Itinerary
Our final itinerary on OneWorld ended up looking like:
Los Angeles - Auckland - Sydney - Bangkok - Amman - Tel Aviv - London - Venice - Rome (overland) - Madrid - Santiago - Buenos Aires - Bariloche - Buenos Aires - Lima - Miami - San Francisco
In terms of a more detailed itinerary, here’s how things unfolded:
| Jan 19 – Feb 24 | New Zealand | |
| Feb 25 – Mar 25 | Australia | |
| Mar 26 – April 16 | Vanuatu | |
| Apr 17 – Apr 21 | Nepal | |
| Apr 22 – May 6 | Bhutan | |
| May 7 – May 17 | Thailand | |
| May 18 – May 28 | Egypt (with Dirk) | |
| May 30 – Jun 3 | Egypt (Sharm el-Sheikh) | |
| Jun 4 – Jun 7 | Jordan | |
| Jun 8 – Jun 20 | Israel (with Sarah & Ilan) | |
| Jun 21 – Jun 28 | Currituck, NC (Ginny’s wedding!) | |
| Jun 29 – Jul 2 | London | |
| Jul 3 – Jul 25 | Tanzania (with Christi) | |
| Jul 26 – Aug 28 | United Kingdom | |
| Aug 29 – Sep 23 | Italy (with Fraziers & Maestrellis) | |
| Sep 24 – Oct 14 | Italy (solo) | |
| Oct 15 – Nov 15 | Spain | |
| Nov 16 – Nov 21 | Chile (Atacama) | |
| Nov 22 – Nov 28 | Argentina (Mendoza) | |
| Nov 29 – Dec 21 | Argentina/Chile (Patagonia) | |
| Dec 22 – Jan 4 | Argentina (Buenos Aires) | |
| Jan 5 – Jan 14 | Ecuador (Galapagos) | |
| Jan 15 – Jan 18 | Florida | |
| Jan 19 | San Francisco! |
Background
Planning our year-long trip around the world took weeks and weeks of laying out our most desirable destinations, thinking about our goals and themes for the trip, planning to be in each place during the right season, and stringing it all together in an order that made sense. Let’s just say there were numerous spreadsheet and grids involved. :) We also had to make some tough choices and pass on many places that we really want to see, someday – Southeast Asia, India, China, Scandinavia, Brazil, Central America, Alaska, and many other amazing places will just have to wait until the next trip (or more likely, trips).
Once we had the rough itinerary, we went about deciding how we were going to get everywhere. In the end, the OneWorld around-the-world tickets were the right choice for us: no mileage cap, up to 16 flight segments, complete flexibility for dates of travel, and reasonable change fees if/when we decide to change the list of cities we plan to fly to (or their order).