What We Are Carrying (Pre Trip)

We each have a 15lb weight limit thanks to the budget nature of our first few flights. The weigh in for our first practice pack was:

John: 12 lbs

Nina: 16 lbs

Madeleine: 10.5 lbs

William: 9.5 lbs

In my defense, I’m carting three months’ worth of contact lenses and all of our toiletries.

Below is a list of the items we plan to take with us:

• Rain jacket
• Puffy jacket
• Reef flipflops
• Running shoes
• 4 x T-shirts
• 3 x shorts
• 2 x pants
• Dress for Nina & Madeleine, button-down shirt for John and William
• REI sun hoodies
• Swimsuit
• Travel towel
• Sunglasses
• Kindle
• Music player
• Journal

Madeleine and I will also have scarves to cover up when visiting temples etc.

We gave my parents some warm weather clothing to take back to England with them when they last came to stay, so we’ll pick those up before we head to South America where we expect cooler temperatures.

Schooling While Traveling (Pre Trip)

We will be homeschooling the children for the first half of the trip. The last time we did anything similar was during COVID when William was an incoming Kindergartener and Madeleine was starting second grade. I remember lots of tears and technical glitches.

We plan to use online learning platforms for math and English, supplemented by practical learning opportunities presented by different currencies, budget tracking, journaling, blogging 🙂 and reading books set in the countries we will visit.

But I’m most excited about the chance to learn about the history and culture of our destinations.

Official Travel Job Titles (Pre Trip)

Nina: Chief Executive Officer

John: Chief Operations Officer

Madeleine: Chief Communications Officer

William: Chief Financial Officer

Free Nights with Hotel Credit Cards (Pre Trip)

Most of our trip will be spent in countries where we can eat and stay inexpensively, but we are using points accummulated on IHG and Hilton credit cards to stay in more expensive places like Fiji, Australia and Dubai.

If you reach the minimum spend on these cards for the first few months you can quickly build up a ton of points. So far with IHG points we have booked four nights in Fiji, four nights in Sydney, a night in Melbourne and four nights in Kuala Lumpur. We also expect to get around 10 free nights with the Hilton points.

Between the two cards, I would recommend IHG over Hilton because the annual fee is $99 vs. $250 and free nights typically cost less points. On the other hand, the Hilton card comes with free breakfast, free lounge access, Priority Pass airport lounge access and $200 resort credit.

John is Looking Forward to…..

When we are in England, John will be realizing his lifelong ambition of driving (sailing?) around the waterways of Wrexham on a narrow boat/barge. We’ll be spending four nights on a route which takes us over the longest and highest aqueduct in the UK, and through the (haunted?) 1380 feet Chirk Tunnel. Here is a link to the boat we’ve booked:

https://www.whittington-wharf.com/wait-see/