A Quick Scetch of My Plans

I'm pretty lucky to have friends and family all over the world. I think that has something to do with being in school so long and meeting a ton of people, and having a mother born abroad (no pun intended - sorry mom, but she really was born in Liverpool, England). This means I have beds or couches in a lot of different places.

I plan to leave some time in early July. I'll start by driving down the east coast of the US. I'll visit my brother in New York City, then make my way down to Virginia (in Ashburn) to see my parents and my grandparents (in Portsmouth).

After a bit of immediate family visiting, I'll leave my car with mom & dad and hop on a plane to San Francisco to visit with my cousin Jane, Aunt Sally and grandma-Rene. From there, I'll either go to Hawaii, then New Zealand, then Syndey - or just straight to Sydney. Ideally, I'd like to go to all of those places, but I need to do a bit more planning to make Hawaii and New Zealand happen. I have an old family friend in Hawaii, who I need to get in touch with. In New Zealand, my thesis adviser has a number of contacts and told me that I HAVE to go there, but I don't quite have a place to stay set up yet. An old friend of mine from my 1st 3 years of grad school lives in Sydney, and I plan to visit him. I've given him a little bit of warning so far.

After Sydney, I'm going to Bangkok to visit an old childhood friend and her family who live there. I may or may not stop in Hong Kong on the way. My mom has a cousin (who I've never met) who lives in Hong Kong, and I've heard great things about that city.

After Bangkok, I will go to Istanbul. I have a couple of friends that live here in Boston who go on a cruise every year off the coast of Istanbul and they invited me to come with them! Their plans aren't quite set for the summer yet, but neither are mine - we'll have to coordinate.

After Istanbul, I will head out to Europe - probably starting in Rome and going wherever I feel on my way to England, where I'll visit with my mom's extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.).

All of this is probably more than I can do in 2 months, but there are a couple of definite destinations - Sydney, Bangkok, Istanbul and England. AND of course I could plan all of this in the reverse order - go east instead of west. I kind of like the idea of going west because I keep gaining time most of the time.

I want to buy my flight package this week, but I need to do a little more research. If you're reading this and trying to figure out where to start in planning a trip like this, here's some quick advice: Wikipedia is awesome. There's a whole Wiki page about starting to plan a trip around the world:
http://wikitravel.org/en/Round_the_world_flights
I've started looking into some of these flight options. So far, I like the Sky Team deal. It looks like I can leave a lot of my trip open ended and plan as I go (as long as I schedule my first flight and give 7 days notice for each subsequent flight). Star Alliance has the best user interface and a whole bunch of flight options. You can see your route on a map of the world as you are choosing your flights - it's really cool. The Great Escapade has a similar user interface, but not quite as flashy. I also run into problems getting from Thailand to Turkey with that package. OneWorld (American Airlines/British Airways, etc.) offers similar trip packages, but no user interface for trip planning. I'm going to have to get on the phone or visit an agent at this point anyway to see if I can get exactly what I want and a price quote for it.

Anyone have suggestions? or run across something I haven't?