So you think you know how to travel? So did we ....

We learned a lot on our Trip Around the World

Travel Plans might sound easy, but you need to be at your best.

Written by Fiona: 

     A lot of people have asked us about what is involved in the planning of a round the world trip.
     So I thought I would be a guest blogger and do a post on the planning and logistics of going around the world in Eighty Days.
     Kevin has been the writer from the beginning of the odyssey and, although my name comes up now and then, my sole contribution up until now has been proof reading!

     I remember the exact date the planning began - April 9th, 2014. The reason I remember is that April 8th is my birthday and Kevin gave me this trip as a gift!  Can you believe it?
     The worlds’ best husband/gift giver!

The fun begins!

     So this trip actually took about nine months to plan.  It doesn’t need to take that long obviously, but I thoroughly enjoyed the planning process so much that this was (in some ways) one of the best parts of the gift - dreaming and researching different destinations.
     Let me begin by saying there are endless ways to approach an around the world trip.  Some people want to do it in three weeks and hit six cities.  Others want to travel for two years and poke around thirty countries. 

     At the outset we agreed on a timeline of about 80 days.  But there were so many places to go!  We knew several places that were on our "always wanted to go" list - Cambodia, Sri Lanka, the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids. 

     So after we made a list of about twenty-five destinations, we moved on to researching airline tickets ...

     I discovered that you can purchase a wonderful thing called a Round The World (RTW) ticket.  They are available through major airlines and they use partner airlines to coordinate different parts of the journey. 

     We flew with Star Alliance, which is the United Airlines option. but surprisingly, never actually flew on United!  Their partners include Air Canada, South African, Turkish, IcelandAir, Ethiopian, Alitalia, British Airways, Philippine, Kenyan, etc.  

     We flew on all of these and many more.

     We ended up actually booking our tickets through a company that specializes in RTW tickets.  It’s possible to buy all these tickets on your own .... but we preferred to dialogue with a consultant - and it worked out well.  Their advice was invaluable.

     I highly recommend airtreks.com - they had great suggestions and were quick to answer all our questions. We ended up with 19 stops on our RTW ticket and visited 24 countries in all.

     Of course, there are rules about these kinds of tickets.  For example, you have to keep heading in one direction (in our case, West).   You can make changes after you start (but it will possibly cost a small change fee). You can travel overland in places and pick up your ticket in another country (we did this in Europe, arriving in Rome and picking up our RTW in Dublin).

     Next up - where to stay?  This took several months and I worked on one country at a time for a few hours each week.  We stayed in a huge variety of places from friends’ houses, to youth hostels, to guest houses, apartments, hotels (anywhere from one to five star).    We even stayed in a tent in Kenya - it was a rather nice tent! 

    I mostly used airbnb.com, booking.com, and orbitz.com for booking accommodations and room reservations.

 

  

There were several criteria I used when looking for places to stay. 

     Number one?  How do we get from the airport to the hotel?  Bus, subway, shuttle, taxi, or ...? 

     This is one of the more complicated pieces of travel because many airports are far away from city centers and if you arrive unprepared you can be faced with a $75 taxi ride. Some hotels have free pick up so they would go to the top of the list.

     Side note: This was probably our biggest hassle of the entire trip - arranging travel to and from the airport.  It's really important to arrange ground transportation!

     Number Two - is breakfast included?  Having breakfast at your hotel simplifies the beginning of your day, and (depending on the breakfast) you can get by with only one other meal that day.  This is something we did often, and it fit our "hunger" patterns!
     Number three - does the hotel have free wifi?  This was our primary means of communication with friends and family and the "outside world", so this was vital for us.  Online broadband was critical, including constant updates on travel changes and airplane connections. 

Sometimes you have to wing it ... 

     We did not have reservations for every place we went, because we wanted to have some flexibility.  So there were some evenings spent planning for the following few days, often in a cafe with wifi, but it always seemed to work out well.

 

Hello, do you have permission to enter our country?     

     One other aspect of world wide travel is researching which countries require a visa.  This could be a real pain.  Do you need to have a visa before you get there? or can you get it at the border? And how much does it cost?  You can get this information at travel.state.gov. 

     Getting a visa at the border is usually relatively easy, but you have to make sure you have the fee in the right currency. (They often want US dollars).  

     Sometimes they want a passport size photo too. Some countries (China and India, for instance) require you to get it ahead of time AND require you to send your passport to their embassy in the U.S. to have it inserted in your passport. This can be very problematic when you use your passport often, so you do need to plan ahead.

     There are some visa services who will do this for you for a fee and we have used them. The one we use and have always been happy with is travisa.com.

            

     We made a spreadsheet to leave with family so they could track us down if needed.

     We were really happy with the results of our planning.       

     Everything worked out well.  Perhaps the only change we might make would be to spend a little more time in each place and have some ‘do nothing’ days built in.

     Guess we’re going to have to keep doing this ‘til we get it right!