Round the World Ticket

At 113 days to go we've finally achieved a major milestone - agreeing and confirming the Round World Ticket booking with Star Alliance. The tremendous value offered by this 28 member airline alliance was the starting point for us and makes our ambitious expedition feasible. To a limited extent the itinerary has been influenced by the Round the World (RTW) arrangements.

Our Travel Agent (and miracle worker) Jenni has been performing amazing feats of manipulation to minimise the overall cost and stay below the mileage and sector thresholds and going into bat for us with the Star Alliance booking people.

We're pretty amazed that Jenni has got our itinerary pretty much memorised and dreams about it at night (we're not quite sure if they're pleasant ones or nightmares.

RTW tickets are a much cheaper way of arranging international travel (rather than buying separate flights from one destination to another). This concept allows you to fly around the world, usually over a period of up to a year and with up to a maximum of 16 stops (including surface segments) at different airports. There are a number of additional constraints relating mostly to milage and direction travelled. Apparently there is also a limitation on the number of available seats on any particular flight (for RTW travellers).

With 28 separate airlines, covering over 162 countries and 975 destinations, Star Alliance is the champion for sheer number of destinations. The other two airline alliances in the RTW ticket market are the 11-member Oneworld alliance with Skyteam 11 airline alliance running a distant third.

Our RTW ticket consists of the following sectors flying with (all the pictures are hyperlinked):

Air Canada

• Sydney to Vancouver
• Banff to Las Vegas

Continental Airlines

• Las Vegas to New York

United Airlines

• New York to Washington (Colgan Air)
• Washington to Miami (Mesa Air Group)

Lufthansa

• Miami to Frankfurt
• Frankfurt to Istanbul
• Berlin to Frankfurt
• Frankfurt to New Delhi

Aegean Airlines

• Istanbul to Athens
• Athens to Mykonos
• Santorini to Athens

Tyrolean Airways

• Budapest to Vienna

Austrian Airlines

• Vienna to Berlin

Singapore Airlines

• New Delhi to Singapore
• Singapore to Ho Chi Min City

British Airways
(non Star Alliance airline)

• Venice to London
• London to Amsterdam

China Southern Airlines
(non Star Alliance airline)

• Hong Kong to Guangzhou
• Guangzhou to Guilin
• Guilin to Xian

China Eastern Airlines
(non Star Alliance airline)

• Xian to Shanghai 

 

Thai Airways International

• Shanghai to Bangkok
• Bangkok to Chaing Mai
• Chaing Mai to Bangkok
• Bangkok to Sydney

Alaska Airlines

(non Star Alliance airline)

• Seattle to Fairbanks

Vietnam Airlines

(non Star Alliance airline)

• Ho Chi Min to Da Nang
• Da Nang to Hanoi
• Hanoi to Hong Kong

___________________________

That's all for now but before you leave,

Have you seen the previous page titled " Planning " yet? (click on the link to take you there)

_____________________________________

Preparation

"the planning can be more fun than the trip itself . . . ."

Welcome to Roger & Helen's trip diary "Round the World in 200 days" - the complete travel chronicle from Vancouver through to Bangkok. If you haven't already heard, we'll be visiting twenty two countries (the Caribbean island of St Maarten - St Martin counts as one country) between July 2011 and January 2012.

If you've followed our previous travel blogs you'll already know that we think publishing an online diary is a great way to keep in touch with family, friends and colleagues whilst we're away. We plan to document our trip as we go so you get a taste of what we've been up to pretty much as soon as its happened. We think it's much better than postcards especially since we never send postcards.

We hope this introductory page gives you a bit of an idea about what's planned so far.

In previous blogs we've produced a daily bulletin of news and photos however the prospect of producing 200 posts is far too daunting (even Roger couldn't keep this up for the whole journey) so we're going with Rah's suggestion that a post per place / tour might be manageable. So, the table below is a proposed list of the posts we've decided to publish whilst we're away. There might be the occasional "special" edition along the way - we'll all just have to wait and see.

If your preferred method of staying current is Facebook, (and you're already one of our Facebook friends), you should start seeing semi-regular update reminders on one or both of our walls. The blog's web address (by the way) is http://rtwin200.blogspot.com/.


The map at the top of the page shows a simplified path of where we're going. It shows the route of the entire journey. As traveling begins we'll show where we're up to using Google Maps.


If you're interested in following our adventure from now until next January and you're familiar with using RSS feeds - why don't you subscribe? One easy way is to have an RSS reader gadget on your iGoogle page.

It would be terrific if you became a follower of this blog. It would also be fantastic you were to keep touch by sending us the occasional online comment.

To send a comment just click on the comments link here or at the end of every post). You don't need a Blogger account to do this - just enter your name and then select "Other". We'd love to get your questions and feedback.

We'd also really appreciate any helpful hints of what to do and see and what not to forget during the planning. There's a huge list of things to research in the time we have left. (The countdown clock near the top of the page is already becoming a little bit scary to think about) . . . . . . .


Roger & Helen.

Blog Publishing Schedule

DESTINATION / ODYSSEY	Publication on
Vancouver and Seattle	12/7/2011
Alaska Tour and Cruise	25/7/2011
Canadian Rockies	1/8/2011
Las Vegas / Grand Canyon	4/8/2011
New York	11/8/2011
Washington	15/8/2011
Florida	21/8/2011
Caribbean Cruise	29/8/2011
Istanbul	2/9/2011
Turkey Tour	15/9/2011
Greek Isles	29/9/2011
Rome, Florence, and Tuscany	8/10/2011
Mediterranean / Black Sea Cruise	20/10/2011
Venice	21/10/2011
Canal (Narrow Boat) Cruising	30/10/2011
London	1/11/2011
Rhine / Main / Danube River Cruise	17/11/2011
Berlin	21/11/2011
India	6/12/2011
Singapore	10/12/2011
Vietnam	24/12/2011
Hong Kong	27/12/2011
China	8/1/2012
Thailand	22/1/2012

_______________________________________