The Bottom Line

I have been asked on a few occasions, “How much does a trip like this cost?”

Not surprisingly, that same question was among the first that I asked our travel agent when we first contacted her. I did have a ballpark figure in mind before I asked it and I had based that figure on a combination of the upper limit of what I felt we could spend and my own swag as to what the cost of such a trip might be. My guess was pretty close.

To ask what a trip like this costs is somewhat akin to asking, “How much are a pair of sneakers?” I’d have to say, “It depends… are we talking about Keds or Reeboks?” Same principle applies here.

The trip we are planning could easily cost less if we chose to make it so. As it is with nearly anything else, it can certainly be done for a whole lot more, too. It all depends on a wide variety of factors, not the least of which involves class of travel, class of hotel and the extent to which you want to utilize guided tours, and which kind. We are looking for the cheapest possible air fare (who isn’t?) and are willing to splurge a bit on the hotels and tours.

For the answer, take a look at the French title of the novel by Jules Verne about a wager made by one Phileas Fogg, and substitute the word mille for the word jours. By the way, for a non-topical comparison, here’s a look at Phileas’ planned route.

click to enlarge

Regardless of how you go about it, an around the world journey is definitely anything but inexpensive. It certainly is not an investment from which you can expect monetary gain, unless maybe you are a talented writer and have some marketing skills. However if you measure the return in terms of lifelong memories and one-of-a-kind experiences, it becomes money well spent indeed. For everything else there's Mastercard...

We are truly fortunate to have the financial ability to take this trip. That ability comes, in part, from having had an upbringing by parents who cared to enough to give their children a solid foundation for learning how to save, how to budget, and how and when to spend money. A stable career with a steady, comfortable income lent a lot to it, as well.

As is the case with many other things in my life, financially, I am not a do-it-yourselfer. We have had help for many years with our financial planning and management from an advisor. Our guy’s name is Chris Allessio and he is with Edward Jones. When I look back at our portfolio value from around the same time as we seriously started planning this trip and compare it to the value today, it has increased enough to cover the cost of this trip.

To anyone seeking a good financial advisor, I highly recommend Chris. If you want to know more about Edward Jones and Chris, here is his home page.

You Can't Get There from There

We, in the U.S., are spoiled. My earlier rant about airline delays notwithstanding, one of the more convenient by-products of all that airline scheduling is that you can fly nearly anywhere in this country on any day of the week. Pick just about any city with an airport and there is probably at least one flight serving it per day. More often than not, there are multiple flights available.

Throughout most of the rest of the world, however, it’s a vastly different story. In fact, nearly the opposite is true. Even between major cities, there is not always daily airline service available. Also, even though there may be more than one carrier to choose from, they generally operate on a single hub and spoke system. So unless your destination is the main airport or one of the spokes for the airline you’re using, you are probably going to go through some other airline’s hub on the way there… even if it means backtracking several hundred miles.

Initially, we had planned to go from Egypt directly to South Africa. Not only were we limited by the lack of available flights, we also ultimately found out that that particular leg would not be included in the alliance fare because it was operated by a non-member airline, even though that flight is scheduled by an alliance member airline and is listed as that alliance member’s flight. Go figure. So we will wind up backtracking to Athens and connecting in Frankfurt to get to South Africa. Although they are not on our itinerary as destinations, we will be passing through Frankfurt once and Singapore twice. Even though Bangkok is on the itinerary, we will be passing through there a second time on the way to somewhere else.

The overall lack of ‘US-like’ flight options along with the scheduling limitations as a result of utilizing an alliance for air travel (which essentially reduces the number of airlines you can choose from) leaves us in a situation where the money saved on airfare is expended on convenience. In our case, we decided that the cost savings would be worth it. If we wanted to, we could book the Egypt to Johannesburg leg separately. However, the cost for that leg alone would be close to a fifth of what the total fare is for all the rest of the air segments covered by the alliance. Convenience ain’t cheap.

An Acknowledgement… Finally

As I set about the task of deciding how to document our travels, I was looking for a way to make things (mostly pictures) available to family and friends, as we went along our way, without encumbering them with emails that have massive attachments. It was suggested by our travel agent that I establish a web album, or a website, or a blog.

Well, I had no experience with, nor any usable knowledge about, any of those things, but at the mention of the word blog, I immediately thought of my friend, Don. Don has a blog of his own, which is listed in the “Links I Like” section in the column to the right. It’s called “Get the Flick.” I have been reading it for nearly as long as he has been writing it.

I have known Don for about twenty-five years. He is easily one of the most intelligent people I know… he’s well read, well spoken and is an excellent writer. Over the years, I have come to value his opinion highly and, although I haven’t always agreed with him on everything, I have found that he is usually right.

I did a little looking into blogging and, as I expected, I came across more information about it than I could filter through alone, so I got in touch with Don and let him know what I had in mind. I felt certain that the answer I would get would be clear, concise and probably correct. I was not disappointed.

Within an hour of hearing back from him, I had created this blog and had it up and running. Although I don’t add things to it with any regularity, I have spent enough time, here and there, tinkering with it to figure out how to write and manage posts, organize pictures, embed links, and add gadgets. In fact, I have gotten sufficiently wrapped up in those aspects that, up to now, I have neglected to publicly thank Don for his assistance.

So…

Thanks, Don! This wouldn't have been nearly as easy without your help!

“Bob”

One for All...

We currently have in our proposed itinerary upwards of twenty flight segments throughout the journey. While it is possible to book individual tickets for each segment, we have reached the conclusion that we would really rather not do that. For one thing it would be really cumbersome to haul around all those tickets. Also, in spite of the contention of several outfits claiming to have the lowest possible fares, it will be at least as cost effective and more convenient to utilize one of the ‘round the world’ packages offered by one of the three major worldwide airline alliances. Plus if there are any changes we want to make along the way or more importantly, any problems, it will be much nicer to deal with one of the alliance members’ personnel than to try to get in touch with a third party ticket provider. Using the alliance method, though, is not without its problems. Look at that word ‘alliance.’ Here’s how the dictionary that came with my computer defines it:

alliance |əˈlīəns| |əˌlaɪəns| |əˌlʌɪəns|
noun
a union or association formed for mutual benefit, esp. between countries or organizations

The title of this post is also the beginning of the motto adopted by the title characters in Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. The motto, in its entirety is, “One for all and all for one.” It is indicative of the fact that they had formed an alliance; that they were committed to supporting each other. They allied themselves with one another for their mutual benefit. Notice that the motto doesn’t go on to say anything about the benefit of anyone else.

It is very much the same with the airline alliances… although they will cater to the customer to a certain extent, keep in mind that the primary purpose of the alliance is for the good of its members… NOT the customer. It really isn’t realistic to expect any one of the airline alliances to be able to fully accommodate any individual itinerary, despite this quote from the brochure of the alliance we will be using for this trip:

“With 855 airports in 155 countries and a network of 17 airlines, our unique Round the World Fare opens up a world of itinerary options which fit into your plans rather than the other way around.”

In actuality, it is “the other way around” for us. There are several portions of our itinerary that aren’t covered by the alliance, and for those parts, we will be securing either individual tickets or regional passes. This particular alliance serves us best, though. We checked with the other two and it’s the same story, only in different parts of the world. I’m not trying to complain here… I just want to point out a truism of planning a world trip. Collectively, the three alliances could serve us better, but that’s not the way it is. So… we are going with what we’ve got… and we will make the best of it.

The Itinerary

Our initial ‘hit list’, which the travel agent asked us for, included just about everywhere that we thought we might like to go. We were initially thinking of a 7 week trip, but the places we had listed made it more like 10 weeks… so we cut some stuff out. Here’s a quick rundown of what was eliminated:

Scandinavia, Russia, Belgium, India, Nepal, Indonesia, Japan, Vanuatu, Pago Pago, and Tahiti

We also had thought initially to start in London, but later changed that to Paris. The trip is now down to about eight weeks and it currently includes:

Paris and Disney, Munich, Rome, Athens, Cairo and a Nile Cruise, Botswana and South Africa both including photo safaris, Thailand including Chiang Mai, Beijing and a tour to the Great Wall, Hong Kong and Disney, Sydney, Melbourne, Ayers Rock, the Great Barrier Reef, New Zealand, Fiji and Honolulu.

I expect this all to undergo a few more changes within the next couple of weeks.

Planning ‘The Trip’- Phase II: Finding Some Help

To take up where the Phase I post left off, we will need to flash back to July of 2006. It was at that time that we had decided to seek help and were just getting started on considering who we might want to have as our travel agent. We would need someone that could work up an around-the-world itinerary and who also had some expertise with things that would cater to the kids. We thought that we ought to make a list of agents to contact, starting first with agents we already knew, then ones in the local area (via the phone book and the web), then adding any possibilities based on input from friends and co-workers.

Susan has been a long-time subscriber to Condé Nast Traveler and it was while I was flipping through one of the issues that listed the year’s best travel agents that I came upon an entry for a particular agent that said something along the lines of,

“…(Agent's name) is a specialist in around-the world-itineraries and in travels involving children.” This particular agent was also located in Atlanta.

Well… I guess that’s sorta what we were looking for!

We didn’t think that searching any further would yield anyone who could seemingly better fit the needs we had, so we decided then and there to give her a call to see if she was taking new clients. She was and we have been a client of hers ever since.

Our initial communications were centered on introductions, passports, fee schedules and that sort of thing. Then we started getting down to the nitty gritty… we gave her a ‘hit list’ of everywhere we wanted to go with the design of cutting it down right away to fit into the timeframe we had established. We have been continually modifying that list over the past year taking into account, among many other things, airline schedules, availability of specific tour dates and changes in our preferences.

We are now working on the fifth mutation of the original itinerary and I will cover the basics of it and the changes it has undergone in more detail in a future post. I think I’ll call it something clever… like, “The Itinerary.”

Took a Little Trip...

My niece got married this weekend up in western North Carolina and we all made the trip to be there with her. The wedding was grand, the bride was beautiful, she and the groom make as handsome a couple as you will ever see and the reception was to die for. The best part of it all was the chance to get together with family and friends. I had lived in Asheville for seven years and the place has gone through some highly visible changes in the nearly eighteen years since I moved away. One thing that hasn’t changed much is the magnificent views… and the peaceful, satisfying feeling I get when I see any of them. Susan did a great job of capturing one of them on this trip…

(click to enlarge)

I took advantage of the opportunity of being out of town to check out the new Mac on several aspects of “away” use. By that I mean making sure that all the wireless settings and email authorizations and such were set to work properly away from home. They did fine.

From where we live, we cannot get to Asheville without going through Atlanta. Since we chose not to leave until after school got out on Friday, we knew that we would be tangling with the Atlanta rush hour. (In fairness to Susan, in the preceding sentence, “we” should rightfully be “I”… she has found it is easier to give in to me on the subject of taking the kids out of school early.)

The traffic met our expectations and we probably spent an extra 10 to15 minutes getting through downtown as compared to non-rush hour times. Gwinnett County on the northeast side, however, was nothing less than horrendous. We spent the better part of an hour in stop and crawl traffic, rarely getting above 10 mph. It’s normally a four-or-so hour trip, but it wound up taking us nearly seven hours this time.

Still, I prefer that to making the kids deal with make-up schoolwork. Also, in comparison, the grandness of the rest of the weekend more than made up for the relatively minor hassle of getting there. Being there for the blessed event was worth whatever it took.