Patti: So we are 36 hours away from our departure. I am describing our iternary as it is set out as of today. We fully expect that things will change as we go along, but want to have a reference for what was "supposed to be" compared to what actually happens. As of about 3 months ago, this plan has been fairly consistent. We decided to divide our year of travel into 3 medium length trips instead of one very long, around the world trip. For both of us, it seemed overwhelming to think about being away for a whole year and we wanted a chance to reconnect and reload. The first trip, from September to Christmas, includes a cycle trip through part of Europe and then Africa (without our bikes). The second trip is South America from mid-January to the end of March. This trip did have a minor change to it as we started planning more because it originally included Costa Rica, which we have now removed. This was because, in July of this year, we had a great road/camping trip in western Canada so we want to leave time in July and August of 2008 to spend more time taking advantage of the beautiful places closer to home. The last trip (April until the end of June) will take us to southeast Asia, focusing on Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, and perhaps Nepal.
So for the first leg of our travels, we start with flying to Frankfurt with our bikes. We will ride out of the airport and try to find the campground that exists in the city. Hopefully we only need a day to get rested and then we will begin our ride west, along the Rhine and to Luxembourg. From Luxembourg we will pack our bikes on the train and head to Amsterdam. From there, we are back on our bikes, south along the coast of Holland to Belgium, when we will begin to head back east. Once we hit Brussels, we'll take a sharp right south and into France. Our hope is to find some accomodations on the outskirts of Paris to take the train in so we don't have to navigate the city on our bikes.Once we get back on the road, we will head southeast towards the northern part of Italy. However, once we start getting into some elevation climbs (i.e. the Alps), we will once again jump on a train to get to the other side. One of the routes that had us most excited and motivated about being our bikes was to ride through Tuscany, which will have us hitting Florence, Sienna, and Rome. Once we get to Rome (hopfully by the beginning of November) we will travel back to Frankfurt by train or plane, where we will store our bikes while we fly off to Africa. We fly to Johannesburg, take a train to Phalobowra where my cousin lives with her family. We will spend a week or so day tripping into Kruger National Park. The remaining 4 weeks in Africa will be spent in Namibia, doing a self-guided and/or guided safari. One unexpexted addition to our trip already is a 3 day stay in Dubai, which will be stop-over when we fly from Frankfurt to Johannesburg. It just so happened that the airline we are flying is from UAE so it take a regular stop in Dubai anyways. We are just extending it from 3 hours to 3 days. This is the first example of what more we hope to come; opportunities that present themselves that we feel we need to take advantage of.
