Historical note: this was my second round-the-world trip. The first one was for work. This one was using Skyteam's Round The World pass, which - at least until a few months ago - is something I would absolutely recommend. Anyway I'm still the person who posted this.
Note: I wrote this while I was still on the trip, but didn't get around to posting it until now.
I have to admit - I miss the travel. Airports, airplanes, delays, lost luggage, tourists, rental cars and taxis; all worth it if you get to see somewhere new and different.
So this winter, instead of being fiscally responsible, I've abandoned work for a few weeks and am taking a trip westward 'round the world.
I gather that normal people don't do this-my evidence being that my goals for this trip so baffled two travel agents that I ended up buying the plane tickets myself (the SkyMiles travel agency quoted me over $10,000 for the trip - are you kidding?).
My original goals were:
I ended up compromising on the second one, mainly due to the availability of flights and some pickyness regarding destinations.
My first stop was Sydney, which I just left. I'm writing this on my trusty Tablet PC, sitting in seat 44A of a JAL 747-400. I've never flown JAL, and I don't have any points with One World, which is why I'm stuck in coach (most of the rest of the trip is business/first class). It's been a while since I flew coach, and it makes the trip a lot less pleasant. The food is nice though, and the plane isn't too full, so it's not so bad.
Sydney was absolutely wonderful. I only had a week there, and I really want to go back. I haven't been many places where I thought I would like living, but I could definitely live here.
I figured driving on the wrong side of the road would be a challenge, but it wasn't - the only things that I was consistently bad at were turning on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signals, and opening the door instead of pulling up the hand brake. My rental car was a Ford falcon, which was fine but not spectacular. I didn't fit well in it and was always a bit uncomfortable. I took it as for south as the Bega Valley, which had a nice little town and an eerily empty beach. Probably not worth the drive, but that's OK. In the end, I could have done without the car and been just fine. Lessons learned for next time.
There are a lot of professional street performers (everybody says "like mimes?" No, not like mimes. Not like mimes at all.) in Sydney, and some of them are quite good. There's also a very useful ferry service, which was new and interesting to me.
One thing that generally surprises me during international travel is the fact that wherever I go, the same restaurant and shopping chains are there; TGI Friday's and Kentucky Fried Chicken are especially common. Not so in Sydney. The only American restaurant chains I remember seeing are MC Donald's, Hungry Jack's (only tangentially a US chain), and Krispy Kreme. I liked that at first, and ate very well the whole time I was in Sydney, but later on I wondered what the deal with that is. Not that everybody has to have American food chains, but how come Australia has so few?
Another thing that surprised me was the lack of steak restaurants (and Fosters beer for that matter). Restaurants serving steak that I went to served very polite and balanced portions, and were generally delicious. I blame Outback Steakhouse for the preconception that Australians are beer swilling carnivores, though it's possible that the rough, meat-heavy steakhouse is more common in other parts of Australia, like Perth. An interesting note about Sydney is that if you appear intoxicated, bars and restaurants are not allowed to serve you drinks. I didn't find this out firsthand-they make sure to point it out. I'm just saying.
At any rate, Sydney was really fun and I had enough missed opportunities that I really want to go back, for at least a couple of weeks, to cover more things.
Next stop: Rome.