Yes, you read that right! Andrew and I will be taking a year long honeymoon. We plan to start our adventures in June 2022, eight months after our wedding. I’m so excited to share all of our plans with you all, and plan to update you monthly leading up to and all throughout our trip.
Experiencing long term travel is something I’ve been dreaming about for a few years now. After hearing me talk about it so much Andrew eventually got on board and is now very much looking forward to it as well! After we got engaged and planned our wedding date, we figured leaving next summer would be a perfect time to start our trip. Here’s to hoping the world is a little more back to normal by then!
Below I discuss our planned itinerary including some big, bucket list items, how we’re saving money for the trip, and what we’re planning to do with all of our stuff.
Table of Contents
Planned Itinerary
Everything I’ve read about long term travel has said to travel slowly or you’ll burn out. I’ve seen people recommend only doing about one country a month at the most, and always stay at least 3-4 days in each location you visit. I know our itinerary will definitely change as we go, but for now I am mostly ignoring the first bit of advice, as I plan to visit about 30 countries on our year long trip! Generally I am trying to plan to stay in each city we visit for about a week.
Our itinerary is outlined below. Any friends and family members that would like to visit one of the places, please let me know and come travel with us for awhile!
US Road Trip - June 2022
We are starting our adventures with a 3.5 week road trip focusing on the Colorado, Utah and Arizona National Parks. We’re taking our tent and plan to do a mix of camping and hotel/Airbnb stays. We have already started booking our camp sites because some of the National Park campgrounds sell out very quickly!
We plan to visit the following parks on our roadtrip: Rocky Mountain, Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde, Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, Zion, Canyonlands, Arches, and Grand Teton. In the past two years we’ve taken a few road trips and been to handful of our beautiful National Parks. Yellowstone, Badlands, Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, Saguaro and Crater Lake have all been featured on the blog here – National Parks.
Central and Eastern Europe - July to October 2022
Andrew and I are attending a wedding on June 25th in Indiana, and then are flying to London the next day. England wasn’t on my original itinerary but then I bought tickets to see Ed Sheeran at Wembley Stadium at the end of June! Andrew hasn’t been to London and I’ve only been for two days, so I’m excited to explore more of the city.
After London we plan to fly to Prague and then move on to Krakow and Warsaw. My family is going on a river cruise that ends in Amsterdam in mid July, so we’ll fly from Warsaw to Amsterdam to meet up with them for a few days. Amsterdam is another city that wasn’t originally on my list to visit but I’m glad that I am now! I can’t wait to ride bikes around and see all the canals and museums.
Leaving Amsterdam, we plan to travel down the western side of Germany and end up in Munich for about a week. From there we’re going to explore Austria and then Slovakia. We then plan to visit Budapest, Hungary and then spend some time in Slovenia.
In September we’ll head to Croatia for a few weeks, which is part of the trip I’m most excited for! We might squeeze in Albania and Montenegro here if we have time. In late September we will head back to Germany because Andrew is 90% sure he’s running in the Berlin Marathon! We’ll most likely head back to Munich after that, because it seems rude to be in Germany in late September and not check out Oktoberfest!
October will bring us to Northern Italy because I booked a cruise to celebrate something special. The cruise departs from Ravenna, Italy on October 9th, our 1st wedding anniversary! Italy is also the first international trip Andrew and I took together right after I graduated college, so cute! The cruise will bring us to several Greek islands, and I am so excited! After the cruise I think I want to fly to Bulgaria to explore Sofia and Plovdiv.
Turkey and Georgia - October to November 2022
From Bulgaria we’ll head into Turkey and stay for about two weeks, then fly to Tbilisi, Georgia. In Turkey I’m excited to see Istanbul, Ephesus and Cappadocia. In Georgia I’m hoping to do a lot of hiking in the beautiful Caucasus Mountains and enjoy a lot of cheap wines in one of the oldest wine producing regions in the world.
Nepal Himalayan Trek - November 2022
After our visit to Georgia, hopefully we’ll be in excellent hiking shape to take on our next big challenge. We’re going to hike the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. I’m not sure how far we’ll end up going, but the trek normally take people 1-3 weeks depending on the route.
Southeast Asia - December 2022 to April 2023
After trekking in the cold snowy mountains, I don’t think anything is going to sound better than getting some sun on a Thai Island, which is exactly what we plan to do. We should be in Thailand for about a month, and during that time I really want to get my scuba certification! Andrew and I loved our first trip to Thailand back in 2019, and I’m excited to return to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, and explore some different islands from our first trip.
I do plan to slow our trip down a bit when we get to South East Asia and spend about a month in Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines after spending a month in Thailand. I also want to make it to Cambodia, Malaysia, and Singapore, but probably just for a week or two each.
Egypt and Morocco - April 2023
After ten month on the road I hope we will finally make it to a new continent, Africa! I want to spend two weeks in both Egypt and Morocco. I might try to squeeze in Greece between the two countries because after visiting just from the cruise, I think I will want to explore in more depth.
Western Europe - May to June 2023
The finale of our trip will be a few weeks each in Spain, Portugal and France. Spain was the first European country I ever went to back in 2013, and I visited again with Andrew in February of 2020. I love the country so much and I’m most looking forward to exploring more small towns in Southern Spain because I loved my visit to Sevilla so much!
Part of Andrew’s family is from France some of his extended family still lives there today. He’s never been before and I haven’t been since 2013, so I think it will be really exciting for both of us.
So.... How are we going to pay for this?
We do plan to fully quit working during our trip as we’re not planning to become digital nomads, so we have to save up for our year of travels. Andrew and I opened a joint savings account almost a year ago that we use just to put aside money for the trip. Currently as of December 2021 we are about 30% to our goal of $50,000.
We estimate that we’ll spend less in one year abroad than we do in a typical year in the US. We expect to spend around $4,000 a month between the two of us including accommodations, food, entertainment, and transportation. I’ve read a decent amount of other travel blogs and $50k for a year seems like a generous estimate, but I’ve never really been one to save and cut back, so I’m trying to give us a little wiggle room.
I know $50,000 sounds like a lot to some people, and probably not a lot to others. We are lucky enough to both have decently high paying jobs that allow us to save a lot of our income, but neither one of us makes 6 figures. Andrew has historically been much better at savings that I am and already has a decent nest egg for us to work on rebuilding our lives in the U.S. when we return from our trip.
In addition to our savings account, I am also spending a lot of time researching the best ways to accumulate and spend credit card points to maximize saving there. When Andrew and I leave for our trip I’m hoping to have over $6,000 worth of airline, hotel and credit card rewards points. Some of my favorite IG accounts to follow to stay up to date on points earnings and redemptions are GeoBreezeTravel and MaxMilesPoints.
I currently have the following cards in my wallet: Amex Platinum, IHG Premier, Chase Sapphire Preferred, Amex Everyday Preferred, Delta SkyMiles Platinum, and Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority. Andrew has a few good cards too, and he actually just redeemed most of his Chase Sapphire points to get me a new MacBook Air! Please reach out to me if you want to learn more about credit card points and miles and if you’d like to use one of my referral links to sign up!
What are we packing for a year long trip?
My mom bought us the backpacks we are taking on our trip for Christmas. We both chose to go with the Osprey 55L Fairview/Farpoint (they have different names for the men’s and women’s styles.) We haven’t made full packing lists yet, but it’s going to be whatever we can fit into those backpacks! I think we’ll each have 3-4 pairs of shoes, a few pairs of shorts, a few pairs of pants, and enough shirts and underwear for a week, a jacket or two, and a swim suit. Anything else we need we’ll be able to buy as we go! We don’t plan to be anywhere cold which helps. We will have to buy our gear in Nepal for our trek, but other than that we really just need normal clothes that we’ll feel comfortable wearing once a week for a year…. I am still working on getting used to thinking about that!
What's happening with our stuff?
This trip really wouldn’t be possible without my amazing mom! She is taking care of our Golden Retriever, Hoosier, for the year. She is also taking our car and letting us store some of our things at her home. The rest of our stuff will be put into storage, sold, or donated. Andrew and I currently live in a small 2 bedroom apartment in Chicago and most of our furniture we purchased from Ikea right after college. This is going to make it pretty easy to cut down on our items going into storage.
Well, that is the gist of our plans for our year long honeymoon! Let me know if the comments if you have any advice or any know of any good blogs I should read relating to long term travel. This really is the biggest privilege to be able to do this, and while sometimes I have doubts, I know that if I don’t do this now, I’ll regret it forever. And now that’s I’ve told all of you, and my plans are out on the internet, I have to follow through!
8 Comments
Wow you guys are getting to do something most people dream about. Can’t wait to see all the pictures! The only suggestion I can think of is to buy postcards from places you visit, and instead of sending them, write on back specific details about your visit so it’ll be easier to remember all the little things that meant something to you. Hope you guys have safe, smooth travels.
How amazing to start your marriage with a year long honeymoon. I love the variety of places you have on your list. It will be interesting to see what changes happen in your plan as the year goes on. Great that you have someone to look after Hoosier!
It’s exciting to read more about what you and Andrew have planned!! I can’t wait to read all about Georgia, Nepal, and Egypt – those are such cool destinations! The Annapurna Circuit sounds fun and I’m curious what hiking for a week or more entails!
Good point about “not being rude” by being in Germany in late September and not visiting the Octoberfest. Enjoy and drink a Mass (gallon sized glass) of beer.
I truly hope that you can accomplish your ambitious itinerary and that the virus will not force countries into more lockdowns. Good luck!
Thanks, I will definitely need all the luck I can get! Can’t wait for the German beer!
This is so exciting! I can’t wait to follow along your journey. I especially interested in how the points and credit cards play out!
Thanks, I am planning to do a post soon specifically about that!
How exciting! Can’t wait to follow your travels!!