by Incredible… our last post is almost a year old!
Life is moving at a completely crazy pace and, we’ve been swept up in the endless spiral of daily routine.
Yes, that same suffocating routine we are trying to escape!
So, where are we now with our travel project?
Good news: we’re still doing our trip around the world!
However, we’ve had to make a few changes to our initial plan. (yes, again!)
Changes 1 & 2: Departure date and trip duration
We originally planned to leave at the end of summer 2019 for one year.
For financial reasons and to give ourselves a bit more time to prepare for this insane project, we decided to push it back a little—but extend the duration.
We are now aiming to leave in February 2020, and we’ll be gone for 18 months!
Change 3: Our Round-the-World Itinerary
By extending the length of our trip, we’re taking the opportunity to slightly modify our itinerary.
Nothing is set in stone. We keep adjusting based on new information we find and how we want to travel (we want to be able to take our time, even if that means removing countries).
Here’s a quick summary of the current plan:
- South & East United States (2–3 weeks)
- Tour of Europe (6–7 months)
- South Korea (2–3 weeks)
- Japan (1–2 months)
- Taipei, Taiwan (1 week — still deciding!)
- Singapore (1 week)
- Australia (2–3 months)
- New Zealand (3–4 weeks)
- Hawaii (1–2 weeks)
As you can see, everything is approximate!
Planning a family round-the-world trip is extremely complex.
Quite the challenge for someone like me who over-plans most of the time!
For the past few months we’ve especially been confused about our Europe portion. Lots of blog reading, video watching, and still no concrete answers.
First step: we listed all the countries we wanted to visit in Europe.
We ended up with 30… we know, way too many for the time we have!
Right now, our route looks like this. Based on our calculations, it adds up to 125 hours of driving over 7 months. It’s reasonable, but still a bit too long.
Another complication: since we are Canadian, we cannot stay more than 90 days per 180 in the Schengen Zone.
A real puzzle for our planning… stay tuned!!
Another tricky part: our mode of transportation!
Buying a car? Car rental? Buying an RV/campervan? Train?
After countless discussions, we finally found the ideal solution for our family:
a six-month long-term car rental.
That way, we’ll have the freedom to leave the beaten path, visit less touristy places, stay in our own bubble, and just be ourselves.
We’ve done dozens of road trips, with plenty of trial and error when it comes to organizing the inside of the car. Now we know what works for us and what doesn’t.
But most importantly—we love taking family road trips.
Between now and our departure, there will definitely be more changes to the plan.
It’s hard work, but we’re having fun gathering information and planning this amazing project.
We’ve involved the kids in the process—we show them what we find and ask what interests them.
C. wants to visit space museums,
S. wants to visit New York (not for the Statue of Liberty—nope! To eat ice cream at Jacques Torres’ shop!)
Meanwhile, N. wants to see animals and especially lots and lots of insects!
The bright side in all of this:
We’re checking more and more boxes off the prep list we made last year!
And that’s pretty much our update on the round-the-world trip!