I'm Still a Student!

It's 6AM Eastern Standard time. For someone who has trouble with morning, I'm up REALLY early. I need to get a little less excited about this trip so I can get a full night's sleep every once in a while.

I took some time last night to work on my trip because I hadn't in a while. I visited Maurene at Baker Travel and she gave me some homework, then I met up with an experienced world traveler (Dave) and he gave me some great ideas - then I realized that some of the great advice he gave me was the same advice that Marisa emailed she sent me back on May 12.

Both Dave and Marisa suggested I go visit Hostel International:
http://www.hihostels.com/
I haven't booked anything there yet, but it's a great site.

Both Dave and Marisa suggested I get a student card. I thought I was too old and too "graduated", but I'm not. To get the international student exchange identification (ISE) card from:
http://www.isecard.com/myisecard/index.html
To get one of these cards, you need to prove that you are a student or WERE A STUDENT DURING THE PRIOR ACADEMIC YEAR! That's me. The card costs $25 USD and I need to provide them with a copy of my student ID, which is a piece o cake since I'm still using it for my post-doc lab access. With this card can get up to 50% discounts on travel, lodging, food and even passes to some cool site seeing locations throughout the world. Most importantly, I can now get the Youth fairs on Eurail/Britrail. I'm considering a Britrail Flexipass and a Greece-Italy Eurail Pass. According to the ISE website, I can get some extra discounts some stuff if I purchase passes before June 30 - need to look into that more. I should be getting my ISE card in about 10 days or so.

According the ISE site, the student card also gives me a 25% discount on Turkish Air, which is awesome because Maurene and I were trying to figure out the best way for me to get from Bodrum Turkey to London in time for my flight to Sydney on August 10 - and we found a flight that cost $463 on Turkish Air. If I can get 25% off with my ISE card, that's a significant chunk of change. That ticket is on hold until June 3.

Interesting facts for anyone who's not a student: You can also get an ISE pass if you are a youth under the age of 26 OR a faculty/teacher member of an educational institution and under the age of 65.

I'm so glad I know so many smart people. I'm happy now and a little less worried about money.

On a side note, I DID graduate on May 18, 2008 in the 152nd Commencement Ceremony at Tufts. I was one of 13 doctoral students (10 men, 3.5 women - one woman was pregnant and 2 weeks away from her due date hence the extra 0.5) to graduate from the school of Engineering and the only female (of 3 students) from the department of Mechanical Engineering.

Here are a few pictures from that day:

Degree Presentation from people in Funny Costumes

The Brother and the Hood

Proud Parents and the Grad

Aunt, Uncle and the Grad

Getting to Turkey

My flight plan has been modified a little bit - partly to reduce cost and partly to eliminate messy layovers. It turns out the that the OneWorld around the world ticket is a much better price than the Star Alliance, but the original plan was still pretty expensive and involved more layovers than I originally intended. Maurene (yes, I misspelled her name throughout the previous blog! oops) and I reworked my travel agenda to have fewer layovers, but this means more "ground transportation" in Europe to get to where I want to go. I'm finding that this isn't going to be much of a problem, and will probably be a ton of fun.

One note about buying an around the world ticket: they take a ton of time to price out. I started working with my travel agent on May 1 and it took until May 9 for the airlines to get back to her with a price. I'm still waiting to hear on the price of my reworked travel agenda. SO START TRYING TO GET A TICKET REALLY EARLY. At this point, I'm just going to accept whatever price the agent comes back with on this ticket because I don't think I'll be able to rework the itinerary again.

Here's the modified plan (I actually have this memorized, so it's not that complicate, which is a relief).

The east coast road trip got just a little longer because I'll be leaving from JFK airport going to London on July 12. This eliminates an annoying layover in Dallas (if I were to leave from Dulles). I plan to take a bus back up to NY and still leave my car with my parents in VA.

After that, I'm on my own for travel in Europe until August 10, when I go from London to Sydney. I think I may have a layover in Singapore.

On August 15, both Paul and I will leave from Sydney, and I'll take a flight over to Christchurch. I'll be there until August 20.

On August 20, I will fly to Bangkok. On August 27, I'm going to Hong Kong for a couple of days. I figured that I should stay a couple of days in Hong Kong if I can't get a direct flight to San Francisco from Bangkok.

On August 29, I head directly from Hong Kong to San Francisco. Since I love San Francisco so much and I got my original starting date at Draper back (Sept. 15), I extended my stay there for a couple of days and will be leaving on September 5 with a flight through Dallas to Dulles (I don't mind the connection here because it's in the right direction).

Then I'll make my way from Virginia back up to Boston through New York.

Now, the most difficult part of the trip is getting to and from Turkey because London is on one side of Europe and Turkey is on the other. Also the boat trip that I'm getting on is not out of Istanbul. It's out of Marmaris, which is on the west coast of Turkey near the Greek Islands on the Mediterranean. Here's a quick summary of the cruise details, which have finally been passed along to me:

We leave out of Marmaris on August 2 mid afternoon, but the group of us are staying overnight on August 1st in Marmaris. The cruise docks in Bodrum, which is northwest of Marmaris up the Turkey coast. From Bodrum, I need to get to London is about a day and I think air travel is just about the only option. Luckily there's an airport in Bodrum, but 1-way tickets look to be running about $350 right now. From Istanbul, it's a little better, but Istanbul is a 12 hour bus ride from Bodrum. My friend is checking with a Turkish travel agent to see if we can do any better on a flight. I'll also check with my agent.

Getting TO Marmaris on August 1 is going to be a ton of fun (and no, that's not sarcastic... it really is going to be AWESOME!!!) So, I'm starting in London on July 12, and I'll be visiting family in Oxford and Liverpool and traveling GB for a little bit. Then I figure I'll take Ryan Air, which is a really awesome airbus that doesn't cost a lot, down to Italy. Here's the Ryan Air interactive map link:
http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/dests.php?flash=chk&pos=MYFLIGHT
Unfortunately, Ryan Air doesn't go over to Turkey or Greece, but that's not a problem because...

For travel in Italy, I'd like to get a special Greece-Italy Eurail pass, which is about $250 2nd class, allowing travel for 4 or 5 over the period of 2 months. Here's the link:
http://www.eurail.com/eurail_greece_italy_pass?currency=usd

Once in Greece, I need to get over to the Rhodes, a Greek Island that offers shuttle boat service to Marmaris. Olympic Airlines offers a flight to Rhodes from Athens for about $50:
http://www.olympicairlines.com/
And the shuttle boat from Rhodes to Marmaris is $39:
http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/trans/Ship/GreekIslandFerries.html
AND I get to go to a Greek Island! Never thought I'd be doing that!

It looks like I will be doing some "backpacking" through Europe (at least Greece and Italy), so I've been looking into Hostels, and they seem really reasonable. Here's a website I found with Hostel Price info:
http://www.europeanhostels.com/
I like this site because the hostels have been rated by visitors, so you can sort by rating and choose the most bang for your buck. It looks like I won't be spending more than $30/night which is really reasonable.

The only thing that's not in this agenda, but was in the first was a stop in Spain. I really want to go there, and I could definitely get there on Ryan Air, but I'll have to finish my budgeting and see what I actually have time for. I'm sure that in the end, I'll be wanting more time everywhere. I'll just have to go back to the places I miss.

Things are working out! I'm so excited!

Gas and the US Dollar

This entry was originally going to be a bunch of notes to remind myself about all the internet searching I've done and what I've learned about travel in Europe. In all my searching and surfing, one thing keeps popping up - THE US DOLLAR SUCKS right now. I've been really good about saving over the past couple of years, but I'm still going to have to budget carefully.

Could I have picked a better time time to travel the world? Economically speaking, the answer is a most definite YES! but I'm going to squash the practical me for a little while and try to do what I've always done - ignore economics... This will be hard, but hopefully I'll just be able to spend then forget I've spent. It's just money... there's always a way to make more. It grows on trees, which after a few hundred million years make coal... it also grows on algae that died a really long time ago and mixed with mud and got heated and compressed to form special money bearing rocks, etc. (oil). I patient, I can wait...

I think it's time to start putting some pictures into this blog for all those visual learners out there.

Here we have Figure 1, taken from http://zfacts.com/p/35.html. This shows the price per gallon of gas steadily rising ever since someone I didn't vote for decided to invade Iraq. We seem to be at an all time high here in 2008. President (I didn't vote for you) is right about 1 unfortunate fact - in today's world fossil fuels are everything... which brings us to figure 2, which directly affects my future expedition.

Figure 2 is from the US department of transportation (DOT) website. It shows a couple of really interesting things. The price of travel originating from the US is at an all time high. Second the cost of travel tends to be a bit cyclic, but from this graph it's hard to tell when the peak cost actually occurs. It looks like the peak prices coincide with what is believed to be peak travel season - summer (at least in the norther hemisphere). It would be nice to know for sure where those peaks are though. Luckily, the US DOT website is really awesome because it allows to download the data used to generate this graph so you can do your own analysis if you wish. Being the data nerd that I am, I put together this little graph (and spent a lot of time rearranging data sets - then had to ask myself why I was so obsessed with a little thing like this... still haven't come up with a good answer for that one). Here's figure 3:
This graph shows the foreign airline price data for 2003-2007 graphed by quart (Q1 = Jan - Mar, Q2 = Apr - Jun, Q3 = Jul - Sep, Q4 = Oct-Dec). Unfortunately, I was right - July - September is when airline prices peak like clockwork. That's a bummer. Luckily I have job when I get back. It's time for me to exit student mentality and enter employment mentality - or just get lost in a foreign country and work my way back to the US (don't worry parents! I'll be fine - call you when I find my new European boyfriend).

Coordinating

I'm planning a trip in which most of the cost is my airline ticket because I'm staying with friends and family all over the globe. Actually, visiting with friends and family is, in my opinion, the best part of this whole gig! However, what that means is that I'm constantly bouncing emails back and forth trying to find out what dates are good for who and that puts limits on when I need to be where.

Many of my friends and family are also more experienced world travelers than I am, and they all have wonderful advice, but differing opinions on what I SHOULD do. Luckily, I have a pretty good idea of what I WANT to do, and I'm accepting of the fact that I probably won't be able to do it all in the 2 months that I have. The best piece of advice that I've gotten so far (and it was also a kick in the butt to make this actually happen), was from my Aunt Sally. She said,

"You should consider using a travel agent for all your bookings... it won't cost more and will probably save you tons of money if they're experienced... especially in today's market. They should also know much more about connections and tricks for foreign ports."

So, I did what most people my age would do - I google'd - "Best of Boston, Travel Agents" and headed to one of the highest rated and conveniently located travel agents in the area. I'm working with a nice lady named Maurene at Baker Travel, see:
http://boston.citysearch.com/profile/4751731/west_somerville_ma/baker_travel.html
Maurene did a pretty good job of putting together 2 itineraries for me so I can compare prices. Even though we have itineraries, we are still waiting on price quotes for the airlines. The 2 airline alliances that seemed to have the most options were the Star Alliance (which is the one with the really cool user interface I mentioned in a previous blog) and Oneworld.

Star Alliance is the largest alliance. Since I am traveling to so many different places in such a short amount of time, both Maurene and I have a feeling that the Star Alliance is going to have the best price and the most non-stop flights. Maurene likes working with Oneworld (which is affiliated with American Airlines) because the agents are easiest to work with. Unfortunately travel to Bangkok/Australia/New Zealnd, becomes a bit of a nightmare with Oneworld. The Oneworld itinerary ended up with a lot of connections on the longer distance flights, but it was pretty convenient for travel in Europe. Whith Star Alliance it's a little more difficult to travel in Europe, but much easier to travel to Asia/Australia/New Zealand. Since Europe is smaller, layovers cost less time, and if I end up getting stuck somewhere, it'll be one more city I get to see.

I spent almost 2 hours at Baker Travel (and made friends with a little mini dog, Max, who couldn't have been more than 4 lbs of dog. Max belongs to another agent and she was calling him a traitor because he wouldn't leave my side.) which is really nothing compared to the time I've put in to planning so far. And now, I've passed all that planning work off to someone who really like planning these trips and I can focus on other things for a while.

Here's the plan so far that Maurene and I have put together after LOTS of email discussions with friends and family:

I'll be leaving Boston on July 2 or 3 for what I'm calling "My East-Coast Road Trip". That trip involves driving from Boston to Atlanta and ending up in Northern Virginia so I can leave out of Dulles Airport and leave my car with my parents for a couple of months. (Notice that the parents are conveniently located too! I'm so lucky. =) )

Please note: some of this may seem like madness, but be aware that there is a definite method to it! With a trip like this, madness is often un-avoidable. I'll take what I can get, It's going to be awesome (when I'm on the ground of course).

I'm leaving Dulles on July 12 and flying to London, arriving at 6:20AM.

I'm planning to get a Britrail pass and travel from London to Oxford to Liverpool and maybe even get up to Glasgow. We'll see what I can do in 10 days!

On July 23, I leave London and fly to Rome (connecting in Frankfurt)

I'll use ground transportation to go from Rome to Pescara to Naples/Pompei.

From Naples, I fly to Madrid (through Munich) on July 28

On August 1, I fly from Madrid to Istanbul (through Vienna)

Here, I'm going on a cruise from Aug 2-Aug 9 with my friend's family

On August 10, I will fly from Istanbul to Sydney (through Bangkok)

It would make sense to actually stop in Bangkok, but my friend in Sydney is leave for a trip of his own (to Boston actually) on August 15, so I want to be there while he is in town.

On August 15, I fly from Sydney to Christchurch

On August 20, I fly from Christchurch to Bangkok (through Auckland)

Here's where I backtrack a little - and go straight from winter to summer!

On August 28, I fly from Bangkok to San Francisco (ground stop in Tokyo)

San Francisco to Dulles on Sept. 2

Then back up to Boston by car.

Life as I know it

It's been a couple weeks since I updated this. That's because life's been CRAZY! I knew my graduate stipend was going to be cut on April 30 and I had this fear that I'd have no money for travel and no money for rent so I was planning to apply for all sorts of part time jobs. I already had my part time job at the Museum of Science teaching workshops through early June, so I volunteered to teach extra workshops. I applied for a part time after-school science club program, and got that job too... However as I was applying for the after-school program, I got offered a post-doc doing some REALLY cool stuff - making biodegradable optical encoders (basically cool colorful message making devices you can eat when you're done with them). I couldn't turn that one down.

And here I am - 2 part time jobs and a full time post-doc taking up all my time, and all I REALLY want to do is plan my trip around the world. Don't get me wrong, I HAVE been planning (and I like my jobs). There have been a ton of email exchanges about the trip, which I'll get to in a different entry. I just wanted to give an update of where my life has been and where it's going. It's funny how fear of being broke and unemployed can drive you to overloading yourself - I don't know, I may be a unique case. I think I need a vacation.

Another important development in my life is that I AM actually gainfully employed starting in September. I was hired by Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA, and I'm starting September 8 or 15. I'm a little confused on the start date because I told HR that I couldn't start until September, but HR didn't communicate this to my future manager before they hired me. They called me up last Friday to ask if I could start (even part time) before I left for my trip - it was at this point when I finally said "NO" to someone.

About the word "no":

This is a very difficult word to say. I think this is because we are raised in such a way that there are dire consequences if we say that word. For example (flashback from childhood)- Mom: "Cappy, can you take out the garbage for me?" Cappy: "No" Mom: "What do you mean 'no'? I asked you to do something for me." Dad "Your mother asked you to do something for her, now do it." Cappy ends up taking out the garbage and has learned that saying "no" probably means she'll have to do it anyway, so why even go through the heartache of trying.

Then, one day you grow up and people will start accepting the word "no" from you - you don't get in trouble, but there are hidden consequences. High School Fencing Coach (HSFC) "Cappy, can you come referee our tournament after school on Thursday?" Adult Cappy's brain thinks 'It technically fits into my schedule, but I'd be more calm if I didn't have to run from place to place. I should practice saying no... I hear it gets easier the more times you say it.' Adult Cappy says, "I'm going to have to say no this time because I think I need to practice saying no, but don't hesitate to call me if you need me to ref in the future." HSFC say "OK, thanks anyway". That was over 2 years ago and adult Cappy hasn't heard from that HSFC about any reffing gigs since then.

So, saying "no" often comes with consequences, but in retrospect, saying yes to too many things can be just as bad. I just hope I have a yes-no balance that I can live with over the next couple of months.

I have made a decision though - NOTHING IS GETTING IN THE WAY OF THIS TRIP!