The End… for now

It’s sad to say, but our round-the-world journey is officially over.

 

The travel gods were looking after us one more time on our way home from Auckland. The four hours of layover time we had given ourselves at LAX had dwindled to one hour after our Auckland to LAX flight was delayed and our LAX to SEA flight was mysteriously moved up. There was no way we could navigate immigration, customs, pick up our bags, and make it to our gate in time. To make matters worse, all the flights leaving for SEA that afternoon were completely booked. We were preparing ourselves mentally for Christmas in Disneyland.

 

After landing in Los Angeles, we hustled through customs and immigration as fast as we could, and made it to the Alaska Airlines desk just about the time our flight was scheduled to take off. We let out a big sigh of relief when they told us that our flight had been delayed two hours and that we’d be able to make our flight. For once, we were actually happy for our plane to be delayed.

 

Anyway, that was about the extent of our travel excitement. We made it back to our home town of Port Orchard in one piece. The foot of snow on the ground was kind of fun – at least to look at. It was nice to spend Christmas with our families, something we hadn’t been able to do very often during our stint in NYC.

 

Thanks everyone for following along on our liltte break from reality. The job market isn’t looking too hot, so make sure to check back in a few weeks in case we’ve decided to postpone reality just a little bit longer.

 

If you’re curious, here’s a few things we thought stood-out along the way:  

 

RTW Best Of:

 

-Favorite Sight: Machu Picchu

-Favorite City: 5 way tie between Buenos Aires, Bruges, London, Prague and Sydney

-Favorite Country: Belgium

-Favorite Continent: Australia

-Best Beach: Roatan, Honduras

-Least Tourist-Friendly City: Moscow. We think they like it that way.

-Tidiest City: Singapore. One misstep, and you get slapped with a hefty fine. NYC could learn a thing or two.

-Best Lodging Value: $100 night at the Hilton in London via Hotwire.com 
-Most Unusual Lodging: A ship called the Waitanic in Waitomo, New Zealand. How many people can say they’ve slept in a boat converted into a motel? 

-Most Scenic Train: Lucern to Interlaken, Switzerland.
-Most Un-nerving Train Moment: Conductor on night train from Krakow to Prague warning us to sleep with our money under our pillows because of all the robberies.

-Most Memorable Flight: Short flight to the Bay Islands of Honduras. The plane looked like a shipping container with wings. Air conditioning consisted of the pilot opening up the windows in the cockpit. Nothing like feeling the wind in your hair at 10,000 feet.
-Best Airport for a Lengthy Layover: London Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

-Most Traveler Carnage: Thailand. Rashes, broken limbs, burns, bites, slings, etc.

-Meanest Tourists: Rome. We’ve never seen so many people so unhappy to be on vacation

-Most Pedestrian Friendly: Sydney. Cars stop even if you look like you might want to cross the street. Several times, we crossed the street just because we didn’t want the driver to feel bad.

-Best Language Moment: A man in Brussels whizzed by on his bicycle and dropped one of his gloves. Jim rushed to pick it up while shouting in his best French accent, ”monsieur!, monsieur!.”

-Place Most Unfriendly to the Waistline: Belgium. They ride their bikes a lot, but waffles and beer are a deadly combination.
-Best Coffee: Cafe Villamil, Honduras
-Best Steak: Argentina (duh)

-Largest Beer: Munich (duh)
-Most Ice-Cream Consuming Citizens: Santiaguinos. It was the middle of their winter too. What do they eat during the summer - hot soup?
-Most Smoking: Santiaguinos. Ice cream cone in one hand, cigarette in the other.

-Person who helped the most old ladies stow their luggage in the overhead compartments: Jim 

 

RTW by the numbers:

 

151        days

25          countries

19          trains

31          flights

12          ferry rides

51          different accommodations slept in

4            dog poos stepped in

13          jars of peanut butter

23          lbs - backpack weight

4,107     photos taken (avg of 27 per day)

$500      spent in Internet cafes

11:45     hrs on plane from Auckland to LAX (longest flight)

1            tarantula spotting, Roatan, Honduras

72          hrs of one-on-one Spanish instruction

$3          haircut in Beijing

1            misplaced cell phone

18.5       books read