Airline Tickets

Easter has come and gone and it has been awhile since we posted. This blog is officially two years old (!) We started posting about our upcoming trip Easter weekend 2007. I know what you're thinking . . . what kind of nutcase family blogs for two years before even going on their trip?? Well, I guess a nut like me who loves to research and write and is hoping to create, not just a memory of the trip itself, but also of all the preparation and anticipation that led up to it.

Another big check off our To-Do list. We are ticketed, Houston. All systems go. Here's the revised itinerary, based on the best we could manage with Star Alliance and keeping within our mileage band of 34,000 miles (and narrowly dodging an inexplicable 20% price increase on RTW tickets - literally happened the day after ours were ticketed):

• Depart Toronto July 20, 2009
• New York
• Paris
• Zurich
• Nairobi (Kenya)
• Cairo (Egypt)
• Dubai (UAE)
• Bangkok (Thailand)
• Tokyo (Japan)
• Seoul (South Korea)
• Sydney (Australia)
• Auckland (New Zealand)
• Apia (Western Samoa)
• Los Angeles
• Vancouver (July 1, 2010 - Canada Day!)

So these are the 15 cities (or "segments" as the airlines call it) that we are permitted with our Round-the-World (RTW) ticket. As I mentioned in a previous post about our itinerary, many factors converge to influence your final routing. For example, we didn't really have a burning desire to visit Cairo but to go from Nairobi to Dubai or Bangkok, you must go through Cairo and like it or not, it counts as one of your segments. Another example, we have to fly through the very expensive city of Zurich as it is a hub for travel from Europe to Africa. We won't stay there long, although no doubt it's beautiful.

The cities listed don't really tell the whole story. These are just our entry and exit points. We hope to travel overland throughout South-East Asia (Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos) once we've arrived in Bangkok. We are holding off getting travel visas for these countries as there is a rumour of a "Mekong Delta" visa coming that would eliminate the need for separate visas for all these SE Asia countries.

Similarly, we fly into Nairobi but have no plans to stay there any longer than necessary. We want to see other parts of Kenya and go on safari as well as visit Longiro, our Compassion child that we sponsor. We'll travel overland to Tanzania (Arusha and Zanzibar) and spend some time visiting and helping out with Sauti Moja. We had also hoped to visit Lesotho but that is looking less likely since we would have to purchase 4 additional flights to Johannesburg and onwards to Lesotho. I am also still waiting to hear from Operation Smile about possibly participating in a mission during that time. Some things we cannot fully plan, we'll have to stay open and flexible and see what we can manage. We have booked our accommodations for New York (just 4 days), Paris (1 week), and St. Papoul, France (3 months), so the first big chunk of our trip is set.

The airlines we will fly with include Air Canada, United, Swiss Air, Egypt Air, Thai Airways, All Nippon Airways, Air Asiana, Air New Zealand, and back home via United. All are carriers with Star Alliance.

Lastly, the costs . . . for one adult ticket we paid $5406.00 and with all taxes it came to $6480.03. Children 11 years and younger were 25% less which brought it to $4055.00 and with taxes it totalled $5124.89. It is a fair chunk of the money we've been setting aside for the last 4 years but actually it's not a bad price for a full year of travel to so many places. Especially when I have to pay over $3000 for my family of four to fly to Saskatoon for a visit.

Okay, gotta run. Amazing Race is starting. My favourite TV show, go figure.

Itinerary Excitement

Ted & I met with our travel agent this afternoon. We're pinning down our destinations and working out the timing of everything. It's a complicated business. Details like the fact that flights from Western Samoa to Los Angeles (near the final stage of our trip, in June 2010) only occur once per week and always on a Tuesday, well these details affect other decisions and plans. But it's fun and exciting - it means things are growing more imminent.

We have a great travel agent. Her name is Leah and she works out of the Adventure Travel Company. When I first started looking for a travel agent, one person I knew told me to go to the ATC because they have experience in the "whole Round-The-World thing". Duly noted. Then, I ventured into a Travel Cuts office literally down the street and around the corner from me, thinking wouldn't this be convenient? They recommended we go to ATC since they did not feel they had the expertise to do the "whole RTW thing". So that confirmed it. And so that has become our travel agency and we highly recommend them if you want to go around the world.

They are helping us with a million little details and answering all of our (possibly stupid) questions. We spent a fair bit of time today trying to find an affordable safari that accepts children as young as 7 or 8 and covers the highlights of Kenya and Tanzania. And it has to be in either November or December 2009. We talked about the best way to get to Lesotho, the best routes through South-East Asia, health insurance, and trip cancellation/interruption insurance. We also had to do the number-crunching to make sure we were below the Star Alliance limit of 34,000 miles.

Right now, it's looking like Toronto-New York-Paris-Rome-Johannesburg-Maseru-Johannesburg-Nairobi-Dubai-Bangkok-Tokyo-Sydney-Auckland-Apia(Samoa)-Los Angeles-Vancouver. Whew! Once we make the actual reservation, we'll have about a week to pay up. And the cost for all of this? Perhaps for another blog posting . . . if you really want to know?? Let us know!