Around-the-world (ATW) preview

It looks almost certain now that, come September 15, Marlene and I will be embarking on an epic around-the-world trip. We will be away nearly 10 weeks. It will consist of two cruises – a transpacific and a transatlantic – two flights – from Fort Myers to Seattle and from Sydney Australia to Rome Italy – and a month in a rental car bumming around Europe. I will break it down into three segments:

• ATW-1: Fort Myers FL to Sydney Australia (25 nights). The trip will begin with two days in Florida, delivering Becky to Marlene’s brother in Coral Springs FL. We will stay overnight with him, then return home on Day 2 to finish packing. On the morning of Day 3 a friend will take us to the airport in Fort Myers and we will fly to Seattle. We will take a taxi to our hotel. On Day 4 we will board the Carnival Luminosa for our 22-night (technically 23 nights as we lose a day crossing the International Date Line) trip to Sydney Australia. Day 10 will be in Oahu HI and Day 16 will be in Papeete Tahiti. We visit Morea and Noumea on Days 17 and 23 and land in Sydney on Day 26.
• ATW-2: Sydney to Rome, with an auto tour of Europe (28 nights). This segment begins with 3 nights in a hotel in Sydney. On Day 4 we board a plane for a long (11 hours) flight to Chengdu China. We have a 20-hour layover there, then fly to Rome, landing on Day 6. We spend 2 days in a hotel in Rome, mostly recovering from the trip there, but also visiting the Vatican (one of Marlene’s bucket list items). On Day 8 we pick up a rental car at the airport and spend 6 nights getting up to Paris (the exact route TBD). We spend 4 nights in Paris, visiting my high school best friend and author, David Benjamin, and his wife, then take 3 days to get to Venice (again, route TBD). Three nights in Venice, two nights in Florence and 3 more nights in Rome (without the car, which we will return on Day 26) will complete this segment.
• ATW-3: Rome to Tampa FL (14 nights). This is the simplest of the three segments. We will find a way to get from our Rome hotel to the Carnival Miracle in Civitavecchia, the port city for Rome, and will sail on it for 14 nights to Tampa. How we get from Tampa back to Fort Myers is TBD, but there is a bus which we will take if we can’t arrange anything better. The ship will stop in Cartagena Spain (Day 3), Ponta Delgada Azores (Day 6) and Nassau Bahamas (Day 13) before docking in Tampa on Day 15).

I worry a bit that this trip will cure me of my desire to travel, but hopefully not. It certainly won’t break the bank. Even with me taking on the full cost of the rental car and all hotels I think it will run between $5,000 and $6,000 – less than half of what I expected to spend on the TC1 – the aborted first transatlantic cruise for Jett and me back in 2018. This is going to be a very economical epic trip due to my ability to find cheap flights and Marlene’s ability to find cheap cruises. And we can both be very frugal on the road portion of the trip.

Total: 68 days, 67 nights. Whew!

I will be taking a lot of photos.