We are officially committed. There is no turning back now! We made Round-The-World (RTW) ticket purchases through AirTreks. Our travel agent was most helpful in finding alternate routes, cheapest routes, etc. We were only able to make actual flight reservations through the end of September, since reservations are available one-year in advance. We will have to make the reservations for our final leg at a later time.
After reviewing the various itineraries, our 6-month RTW ticket comes to ~$4800/traveler, which includes travel insurance and cancelation insurance.
Here is a rough outline of our flight pattern. We will experience layovers in a wide variety of destinations; experience many different airlines we have never heard of; and basically plan on lengthy travel times. Oh well. That's part of the adventure!
(We are taking a major detour to Tokyo first, but will be back to the States to start our official RTW journey). Layover spots in italics. Atlanta, Georgia > Miami, Florida > Caracas, Venezuela > Quito, Ecuador > Lima, Peru > Santiago, Chile > Buenos Aires, Argentina > back to Quito, Ecuador > Madrid, Spain > Istanbul, Turkey > Riga, Latvia > Tel Aviv, Israel....That's all we've got booked so far. Destinations past September will include Asia.
Airlines we will be flying: American Airlines, Air Baltic, Lan Airlines, Santa Barbara Airlines.
I must confess. I have some butterflies in my stomach from two things: our first major purchase towards this trip, and the significance of the purchase towards making this more of a reality than ever before.
