Itinerary - From Hawaii!

Well, our trip has begun... Aloha from Hawaii!

Our final itinerary looks like this (in this order):

USA - Hawaii
Japan - Tokyo
Thailand - Bangkok, Chiang Mai
Turkey - Istanbul, Selcuk/Ephesus
Italy - Rome, Florence, Venice
Slovenia - Ljubljana
Croatia - Zagreb, Rijeka, Split, Dubrovnik
France - Paris
Morocco - Marrakech, Fes
Spain - Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla
Mexico - Cancun

Meanwhile, as dedicated followers may recall, our posting this from Hawaii means that Melissa won and we went to Hawaii. (As one insightful commenter suggested, "Happy wife, happy life." Turns out Hawaii, and specifically Maui, has made the wife AND the husband happy.) We've spent about five hours snorkeling over the past two days (pictures to be posted after the trip), we've been to an awesome luau, and we've had some really great food (and drinks!). Neither of us had been snorkeling before - or, if we had been snorkeling, it didn't compare to the extent that we forgot we had been snorkeling - and it's crazy. We've seen hundreds of fish (including Melissa's favorite, starfish) and about five or six really big turtles. In fact, Trevor got a little too close to one of the turtles and it chased him all the way out of a reef!

For the remainder of our Hawaii leg, we have scheduled a helicopter tour of Hana and Haleakala (recall that Groupon is on the hook for three "excursions" at its expense - that's one of them), and we might do an amateur scuba diving trip, too. We'll also have to save some time to do laundry (lame!) before we go to Japan (not lame!).

We are staying in the Kihei / Wailea area - is there anything else that should be on our to-do list in the next couple days? Shaved ice, maybe? Let us know in the comments!

Tentative Plan

We're back!  It's been a good long while since our last post, and for that we apologize -- we're trying to plan a wedding, too, and we both work full-time.  BUT, we've also made a lot of progress.  We've decided which way we're going, and we have a tentative list of places to visit!

East or West?

One of the restrictions on our trip – pretty standard, we think, for round-the-world travel – is that travel must continue in one direction for the duration of the trip.  As we explained previously, that likely isn’t a burden.  But it does raise an interesting question: should we go East or West?

As best we can figure, each option has advantages and disadvantages.  We’ve brainstormed a bit and shared our results below, but if you have any additional insight, please share it with us in the comments!