Overview of Our Round the World Travels

We’ve been back in the United States for a few months now, settling into our new home state of Michigan.   We found a house, perched on a hill, with a view of the bay.  During our travels some of our favorite locations were by the water, so we made that a priority in our home search!  We’ve been busy with unpacking and settling in, but every once in a while the trip will come up, and we will recall some of our favorite or memorable experiences, which already seem so far in the past!  It was a wonderful experience…one we hope to repeat at some point in the future.

I thought I would conclude this blog with a short wrap up of our trip for our faithful followers, and anyone else who might stumble across it at some point, perhaps when planning a trip of their own!

We traveled from late June 2013 to mid April 2014.  We followed the sun, trying to avoid cold weather, which we succeeded at for the most part.  We visited 21 countries on 4 continents along the way, staying in 47 different lodgings (hotels, vacation rentals, camp sites, homes, and a cruise ship).

Our journey included stops in Ireland, Scotland, England, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Italy, France, Croatia, Turkey, Jordan, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and Ecuador. Some visits were only a day, as a part of our cruise in the Baltic. Generally we spent at least a week in each country, but in some cases we stayed a month or more.

We traveled via plane, train, automobile, camper van, cruise ship, ferry, water taxi and modified fishing boat, with shorter jaunts on camel, pony, subway, bicycles, funicular, bus, raft and horse-drawn carriages.

We traveled as light as possible, which meant 3 large carry-on sized bags, 1 small carry-on suitcase and two back packs.  I started the trip with the intention of always keeping our luggage with us, to avoid loss.  We quickly realized how much trouble that would be, so we generally checked the larger bags.  Fortunately, most of our flights were only one leg, and even when we had multiple legged trips, we never had a problem with our luggage.

I used the Trail Wallet app on my iPhone to track our expenses on the trip.  This was a great tool, which I continue to use as a way of tracking day to day expenses at home.

So what did it cost?

• Transportation: Our 18 flights came to around $21,000, plus 190,000 United Airlines frequent flier miles.  Both kids were 11 or under, which meant discounted fares for them on most international flights!  We had additional travel expenses of around $7,000 (trains, taxis, car rentals, ferry tickets, etc.).  I used a San Francisco-based company called Air Treks, which specializes in multiple destination flights, to book some of our longer flights.  Others I did myself, generally using the airlines’ websites.  http://www.Skyscanner.com  was a great resource for finding the best fares on a given route.  We accumulated lots of frequent flier points on our credit card while traveling, which got us free flights from Croatia to Turkey and Ecuador to Michigan.
• Lodging: $28,770, or just under $100 per night.  We stayed in vacation rentals as much as we could, avoiding the expense and limitations of hotels.  Most were booked through homeaway.com.  When we did need to stay in a hotel, I found booking.com and Orbitz.com to be my favorite sites for finding a deal.
• Food: $12,700, or around $44 per day

We had entertainment and miscellaneous expenses on top of these, but these are the big three expenses you need to worry about.  We were fortunate in our travels, with no theft or loss of note (other than an inexpensive video camera that was left in a seatback pocket on one of our early flights), and no medical expenses.

We are often asked what country was our favorite of those we visited.  That’s a tough question, as we had a great time in each location!  Bill and I were particularly impressed by Jordan, with its ancient ruins, vast deserts, biblical links, and great food.  The kids were happiest when we were in a country where everyone else spoke English, so Ireland and New Zealand were two of their favorites.  But again, each location had something great to offer, and left an impression on us.  We did our best to pick up the language while we were in a given spot, and experience life as a local.  We met some wonderful people along the way, and caught up with some old friends as well.  But in the end, we were all excited to return to the United States, and settle in our new home.  We look forward to catching up with friends and family in the months ahead.