Gap Year by the Numbers

Ilene
Jul 5
2 min read

Updated: Aug 20

Traveling this past year was full of adventure, memories, eye opening experiences, uncomfortable moments and a lot of learning. It was also full of traveling - of all sorts. Commercial planes, bush planes, sea planes, bullet trains, regional trains, metros, tuk-tuks, cars (on both sides of the road), vans, buses, ferries, boats and I’m sure I’m missing a thing or two. Where we rested our heads varied from hotels to apartments, homes, treehouses, Bedouin tents and airport lounges - it happens! Given all that we thought it might be fun to recap the year in data.

342 nights

101+ cities

24 countries

First though, a fun, though lengthy, visualization of our year around the world.

TRANSPORTATION MODES

We netted out with 55 flight segments totalling about 55,000 miles. And though flying was by far the main way we covered distance, we were fortunate to have only a couple of delays along the way and only one rescheduled flight. We rented cars in a few countries, driving on the left side of the road in S. Africa and Japan. Trains were most common in Europe and Japan and ferries in Norway. Fortunately most Norway ferries were calm on the beautifully glassy fjords, though we did get on one that was truly unfortunate and not just for us. Let's just say the crew kept bringing bags to the trash at the back of the ship where we stood staring intently on the horizon.

BY REGION

Our goal had been to visit countries we had not been to before and as David and I had traveled very little in Asia, that is where we spent the majority of our time. Spain and Portugal were mostly new for both of (we’d been to Barcelona but nowhere else in Spain). And though Ilene had visited Norway and Sweden, it had been back in her college days. Africa was a whole new continent added to our travel stats with Morocco, Egypt, South Africa and Tanzania.

ACCOMMODATIONS TYPES

As we've shared along the way we used a mix of accommodation types, really enjoying the benefits of the HomeExchange platform for slower travel. Hotels are hotels and definitely serve a purpose. Apartments are rentals and not quite homes. They never seem to have the cooking oils or spices you need for a decent meal or the comforts gained from someone who actually lives there. HomeExchange really bring it home, especially a "primary" home or even a "secondary" home that is not rented. We stayed in amazing home exchanges ranging from a family heritage farmhouse on the fjords in the Lofoton Islands of Norway, a villa in Ubud, Bali, an owners apartment above their B&B on the beach in Wilderness, South Africa and many others. One of our favorites had to be in Valencia where a beautiful family had a great flat in an awesome neighborhood. We walked in and immediately felt at home - everything from a comfy couch for binging some Netflex to an open concept great room, amazing kitchen, dishwasher and washing machine!!!