Around The World

You may already know this, but last year, after working 60 hours plus per week for many, many months, I had finally saved up enough to do my favorite thing in the world (no pun intended) -- Travel!

This time the trip was going to be around the world. Now, I am a planner and I usually like planning, but have you ever tried to plan a multi-month trip? It's not so much that we had to plan the day to day things, like buses and accommodation, but we did have to plan a few things ahead of time.

Here's the deal. We had the option of 6 stopovers. That means we could get out of the plane and stay out of the plane for over 24 hours SIX times. However, we got 16 "segments". A segment being any flight from point to point. For example, when flying from San Francisco to Madrid, we had a layover in Atlanta. So, SFO - ATL = 1 segment, ATL - MAD = 1 segment. 2 segments down, 14 to go.

At first it seemed like a lot. I mean, with only 6 stops, 16 segments should be fine, right?

But I haven't told you everything yet. This flight was being funded using airline miles. Have you ever tried to book an awards ticket? There are black out dates; you get the worst flight times (3 am flight anyone?); you have to fly from New Orleans to San Francisco via Boston. They don't always make it super convenient for  you.

So. We set out to plan. Not only where we wanted to go but how long we wanted to stay in each place. This is hard. This is already hard if it were only me planning it and it was a ticket I paid for so I could have any flight I wanted. Now, throw in a boyfriend who wants to go to Europe for 1 month, meaning 17 countries in 2 weeks and Portugal for two weeks. So, yeah, we had different opinions on EVERYTHING. How long we would stay in each continent was a discussion, let alone how long we would stay in each country!

I am of the "rather stay in one place longer than try to cram in many places" school of though. He is (was actually, but that's another story!) of the opposite school. Anyway, we finally narrowed it down after many arguments discussions and many weeks of planning. We decided on the 6 countries AND which city we would fly into and out of. Then we did all the research online. Which flights we liked the best, what times we wanted. Sounds great, right?

This was only the beginning. Next, we spent the ENTIRE day, and I do mean ENTIRE, on the phone trying to book the flights (You are not allowed to do it online. Poop). Delta had different ideas then we did however. We wanted to fly from Amsterdam to Cape Town. It's a direct flight. It would be perfect. What did Delta do? (WDDD?) They got us a flight from...Paris to Dubai to Nairobi to Maputo. Do you see any of the cities we picked in this list? No? Me neither. Now do you see where the segment thing got eaten up really fast? This counted as 3 segments! 3 x 6 = 18! This just would not do!

So it went like this. We would ask the lady about flight X. She would, inevitably say it wasn't available but that if we took flight Y, we could start in a city miles from where we would be, get rerouted through 4 different cities and then end in a city miles from where we wanted to be. Would that work for us?

And it did. I am making it out to be worse than it was, but we really did not get any very many of the flights that we wanted. However, it turned out fine.

The funny thing is, like I said above, I am a planner. Usually I like everything planned in advance so I know what to expect. When I travel, I don't mind throwing the spreadsheets out the window and doing things differently. If I love a city, I will stay for a few days, even if I thought I would only be there for a day. If someone says to me, "you have to go here! It is great!", I will go there and it will be great!

And picking these flights was the same. We threw the spreadsheets out the window. We let Delta do the picking. Because it doesn't really matter where you go, it only matters that you enjoy it, wherever it is.


Have you ever planned a really long trip? Did you have to plan anything beforehand? Was it hard? How did you do it?