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  Great choice! You are in for the adventure of a lifetime.  Let us share some lessons to make it easier:  Planning 365 Days, What You Really, Really Need in Your Suitcase, Packing for Men, Health on the Road, Packing – the Technology.  You can also look back HERE to see a detailed retrospective of the […]

Last month in China we had an important decision to make.  The latest update of the trip itinerary had a three week gap between the end of Latin America and the beginning of Africa.  How would we spend early May? At that time we wanted a change of pace and did not know what to […]

“Ms. Wilcox, please report to the check-in counter for a message.”  I hear my name over the PA system as I am eating soggy pesto spaghetti in the airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador.  We are waiting to board our flight to Costa Rica. The four of us race to the counter, half-expecting a message from our […]

We made it to Quito, Ecaudor last night and will be taking a flight to the Galapagos Islands this morning.  We are hoping to find turtles, sea lions and dancing birds. Peru has been one of our favorite countries, and we are working on pictures and blogs to share the story.  You will not see them […]

We were waiting in line for the toilets.  The ride from Machu Picchu to Ollanta had been almost two hours and Nature was calling. As I waited for the kids, I entertained myself by eavesdropping on conversations of those in line.  One group of four women was particularly interesting.  They were American and about my […]

  If you strategically omit patience and our tempers, our record on what we’ve lost so far is really not so bad. With more than twenty countries and countless transfers by plane, train, bus, boat, and taxi, it’s a miracle we haven’t lost all our worldly possessions.  Fortunately, we haven’t lost anything irreplaceable, like say, […]

      On April 20 we sadly bid farewell to the Asia/Australia time zones – our home for the past three months – and entered a new chapter:  South America!  We were all excited to see a new continent, but first we had to get there.  The itinerary called for a journey on April 20 from […]

Well, almost.  The high-speed train we took from Nanjing to Shanghai is as sleek and shiny as a silver bullet and, at 300 km/hr, goes almost as fast.  Everything in China seems to be new and improved, or at least improving.  Transportation is no exception.  This particular train is less than a year old and […]

We had a red-eye flight into Hong Kong that proved easier than expected, due to the kindness of a Kingfisher employee who saw the kids and decided to upgrade our seats!  Thank goodness for a decent night’s rest. The goals for Hong Kong were simple:  first, to rest and rejuvenate after a couple of weeks of intense […]

When we were in France, I fell in love with the castle Chenonceau.  In India, I fell in love with The Lake Palace.  The Lake Palace was the summer residence of the Maharana of Udaipur. Maharana means warrior king and is a title distinct from Maharaja.  The current ruling dynasty in Udaipur has stood for […]

When the day finally arrived to leave Paris, we dried our tears and left home four hours early for the train station.  We knew there would be some sort of weather delay because heavy snows had already cancelled most of the Eurostar trains from Paris to London the day before.  We stumbled out of the […]

We have now completed six weeks in Paris. Any notion of sitting quietly at cafés has been dispelled by the sheer magnitude and opportunity of arriving at the city, hosting visitors, setting up an apartment and enrolling family members in various activities.  This is the absolute best place on our year-long itinerary for friends and […]

Using a US cellphone in foreign countries is prohibitively expensive.  For this reason we brought an unlocked GSM cellphone.  We planned to buy prepaid SIM cards in each country where we would stay for a long time.  We also brought a SIM card from GymSIM that offers discounted international calling around the world, so we could use that for the shorter […]

After a 90 minute tarmac flight delay in Munich and an endless wait for baggage handling, we finally made it out of the Copenhagen airport late in the night (so late it was dark even in summer when they get 19 hours of sunlight!). Our bleary eyes could not miss this sign though. It seems […]

Off we went to the airport. Air Italia helpfully provided us the weights of all the baggage.  The biggest bag weighs 23kg, just a hair below the limit where they start to charge a fee.  This is the bag the contains electronics and tour books!  The other three roller bags weigh 19kg.  Carry-ons weigh 7kg for […]

Yes that is Gina, standing in an empty driveway in front of a clean house and cheering. Getting out the door for this journey was a lot of work! Although we had agreed to rent our home furnished to cut out the labor of moving, we realized eventually this simply meant the furniture would stay. […]

Good grief!  It is just about time to go.  Over the past few months we worked as a family to sort out all the details of a year’s travel abroad.  We started with the outline of the itinerary.  The trip spans six continents and roughly 30 countries and is the journey of a lifetime.  The […]