Tracy Carolyn Photography

Bariloche, Argentina (2009)

 When I spend too much time with my head buried in the planning, I sometimes forget the plan.

I’ve been reading travel books and blogs for months now.  I keep combing them for gems of must-see locations, budgeting tips, and packing lists.  I find these blogs both fascinating and troubling.

Most of these people are traveling hard core.  A different hostel every night (often staying in dorm rooms), carrying only two changes of clothing, showering every 2-3 days, and breaking their backs to schlep their stuff on trains, planes, and buses through country after country.

When I finally remember to pull myself away from these resources and take a breath, I am full of panic – how are we going to possibly do this?

The answer?  We aren’t.

John and I established early on that the new-bed-every-night way of travel isn’t what we want.  We want to find an apartment in a cool city, settle for a month, and then move to the next city and do the same thing.  We want to have a kitchen to cook in, a regular shower we don’t have to share with 20 other people, and some semblance of routine.  Otherwise, after about 3 months I think we’d honestly be cooked and ready to come home.

Our essential idea is the 4 to 1 ratio – for every week we spend “playing tourist” we’ll have four weeks of living.  So we’ll spend a week playing in Cuba, followed by a month living in Peru.  A week in Costa Rica, followed by a month in Nicaragua.  You get the idea.  This way we’ll have more time to really enjoy a culture and surroundings, rather than flying through it on the way to our next destination.

So if you had also been trying to picture the two of us scrambling from city to city, finding a new place to stay each night and washing our clothes in the bathroom sink, you can breathe a sigh of relief.  We will be moving in slow motion.

And hopefully showering more than every 3 days.

San Fernando, Philippines (2010)

Everyone has an opinion.

Just like when you are getting married or having a baby, when you are planning a trip around the world, everyone has an opinion.  The difference is, when you’re planning a trip, other people’s ideas can actually be really helpful. :)

We’ve got a rough plan of where we want to go, but there are a few countries and cities that are on the bubble – the place of indecision between cutting them out of the plan or adding them back in.  If you’ve been there (or even have a secondhand story to share), that could help tip the scales one way or the other.

So bring it on.   I want to hear about your favorite spot in the world (outside the US, please), and why you think we should go there.  Even if you think we’re already planning to visit there, tell me why YOU loved it.

This is just about the best time for us to make adjustments to our plans and include your ideas, so please leave your suggestions in the comments.  Many thanks for taking the time to share!

Just look at that map.  Someone got an A for presentation in college, and it wasn’t me.

(Well, it probably was me.  I got a lot of As.  But I didn’t make the map.)

John took this little project upon himself both for explanatory and inspirational purposes.  He mounted it on poster board and everything.

How cute is that?  Very cute, I say.

I find this map very inspiring.  It makes me want to add pins to Africa and Russia so we can cover more of the globe.  Not that we aren’t already being crazy ambitious.  This route we have planned is a little intimidating.

I’m sure that from the photo you can’t even remotely tell where the pins are.  But trust me, there are a lot of countries under those pins.

A lot of cool countries.  Countries I’m excited to visit, and not entirely sure we’ll have enough time for.

So some of them may have to be removed.  Some may get added.  That’s the fun of this little map, right?  We get to keep playing and changing our minds, looking to see what we want to add or delete to our tentative itinerary.  Then once we hit the road, who knows what will happen to this plan – we may change the whole thing on the fly.

For the next couple of months, we get to keep playing with our potential itinerary and trying out ideas.  Adding, removing, and rearranging pins on our giant map.

Awesome.