’tis the season to be travelling. I’m excited for a few people who are heading off shortly on some highly anticipated adventures. Ben Spall has just jetted (trained) off to Spain, Abby is on the brink of heading to South Korea and everyone else seems to be partying on airplanes.

I’ve been planning a lengthy trip to India for a while, as the planets have aligned I’ve got the opportunity to visit a friend in San Francisco if I travel East from Perth, the long way ’round to India. And then the flood gates opened.

Being from Perth (funnily enough the most isolated city in the world) I suffer from sort of travel distance perception syndrome. A flight to the UK is either 8 hours to Bangkok, then a friendly 12 or 13 hours to London. Or if Emirates is on the cards, it’s a long flight to Dubai then onto London. I’m not too bothered with plane travel, more of a sit down and enjoy the ride kind of guy.

After mentioning my American sojourn to a few friends, the odd offer of a couch or tourist guide popped up and were more than welcome. New York New York? Why not. Brazil? Well, it is in ‘South’ America, which surely couldn’t be too far from ‘North’ America? (wrong)

Paraphrasing a wise sage, who after a bit of hindsight, plotting this trip on a map and realising he was right;

Man you’re flying from the States to Brazil, back to the States, then to India? You’re an idiot.

RTW or Flying High?

After years of reading about frequent flyer ninjas jetting all over the globe for next to nothing, I was lured to booking individual flights to see what I could benefit from utilising frequent flyer miles. I’ve managed one win so far, booking a Perth to San Francisco flight for $351 in taxes (score)! The internal American flights are a welcome relief being quite inexpensive, but from what I’ve heard fraught with delays. I’ve stopped watching ‘aircrash investigation’ in the lead up to the trip, as it doesn’t really inspire too much confidence.

Hindsight in booking this trip would have been glorious; a combination of getting a rush on to try and get visas, the price of flights from NYC to London and being in a state of delirium from having 6 vaccinations in a day mean that this sucker is flying into JFK not once, but twice

Visiting Uncle Sam & The Maple Leaf

Australians grow up with America via the idiot box. I’m looking forward to learning about a land that I know everything and nothing about. I’m going to finally be able to find out it anybody loves Raymond, take the New York Home Alone 2 tour, be able to legitimately sing the ‘full house’ theme song in San Fran¹have a big salad at the Seinfeld diner, see if Canadians really say ‘aboot’ and if I bump into Shaquille O’neal in Miami, tell him he should have never left the Magic.

Those are the tentative dates for my whistlestop tour; if you’ve visited the cities, live in or around the cites or have any recommendations please shout out! I’m going to be flexing a bit of couchsurfing.org muscle and would love to catch up with anyone who is keen for a coffee or beer. Please feel free to leave a comment, any suggestions are welcome!

Tagged as: America, Brazil, Frequent Flyer, Montreal, New York, San Francisco, travel, US