- 16 flights
- Over 50,000 miles
- 6 continents
- 2 times around the world
- 12+ months
And that is only getting us started!
We’ve only loosely planned the major hub flights for our trip. From these hub cities we will make side trips to other destinations.
What kind of ticket did we get? Well, there are various “round-the-world” type tickets and they are actually very reasonable when you consider what it would cost individually. Some tickets with 5 or 6 stops can be gotten for $2500-$3000. They usually have very strict rules and most require you to travel in only one direction east or west and you cannot backtrack.
Meeta and I have been saving miles on our AA credit card for YEARS. Meeta has been hording the miles and had not been willing to use them for any trips even though I have questioned that thinking on many occasions. It was not until we contemplated doing this tripped that we realized why we had been saving those miles all of these years. It turns out that using miles for a RTW ticket is a very efficient use of miles. For 160,000 miles you can book an economy class ticket to travel 35,000-50,000 miles on airlines in the oneworld alliance. That’s enough flight miles to go around the world two times. For 330,000 miles you can get the same ticket in first class.
Meeta and I are generally very frugal and we had only been on a true first class flight once (Hawaiian interisland flights don’t count). However, the thought of being able to fly these long international flights in first was very appealing. The problem was that even with all of this miles hording, we were 10,000 miles short! Luckily, I had a stray AA account with 13,000 miles in it and we transferred the miles over and had enough to book 3 first class tickets around the world. The booking of the flights took a lot of time, persistence and patience, but even with us planning this entire trip to leave in less than a month, we were able to get the flights we need to make it happen. The flights that we will take outside of this itinerary will all be on our dime, but we are not too concerned about them, because they will be relatively short flights in markets that have lots of low cost carriers.
So you will see a lot of emphasis on the first class seats and the lounges and such. This is not because are gloating about it, but because we are so excited to be able to do this and know a lot of our friends and family would appreciate seeing what it is like.
We may also take some train and boat trips.
It should be quite an adventure.
Keep checking back here because we will be using this as the general outline of our travels with links to the more detailed blog entries.
Here are the flights so far, each of these are stops. If there is a flight in between two cities, it is a connection flight.
21/May/2013 – HNL>OGG then OGG>DFW>BOS. The start of our journey! The reason for leaving from OGG is because of a funky rule with the ticket that says we cannot stopover or connect in the starting city. Since we need to come back to HNL in January, we used OGG as the starting city.
25/May/2013 – BOS>LHR. This was our first time in a true first class cabin pod. It was amazing!
08/Jun/2013 – LHR>ROM
09/Jun/2013 – A GREAT day in Rome, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, lots of Italian food. Our flat is 5 minute walk to everything. Meeta is threatening to never leave. We are exactly 12 hours ahead of Honolulu.
19/Jun/2013 – Road trip. We’ve rented a car for a month and will tour around Italy. First stop is Grosetto in Tuscany and where we will be enjoying the natural hot springs and beaches.
19/Jul/2013 – Paris
15/Aug/2013 – CDG > IST, Istanbul, Turkey
28/Aug/2013 – La Tomatina Bunol, Spain?
15/Sep/2013 – LHR>NBO
29/Sep/2013 – Check-in at Giraffe Manor
01/Oct/2013 – NBO>LHR>BOM
05/Oct/2013 – 13/Oct/2013 – Navratri. We plan to be in Baroda during part of Navratri
09/Nov/2013 – 17/Nov/2013 – Pushkar Camel Festival in Rajastan
18/Nov/2013 – BOM>HKG
25/Dec/2013 – Christmas in Hong Kong?
21/Jan/2014 – HKG>NRT
22/Jan/2014 – NRT>HNL
11/Feb/2014 – HNL>DFW
13/Feb/2014 -DFW>MEX
Late Feb/2014 – Monarch butterfly migration festival (Mariposa Festival) in Michoacán, Mexico
Mar/2014 Galapagos Islands
04/Mar/2014 – MEX>ORD
05/Mar/2014 – ORD>LHR>HEL
10/Apr/2014 – HEL>BKK
13/Apr/2014 – 15/Apr/2014 – Songkran festival in Bangkok