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!