Update: Just got a call from the travel agent. American had cancelled a flight we needed, so we had to jig it around again. The jigging necessitated leaving out Seattle, which is a shame, but we're planning a separate trip to the Canadian Rockies at some point so we'll get to see it then. The new plan, which is 10 days or so shorter, is below. Those 10 days will not be missed - the car hire and accomodation bill for the original plan was looking a bit over the top!

Given that we'd made the decision to head back to England for a while, there didn't seem much point in procrastinating about booking flights. So, a couple of days ago we went off to Trailfinders to book the trip. Of course, the simple way to do it is to get on a Singapore Airlines flight in Perth, and after a brief stop in the far east and a bad night's sleep, you wake up in London. But that's the dull way...

The alternative is longer, more expensive, but infinitely more exciting and beautiful. Going across the Pacific takes you via New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii, the USA and the Atlantic. Obviously we couldn't stop everywhere, but it seemed a shame not to do this properly. So, after seemingly endless deliberation, we decided on the following route:

Perth to Cairns

Cairns to Hawaii

Hawaii to San Francisco

San Francisco to Las Vegas

Las Vegas to Denver overland

Denver to Chicago

Chicago to Washington DC

Washington DC to New York

New York to London

The really exciting bit is the overland trip out of Las Vegas (yeah, we've been there twice already but Tina insisted!) to Denver. This will involve about 10 days driving through the parks of Utah and the mountains of Colorado. Can't wait...

We leave on the 17th of April, destined for Cairns, which is right in the top right corner of Australia. You can't spend a couple of years in Australia without going for at least a quick look at the nation's most outstanding natural feature: the Great Barrier Reef. Tina is in danger of doing just that, and our round the world ticket allows a couple of stops in Australia, so that's where we're going first. After a couple of days there we head to Hawaii (via Sydney), where we tranfer to the Big Island. People think of Hawaii as all beaches and palm trees, which it is, but we're more interested in volcanoes, waterfalls and rainforests. Sandy white beaches are rather common in Perth! A week in Hawaii, then a succession of US city visits, ending in New York on 23rd May 2005.

The good thing about this ticket is that it actually takes us around the world. We're not planning on using the return leg to Perth within the one year limit, but it's nice to have a flight home (i.e. Perth) in case things don't work out in England. We also get to do a number of flights in Europe on this ticket. So we've booked flights into St Petersburg and out of Moscow, and a return flight to Rome. So that's a couple of nice European holidays thrown in for good measure!