Author Archives: abcdworldtravels

In preparing for this trip, I’ve become a bit of an internet travel-site junkie, subscribing to numerous blogs by adventurous full-time travelers.  I’ve learned so much from the experiences that these couples, individuals, and families have shared via their blogs.  At this point, I’m really focused on the logistics of the trip, recognizing that we’ll have plenty of time to figure out what we’d like to see and do once we settle in a particular location.  So with that in mind, here are some of the key things I’ve taken away from these sites:

1. This is a great idea!
2. It’s really important to travel light.  My goal is to limit ourselves to four carry on bags.  We’ll see….
3. There are a lot of travel gadgets/travel gear/travel clothes options.  I need to control my urge to buy one of everything, if I want to stick with my goal of 4 carry on bags!
4. There are mail-forwarding services out there that for a reasonable monthly fee will provide you with an address to which you can forward your mail, and they will discard all the junk mail (90% of our mail), scan the outer envelope, and if desired, scan the contents.  Then they’ll forward it to you anywhere in the world, if you need the original.  Seems like a good alternative to burdening a friend or relative with this onerous task!  Couple this with online banking for taking care of all the bills that come in, and we should be all set, provided we have regular access to the internet.
5. An unlocked phone will come in handy, as we can pick up prepaid sim cards in various locales to give us a local phone number.  There are also various global sim cards that might come in handy, though I’d like to limit most international calling to skype calls made via wi-fi.
6. It’s a good idea to read the fine print for your credit card and ATM cards, to see if they charge a foreign transaction fee.  There are various cards that don’t charge a foreign transaction fee, which will be pretty important for a year-long trip!  So it’s worth shopping around for a good deal.  A credit card with chip and pin technology would also be good, particularly for Europe.
7. Short term rental homes/apartments are available everywhere we plan to travel, and will be our first choice when it comes to lodging.  We are too old/too picky to do the backpacker’s hostel thing.
8. Homeschooling will be quite doable on the road.  The trip itself will be an education, but I should be able to piece together a workable curriculum to supplement all of the experiential learning that will take place.
9. There are various options for purchasing round the world airline tickets.   You can go with a round the world ticket consolidator like airtreks.com, or use an airline alliance program, or just buy a succession of one way tickets.  We will use a consolidator for the long distance legs, and purchase budget airline tickets for shorter legs around Europe.

We welcome advice and suggestions from anyone who would like to chime in!