One trip to Trailfinders yesterday in the snow, one phonecall this morning and a vast sum of money later and we are the proud owners of five round-the-world tickets.
We leave London on 1st November on a Virgin flight arriving in LA about 11 hours later. I checked they had seat back TVs.
We have bought an ‘Escapade’ round the world ticket which uses Virgin, Singapore Airlines and Air New Zealand. We’ve bought a separate ticket from LA to Hawaii as that route isn’t covered by these airlines. It’s on United, an airline I’m not keen on. Last time I flew with them the seat was broken and I was made to sit in the smoking section. On a thirteen hour flight. Owen from Trailfinders assures me they’ve improved.
After Hawaii, we fly to Auckland, then into Sydney and out of Perth in Western Australia, to Singapore, then Tokyo and finally back to London at the end of July 2011. We’ll fill in the middle bits ourselves with flights with local low cost airlines and lots and lots of trains, buses and cars.
We’ve taken out insurance with World Nomads. We are now free to jet ski, bungee jump and clay pigeon shoot without a care. It also covers the boring stuff we hopefully won’t have to use.
The plan is coming together.
How utterly, completely & amazingly exciting! Congratulations! The countdown can begin!
My heart is beating fast, my eyes are welling up: I am so excited for you all x
Woo hooooo! What an adventure
Wow, I am so excited for you
I’m squeeing with excitement and I’m not even going!
Woo hoo!! How exciting!
Congratulations! Anxiously waiting to read about your journey every step of the way!
Brilliant! I can’t wait to read all about it.
when is the car sick carnival by the way. I keep meaning to write something for you…
Congratulations….how fantastic. I’m very envious. It will be brilliant.
Congratulation!! How exciting! I can’t wait to hear more about your planning and itinerary.
Awesome! Congratulations! You’re going to have a fab time. I’m sure of it. I wrote a post about RTW trip planning. Thought you might find it handy: http://velvetescape.com/blog/2009/06/ten-tips-for-planning-a-rtw-trip/
I am so jealous I could spit, namely because NZ and Hawaii are probably my favourite places in the world and I’m actually physically aching to go there at the moment. Seriously though I hope you have a wonderful wonderful time. Re United to Hawaii: we flew United to Hawaii from LA the first time we went and they were absolutely fine. I think you can pay a little extra for a slightly nicer seat. Of course no one smokes on the planes any more! And I think they have Pass-o-Guava – my absolutely favourite soft drink to have in Hawaii. Second time we flew Hawaiian Airlines which is also brilliant. *sigh*
Thanks for reassuring me about United. You can never quite trust the person selling you stuff. I shall make sure we try Pass-o-guava. You can travel vicariously, as I’ve been doing for the last eight years. Not quite as good as the real thing, but not bad
I am both happy for you and insanely jealous.
Hip hip hooray. That is too exciting for words. I am so envious of your grand plans. I’ll floow the countdown to D-Day with interest! x
Oh my Gawd – you’ve only gone and done it. So pleased for you. Was your heart beating very, very fast? Too exciting for words x
Yes it was, very fast indeed!
Yay! I am so excited for you and can’t wait to read about it!
Jen, HCM, Heather, Amy, Keith, Brit in Bosnia, Chic Mama, Pamela, Catherine, Vic, The Mad House, Notsuchayummymummy, Dotty, Becky,
Thank you all so much for your lovely comments and your excitment for us. I’m quite overwhelmed. Sniff.
Woooohoooooooooooooooo. That is all.
Good for you for taking the plunge! A family adventure brings its own unique challenges, but undoubtedly its own joys as well.
I don’t mean to date you, but when did you fly United when they had a smoking section??????
Yes, I know I’m very old! It was about 18 years ago when I did my first RTW trip aged 19. I’m asthmatic and when BA tried to put me in smoking I complained and was upgraded to Club. United just said ‘tough, we’ve no other seats’. I’m very glad it won’t be an issue this time!
This is fantastic news! And hey, this means you’ll still be around when I’m in England next summer – which is good since you’ll be flying right over my head as you jet off!
Congratulations – I’m really looking forward to sharing in your adventure.
I meant to reply to your earlier comment, YES! We WILL be in London when you come over. As long as we’re not on our summer tour of in-laws, I’d love to meet up. We’ll have to sort something out…
OMG! I am so excited for you. Way to go!! It all starts coming together now. Love every blog post of yours and cant wait to read all about it as you travel the world. A quick question, have you put up any videos thus far? Please do take and load up as many videos as you can to this blog.
Thank you! We’ve got a flip camera, which we’ve used a bit, but no ‘travel’ films yet. I’m pretty sure we’ll take it with us, so I’d better get practising.
I am so excited for you. One thing I was wondering, do you plan on keeping your blog updated when you can while traveling?
I will definitely be blogging as we go! That was originally my reason for starting this blog, to keep a record of our trip. We will take one, possibly two netbooks for emails, photos, DVDs, blogging, photo storing and twittering. One of my other highlights of 2009 was discovering Twitter and I’m really happy that I’ll be able to take all my new friends with me when I go!
It turns out that Steve does actually want to go bungee jumping. You may think you know someone, but you never really do. At first he was keener on zorbing (you roll down the hill inside a giant inflatable ball) until I pointed out that his history of motion sickness makes this particular extreme sport possibly a little too risky.
I am late in commenting as not managed to get to pc for a few days but read this when you posted it up and wanted to swing back through and say “YEAH! THAT ROCKS! WOO HOO!” I have much admiration for your trip. Cx
Wow that is brilliant news. Well done you for taking the plunge! My husband did the sky jump off Auckland’s Sky Tower http://www.skyjump.co.nz/ and then on the next trip he did the bungy at Taupo. I also took him skiing taught him how to body surf, swimming with dolphins and fishing! You are going to love New Zealand!
Thank you. I never knew my husband had it in him, but I guess we’ll find out…
In the words of Bruce Willis: Yippeekayaye M***********
How exciting. x
Wow… you must be beyond excited. You are so brave and no officially my hero!
….and Im so over excited I misspelled! That should’ve read now. I have to go and calm down.
I have been having a good look at your blog, and am very excited for you, this is our dream to do this with our children and I will be keeping a close close eye on what you do xx
I’m really pleased you have been enjoying my blog. I first got the idea to do this 2.5 years ago from reading other family travel blogs so I hope I’ve been helpful.