Behind the scenes - planning the trip

We had been thinking about taking a break from work for a long time to do some travelling. We agreed that the kids, who are now ages 10 and 12, were about the right age for an extended trip. Any later and we felt we would be impacting their studies too much. I must admit that Catheleen was the main driver for this trip, but I came around soon enough.

A question I get often is how did we plan out the trip? The short answer is just ensure your spouse likes planning trips and just let her do everything. But even so, it took some stages of planning and the input from everyone, including the kids, to help ensure a viable and enjoyable trip for all.

We first thought to take a year off and go to France where the kids could go to school, and where we would be able to travel around Europe on weekends and school holidays. But we found it too difficult to arrange for a year long stay in France or other European countries, especially with the kids. The rules for France indicate a concern that we could be trying to establish residency. We also looked into house swapping with someone else in the world but found this hard to arrange for a whole year.

So we settled on a six month trip from July though December, with stops of a few weeks at a time in a range of countries. This would then fit easily within the maximum visit length for tourists for each country, and would mean less time out of work and school.

We confirmed the home schooling regulations for Ontario, and later sent letters to the school board to inform them of our plans. For home schooling, we plan for the kids to blog their experiences regularly to practise their writing, and complete a math syllabus for their grade level.

We agreed on the countries to visit based on our interests and the weather mainly, and we created a budget. Star Alliance is a consortium of airlines which provide planning and pricing tools online, which we found very helpful to book most of our international flights around the Pacific; they also offer around-the-world tickets. We worked out when we could end our employment and we budgeted for a reasonable period of time upon return to find work. We purchased most of our international flights three months in advance, and budgeted an allowance for food, accommodation, additional travel expenses, and activities in each country. Travel books were a good source of information. We considered renting our house, but we doubted we could rent it for only six months. In the end we decided to save ourselves the hassle by arranging for house sitters instead. We included budget to pay for house expenses, insurance and other expenses while we were gone, and arranged for travel medical insurance.

Since it would not be high tourist season for any of the countries we planned to visit, we are doing much of the remaining planning as we go. This includes booking locations and accommodations to visit within a country, and booking land or air transport between these areas.

Thanks to Catheleen for doing all the planning and booking. I'm just along for the ride.