The Plan:
My plan is to start in South America, come back home for Christmas and then head west until I reach Amsterdam at the end of May 2011.
One FAQ I get is "How did you ever come up with that route?". Well, it took me a heck of a long time. Once I started researching around the world flights I found that a traditional flight package wouldn't do for me. One: it's done in either miles or stops. In both mileage and spots I would far exceed the limit. Two: You can (mostly) only go in one direction and can't backtrack. I was committed to coming home for Christmas to both break up the travel and because I friggin love the holiday and couldn't imagine it without my fam. I decided on a non traditional "a la carte" pricing model and went through STA Travel (they help us non students as well). I essentially paid for each one way ticket individually and the peeps there helped me out greatly (shout out to Chris from STA).
I thought about the stops for years - where I would start, what direction I would go in, where do people recommend, where would I not have the opportunity to go back to in a while? A couple of years ago I asked for an atlas for Christmas and would sit around dream of my trip and the things I wanted to see. A million sticky notes came out of the edge of the book that held all my notes for where I'd plan. Each continent page was the final summary of my "have to do" and I'm happy to report that all that fit into that category are listed below:
My stops are:
Bogota, Colombia: Oct 13th to Oct 22nd
Lima, Peru: Oct 22nd - Nov 9th
Buenos Aires, Argentina: Nov 9th - Nov 30th
San Jose, Costa Rica: Nov 30th - Dec 19th
New York/Boston/NH: Dec 20th - Jan 4th
San Francisco: Jan 4th - Jan 10th
Auckland, New Zealand: Jan 12th - Jan 21st
Sydney, Australia: Jan 21st - Feb 16th
Singapore, Malaysia: Feb 16th - March 2nd
Bangkok, Thailand: March 2nd - March 16th
Hong Kong: March 16th - March 31st
Seoul, South Korea: March 31st - April 25th
Athens, Greece - All of Europe: April 25th - May 31st (Depart from Amsterdam)
