the plan

After seriously stressing about how we would get to the top 173 places we wanted to visit when we decided to spend a year traveling, and taking respective time-outs after a slightly ridiculous fight about whether or not we should include Morocco in our plans because the first time we only made it to Tangier (or “Moroccan Disneyland” as we called it), which doesn’t really count, we were calm enough to approach planning with a sense of logic.

We had traveled a decent amount together, hitting over 15 countries in the previous 8 years, but we were always inclined to pack as much into each trip as possible. Heading to Oktoberfest? Let’s throw London, Amsterdam, and Budapest in too! For this trip, we wanted to try to travel much more slowly and really get to know the culture of each place as much as possible. We decided to split the world into three main regions we wanted to visit and spend a third of the year in each. For multiple reasons, we decided to skip India and Africa entirely, even though Giraffe Manor is still very much on the radar! We narrowed it down to Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

We wanted to be really spontaneous about the whole trip and sort of go wherever seemed like a good idea as we were on the road, but quickly realized we were basically delusional. First of all, we’re super lucky to have family and friends that want to meet up with us in various places throughout the year, so we kind of needed to let them know when and where we’d be. Secondly, we’re points and miles travelers. Until just a few months before the trip, we hadn’t “paid” for a plane ticket in 5 years, aside from a mistake fare to Abu Dhabi that cost $178 each. And, unfortunately, with travel hacking, comes lots of research and planning.

find out more about travel hacking here

So we made a general game plan, with about 35% of it is really set in stone, hoped to be as adventurous as possible as the trip played out. Above, you can see where we ended up!

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