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Archive for June, 2008

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Game Day is November 1st

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

It’s official…  we booked our plane tickets!  We are now the proud owners of two LAX-Sydney-Carins-Alice Springs-Perth-Sydney-Bangkok-Mumbai-Hong Kong-Dubai-Cairo-London-Miami-LAX tickets.   While we celebrated the purchase with a great Napa cab, it really hasn’t sunk in yet that we are actually committed now to going.

Our decision on what type of tickets to get has been a huge open question for such a long time.  We thought about just buying flights as we go so that we wouldn’t be tied to any particular places or times.  However, after surfing for prices this really turned out to be the most expensive option.  After more research, I found out that American Airlines has a program to use frequent flyer miles to book RTW tickets.  Joy!

I have about 250,000 miles that I’ve been saving for just this purpose.  After hours on the phone, I soon realized that they are pretty much useless for this type of ticket.   There were no flights to any of the places we wanted to go within a month of any of the dates we wanted to go.  Frustration! Despair!

Finally we gave up and went back to our first plan, buying a RTW ticket.  Note that AA has a great tool for this here: http://www.oneworld.com/ow/flight-info/itinerary-planner 

There are lots of rules with this type of ticket.  For example, once you leave a continent, you can’t go back to it.    There’s also a limit to the number of segments and breaks in the itinerary.  So we’ll have to buy a separate ticket (or hopefully my miles will be good for something)  to get to New Zealand, as well as some internal flights in India and Europe.  The best part of the ticket is that even thought the cities are set, we can change dates. 

Anyway, it’s done – paid for and booked.  Elation! (and a little anxiety)

Posted in Planning, Travel | 1 Comment »

Tere from Estonia.

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

After a delayed flight and some classic British customer “service,” we finally made it to Estonia a day late.  My group’s team building activity turned out to be sailing in the Baltic sea – beautiful day.  Eric came along and then the two of us headed out to Tartu, the second larget city in Estonia.  After an evening of watching the Euro 2008 and a day of walking around the city, we returned to Tallinn to take in more sights in the Old Town.  Unfortunately I caught a cold along the way, but it didn’t stop us from climbing the tower at the Oleviste Church for a great view of the city.  More about Tallinn later – we’re writing this at the aiprort and our flight back to London is boarding….

Here’s the Town Hall, taken at 10 PM last night.  

 town-hall2.JPG

Posted in Estonia, Travel | No Comments »

Hi from across the pond

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

No, we haven’t left early for the RTW trip!  I’m on a business trip this week in London and Tallinn, so I thought I’d get a head start at practicing this blogging thing.  Eric came with me and we had some time this weekend to see a few new sights.  On Saturday we visited Leeds Castle, Canturbury Cathedral, and saw the white cliffs of Dover (as well as a view of the French coast accross the Channel!).

 Here’s the proof from a boat ride down the Thames last night:

london-blog.JPG

Posted in Travel, UK | 4 Comments »

Welcome to our blog!

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Thanks for checking out the new blog.  It’s a little empty right now, but expect lots of updates coming soon as the countdown to our trip begins.  In the mean time, check out the latest Itinerary and FAQ on the pages listed to the right.

Posted in Travel | 1 Comment »