July update
Hello again!
Let’s get into it!
Researching:
One down point of being me is my desperate neeeeeeeeed to either know ‘the plan’ or to meticulously plan however the other side of me (the well travelled side), knows this is the most ridiculous thing ever because travel never goes to plan!
But still, I’ve spent hours and hours and hours researching for our upcoming trip.
Between my iPhone, iPad and BK’s new surface pro computer tablet (which I have recently fallen in love with much to his frustration, a high spec’d machine used for Internet surfing isn’t his idea of money well spent! Haha!) I’ve clocked up solid days if not weeks of research!
I have researched flight paths and costings, accommodation, transportation, road tolls in Europe, visas, places to do a safari that will actually take kids under 10 (none as of yet!!!), cruises, places to volunteer, vaccinations, other people’s daily budgets, how to educate the children – including what the NZ Ministry of Education’s thoughts are on taking our kids out of school and overseas for a year which is apparently not a lot – and of course, stuff to do for families in all of the cities I plan for us to visit!
I’ve also read a LOT of blogs on how other families have done this thing. From families with only carry-on luggage to families driving motorhomes (RVs) across whole continents. From families of 2 adults to families of 2 adults and 9 kids (yes 9 kids and a bunch of those kids have special needs, wow). And everything in between.
All my researching has given me ideas for daily budgets, sometimes I think they are quite generous and sometimes I think we’ll be eating only toast! We’ll see how that goes. Let’s just say I’ll be watching the foreign exchange market closely. I saw the £ took a dive recently and I’m still on the fence whether to buy any or not. If I did I would probably need to buy cash as currency cards start charging you after a year of not using them and so there goes any benefit from the good currency conversion!
My research is stored on a note on my phone, yes I know, not the smartest place to store it but I do regularly email it to myself and since my emails “live in the cloud so are always backed up” according to my onsite IT geek, I mean husband, I will forever have them. It’ll be interesting to look at very early editions of the notes to see how my planning/researching has evolved! At some stage I think I’ll have to move to an excel spreadsheet but for now, my phone is fine.
So after all that, a top tip from me: know which currency you’re looking at and if you’re a Kiwi like me, chances are if it has a $ at the front it’s not NZD! I learnt this the hard way as I may or may not have planned out almost my entire budget before Captain Obvious (aka the husband), announced “Ahh that’s American dollars you’re viewing!” Oops, oh well it is all part of the researching process.
And last but not least, here are some sites I’ve found useful so far!
Accomodation – airbnb.com
Flights – skyscanner.com
Transport – peugeoteurolease.co.nz
(Any suggestions on how to get a car in the states for 3 months are welcome. We hope to start in New York, NY and end in Portland, OR.)
Tolls – viamichelin.com
(Wow European tolls are expensive! I can see how they think it’s better to get the tourist to pay rather than the taxpayer though.)
Until next time,
Claire