Departure date changed to August 9th
Still no sign of Carmen's passport from the UK Consulate in LA, and our sublet in San Anselmo is coming to an end on Friday. I already changed our tickets on Aer Lingus for Dublin once to leave on the 9th August instead, but this seems presumptuous -- I also hear are having financial woes, so hopefully they will honour our tickets if and when we are ever able to leave.
Yesterday we emailed and faxed the consulate, begging them to return the passport, processed or not. In a bold move, I also booked non-refundable onward flights from Dublin to Girona( Spain) on Ryan Air. We will get to spend a day or two in Dublin which I have always wanted to visit, but will more likely recovering in the hotel from the flight and jet lag.
Now we are getting packed up and are almost ready to leave Scenic Drive. Luckily we can stay at the Peninsula Ski Club cabin next to Donner Summit in Lake Tahoe until the passport arrives. This is a great ski club with dormitory style accommodation. We will spend the time there hiking to various lakes, perhaps do a bit of swimming in them and generally get to know the area better. Area knowledge is useful in winter when driving in blizzard conditions and needing to know where the nearest pub/brewhouse is.
In researching places to visit on our trip, we have used the Marin and San Francisco libraries extensively. Both libraries have excellent online resources including the ability to access electronic resources such as the full Safari library from OReilly!
Belvedere library seems to have the best selection of travel books. I would highly recommend the following two books for anyone thinking about traveling: 1) National Geographic's "Journeys of a LIfetime: 500 of the World's Greatest Trips": a truly inspirational book with concise summaries and excellent photography of the best journies to be taken over land, sea, foot, rail, etc., and 2) "Travel with Kids" by William Gray: written by a British author and detailing best places to take your kids by country. Both are much too heavy to take with us unfortunately, so we need to plan our destinations before we leave for Spain. We are using "Journey's of a Lifetime" for inspiration and the Lonely Planet Guides for detail, placing what we learn in google doc spreadsheets.
Some of the ideas for our trip so far are as follows, and in no particular order. It'll be interesting to see if any of them pan out.
i) Purchase a second-hand car in Spain and drive around parts of Europe. Diesel car because it gets much better mileage.
ii) Take the Trans-Siberian express between Moscow and Beijing.
iii) See the pyramids in Egypt.
iv) Visit Morocco, particularly Marrakesh, and perhaps take a trip to the Atlas Mountains in the South, spending the night in the desert. Yesterday I found flights between Barcelona and Marakesh for 5 Euros per person on RyanAir, so this one looks possible!
v) Dubai, Seychelles, Sri Langka
vi) Stay for several months in Thailand and make side trips to Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and perhaps Burma.
vii) Travel for several months in China, perhaps seeking opportunities to teach English (for me) and put the boys in a public school so they can learn Mandarin.
viii) Stay a couple of months in Bali or Gili islands.
ix) Visit the Cook Islands and French Polynesia.
A lot of these traveling fantasies depend on our state of mind, budget and flight availability in September while we are staying in the UK at my brother Nick's place nr. Londonistan. The intent is to buy round the world (RTW) tickets in London because it's a big hub for airlines, there are a lot of RTW travel specialists, and we would be leaving during low season.