Our Itinerary
As many of you know, I’m a planner to the n-th degree, so yes, our gap had a pretty well established itinerary. Now that we're back, David wrote a blog on some things we learned about travel planning and travel itself. He covers more about how we built our itinerary, how far ahead we booked things and more. The basis for our itinerary was three specific things we want to see:
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Safari great migration - August
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Northern lights in Norway - September
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Cherry Blossoms in Japan - April.
The rest of our travels were built around those three things.
We tried to give ourselves some more time in cities that we’d like to get to know or use as a home base for day trips (10 ish days is longer for us). Other cities were quick stops (2-3 nights) to see someplace with our own eyes and note our interest for the future. Though we’d have liked to have more longer stays we also learned that some countries just have SO MUCH TO SEE and so moving around was just part of this years’ adventure as well.
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For posterity, our itinerary:
July 23 - depart LAX for Istanbul, Turkey
July 24 - 27 - Istanbul, Turkey
July 27 - August 19- South Africa (Cape Town, Garden Route to Port Elizabeth, Panorama Route from Johannesburg, Drakensberg Mountains from Durban)​
August 19 - September 2 - Safari in Tanzania & beach time on Zanzibar
September 2 - 26 - Norway (Oslo, Bergen, Ålesund, Tromsø, Lofoten Islands)
September 26 - 30 - Stockholm, Sweden
September 30 - October 20 - Croatia (Zagreb, Zadar, Dubrovnik) & Montenegro (Tivat) ​
October 20 - 30 - Madrid, Spain (w/day trips)
October 30 - November 2 - San Sebastián, Spain
November 2 - 12 - Porto, Portugal (w/day trips)
November 12 - 22 - Lisbon, Portugal (w/day trips)
November 22 - 28 - Seville, Spain (w/day trips)
November 28 - December 4 - Valencia, Spain
December 4 - 22 - Morocco (13 day tour, 6 nights in Taghazout on the beach)​
December 22 - January 2 - Egypt (Josh is joining us!)
January 2 - 7 - Dubai
January 7 - 11 - Maldives
January 11 - 15 - Singapore
January 15 - February 14 - Vietnam (Mark & Marissa with us for a bit)
February 14 - March 4 - Laos
March 4 - 20 - Cambodia
March 20 - 25 - Hong Kong
March 25 - April 26 - Japan (Molly & Enrique with us for a bit)
April 26 - May 10 - South Korea (Rachael is about to book flights!)
May 10 - June 27 - Indonesia (Java, Bali, Flores, Lombok)
June 27 - July 1 - Taiwan
July 1 - 14 - Los Angeles Baby!
July 14 - 31 - Northern Cali visiting friends & family
July 31 - HOME in Truckee!!​​
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