May 15

May 15 Rough itinerary

When we started planning this trip, it struck us (again) how big and vast this world is!!!!! We are planning to travel, at least, 14 months and will only see a tiny fraction of this amazing planet! We are doing a mixture of slow* and traditional/fast traveling. The first months will be mainly fast traveling and the longest we will stay in one place is 10 days. The second part of our trip (around September) we will start slowing down and are hoping to stay for weeks and even a month in certain places. Here is our rough itinerary:

- Nordics, 40 days: we will be flying into Oslo (Norway). We will spend 9 days exploring southern Norway. After that we will fly into Copenhagen (Denmark) and spend 7 days in that country (including a necessary stop at the original LegoLand!). From there we will spend 7 days in Sweden, exploring mainly the south western peninsula and Stockholm. We fly from Stockholm to Helsinki (Finland) and will spend 14 days in the southern part of Finland. This will include a 72 hour trip to St. Petersburg (Russia). We fly from Helsinki to Berlin (Germany) at the end of June.

- Mainland EU: we will explore Berlin for several days and then take the train to Belgium. We will be visiting friends and family for several days and then starting our 45 day road trip through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, France, Spain and ending in Portugal. We will spend 2 weeks at my parents house in southern Portugal! We fly from Madrid (Spain) into Athens (Greece). We will be in Greece for 7 days before heading to Istanbul (Turkey).

- Going East: from Istanbul we fly to Dubai for a couple of days. From Dubai we fly to Manila (Philippines).

- South East Asia: this part of the trip is not set yet and we have started our research. This is where we will start slow traveling. We have 3 months in this area and are considering the various countries.

- Australia and New Zealand: we have our flight from Kuala Lampur (Malaysia) booked on December 1st into Sydney (Australia). We have a home exchange arranged for the month of December in Sydney. We will likely travel in Australia for the month of January and fly into New Zealand early February. February and mid March will be in NZ and then we head to Japan.

- Japan: everyone in our family has always been intrigued with this country and we are planning to spend 2 1/2 months.

Our trip around the world!!! (look at how many, huge, blank gaps there are….)

This is our rough itinerary (although the first part of the trip, until Istanbul, is booked and planned) and are excited to see where we will end up! We are open minded and are conscious that not everything will always go as planned. We are hoping that when we are in Japan we will be ready to keep traveling and exploring the world, however we might also decide that it’s time to have a set home and a steady school for the kids.

We are ready for the world to amaze us and to explore what it has to offer.

*slow traveling: Slow Travel is a mindset that rejects traditional ideas of tourism and encourages you to soak in your environments and keep yourself open to new experiences.