether it would for the much lighter Leica, would be interesting.
One thing you've not addressed here is the degree of "light awareness" needed for an Italy trip: yes, I know this is an experience-thang: There is a lot of it about. Ambient and reflected light in Italy bounces around in a mannner I'd not seen before, giving glows and shimmers that are outstanding, deserving of always shooting in raw(which I know you do anyway)...also, there is so much light knocking about that it is almost worth setting exposure compensation permanantly to +1.5 for good measure. Any form of polariser I've found to be completely redundant and adding so much shadow blocking as to work against me.
Aw...I'm running out of time here Toad, and I've not couched things as clearly as I might have: I've not forgotten either your skill or experience or the fact that you've visited Italy already, so forgive me if I've "taught granny to suck eggs". I've got a busy day ahead, so will come back and have another think in about 24 hrs.
Stonking!