Itinerary

Marcus says:

Below is a summary of our itinerary:

• Wed 20 Jun 2007 at 10:00am Depart from SYDNEY
• Wed 20 Jun 2007 at 4:25pm Arrive at BANGKOK
  

• Mon 25 Jun 2007 at 12:20am Depart from BANGKOK
• Mon 25 Jun 2007 at 6:50am Arrive at ROME FIUMICINO
  

• Fri 13 Jul 2007 at 8:30am Depart from LONDON HEATHROW
• Fri 13 Jul 2007 at 11:25am Arrive at TORONTO ON
  

• Sun 15 Jul 2007 at 9:00am Depart from TORONTO ON
• Sun 15 Jul 2007 at 11:10am Arrive at CALGARY INTL AB
  

• Wed 25 Jul 2007 at 11:10am Depart from VANCOUVER BC
• Wed 25 Jul 2007 at 2:03pm Arrive at LOS ANGELES
  

• Sun 29 Jul 2007 at 10:39pm Depart from LOS ANGELES
• Tue 31 Jul 2007 at 6:10am Arrive at SYDNEY

I must say, I was pretty happy with most of the times. Aside from Bangkok to Rome, most of the legs allow us a reasonable time at both ends to get organised.

There were two reasons to stop in Thailand - one was to break up what would otherwise be a very long leg to Europe and the other to ride an elephant. We're heading up to Chiang Mai for this, but I'm currently checking out flights. We were going to take the train from Bangkok, but it takes 12 hours and we wouldn't see much countryside as they run overnight anyway, so flying will give us an extra day to spend in Chiang Mai or possibly a beach resort near Bangkok. Either way, I'd love to rent a scooter and spend a day tootling around the countryside.

We're also looking for places to stay in Rome - a friend has recommended Villa Lituania (http://www.villalituania.com). Apparently it's clean, inexpensive and overall, very satisfactory. I've emailed them about a booking, as they don't seem to have caught up to the online booking thing.

Rome is going to be difficult to plan, no matter what. It's one of those cities that I think really require weeks to do it justice, but we simply don't have that kind of time. Over the coming weeks, we're going to compile lists of things that we could do in each place we visit, so that even if we don't know exactly what we're going to do from day to day, at least we have a list of options. The good thing is that we hopefully won't waste any time - the bad thing is that we'll miss out on seeing some things that we thought were interesting enough to put on the list.

Oh well, it's all in how you look at it - a half-full glass might not be as good as a full one, but it's a whole lot better than an empty one.