Trip Prep

Our Wedding Map

First things first, all of the photos in this post are by Jason Fukura – he was our awesome wedding photographer and you can check out his website here.

It has taken me a long time to get to this post, but it’s a really special one!  Justin and I spent a long time dreaming about heading off on this trip.  We made lists of places we’d like to go, messed around with possible routes and looked up activities.  About six months before we left home we got married and decided that the wedding was the perfect chance to get some great travel ideas from our friends and family.  Each person who came to the wedding got a card and a little sticky arrow and we had a giant laminated map hung in the entry of the reception.  Throughout the evening people filled out the cards telling us where we should go and why and then stuck their arrow (numbered so we could match it up with the cards) to the map.  At the end of the night we had lots of great ideas and a really fun map!

So, now that we are nearing the end of the trip I wanted to post the list of locations our nearest and dearest suggested to us and to highlight which ones we made it to in our travels.  We were flattered that many people picked their hometowns (for those of you we didn’t visit, we still want to come!) and loved all the ideas (and reasonings!), but we’ll need to make several more trips to make it to them all.

Here they are!  Places we have been or will go to are in bold and I’ve tried to link back to our blog posts about the ones we have already visited and I’ll come back as we get more written and update the links for the other bold ones.

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We just finished another 22 hour bus ride, so I thought I’d post this.  I wrote it a little while ago, but wanted to get it up to document our planning process and how the trip will go!

When we started to plan our trip we looked at all kinds of options for getting ourselves around the world.  From our reseach it seemed to us that most people doing this type of trip do one of two major options.

Option 1:  Buy your flights as you go.  This provides a lot of flexibility since nothing or at least not everything is booked up front.  You also can shop for cheap flights as you go and try to save money that way.

Option 2:  Buy a Round the World ticket from one of the major airline alliances.  This has the advantage of the price being set upfront, you have dates and flights set before you leave home, and there’s usually at least some measure of flexibility built in, although you may have to pay to change some things on the fly.

We went with option 2.  After checking around we decided to buy our ticket here: Oneworld Alliance.  We liked their planner and found that we could get the kind of trip we wanted this way.  Even if you aren’t setting off around the world it’s fun to play with their planner and see all the places you can go!!!  Oneworld Planner

Our Itinerary:

Ready to Travel

I have been meaning to write this post ever since I hit publish on part one.  When we were preparing for our trip I found this kind of information so helpful and was anxious to document what I’m carrying with me.  So this is long overdue.  On the other hand, now that we’ve been on the road for four months I’m in a much better position to comment on what has been needed and used and what hasn’t.  So here it is, what I have with me now. (more…)

I had hoped to get a lot more blog posts up before heading out, but it’s time to turn off my computer, pull out the hard drive, and say goodbye to the rest of it.

It’s so hard to leave this place – we love our apartment and our friends and our dog!  The goodbyes have been tough, but wonderful to have such amazing friends.  And now we’re almost on our way.  Tomorrow we set off for a few days in Seattle with family and then on Saturday we fly out.

Thank you California friends!!!!!  We’re really going to miss you!!!

It's so empty!

This is getting so real!  Had to say farewell to several friends last night and to all of LiveOps today.  Between that and the stuff fleeing to Goodwill it is all getting crazy.  We leave tomorrow!  Vamanos!