Jon & Hannah's World Tour
In and around World
The planning behind this trip started in 2005 when, after 3 years of university, I realised that I didn't want to start living in the real world just yet. For company, I managed to drag my girlfriend Hannah into the journey as well.
Whilst we are not covering the whole world, we are going to try as much as we can over a period of about 7 months. Heading initially across the U.S.A., before traveling onwards into Australasia, Asia, and maybe a bit of Europe thrown in at the end.
We are currently 4 days away from heading down the M25 to Heathrow airport to head out to Boston, U.S.A.. Hopefully, we just about have everything that we are going to need (which doesn't seem like much).
We are going to try to update this journal for friends and family as often as possible. Next stop Boston!
Route taken and entries by Real Traveler Jon & Hannah
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1
Letchworth
I just put this in so as to get the map to work properly. Nothing to see here! Continue reading » -
2
Boston
We arrived in Boston mid-afternoon, to some nice traditional British weather, it was pouring with rain. We managed to fumble our way through the su... Continue reading »
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3
Washington DC
We arrived in Washington DC at 7am after a 9 hour train journey. We both managed to get about 5 hours sleep each which was a bit surprising as we w... Continue reading »
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4
New York
We arrived in New York at lunch time, having travelled up from Washington on the train. With only two days in New York we new we would not be able... Continue reading »
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5
Buffalo - Niagara Falls
We arrived in Buffalo at about 8pm after an 8 hour train journey from New York. We weren't sure where the street with our hostel on was so we... Continue reading »
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6
Chicago
I think there can be no worse feeling than waiting for a train with heavy bags in the middle of the night, only to see a train approach an hour lat... Continue reading »
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7
The Train
What can I tell you about Portland...
... Not a lot! We arrived, suprisingly, 15 minutes early after just short of 46 hours on the train. It... Continue reading »
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8
San Francisco
We arrived in San Francisco 3 hours later than planned but we found the hostel easily and it is really central, very close to Union Square. Its one... Continue reading »
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9
L.A.
We arrived in L.A. about an hour and half late. Due to slight oversight in our planning, this meant that it was 10:30pm on a Sunday night, this res... Continue reading »
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10
Bounty Island
We arrived at Bounty Island after a long journey from LA involving the subway, a tram, a bus, a plane, a coach, a catamaran and a little fishing bo... Continue reading »
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11
Nadi Bay
The trip to our new lodging on the main island of Fiji took most of the day. Despite the relatively short distance between the two resorts. We had... Continue reading »
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12
Auckland, New Zealand
We arrived in Auckland about 2pm. It was sunny and warm but not hot like Fiji which was a nice change. We found our hostel which turned out to be o... Continue reading »
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13
Waitomo Caves
The coach ride to Waitomo was suprisingly pleasant. The coach was very comfortable and the driver pointed out various points of interest as we trav... Continue reading »
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14
Rotorua
We arrived in Rotorua at around 3.30pm after another pleasant coach ride. The first thing that struck us on arrival to this city was the lack of an... Continue reading »
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15
Taupo
We arrived in Taupo early morning and got into a hostel. We then had a walk around the town and along the lake. Jon had been saying he would get hi... Continue reading »
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16
Windy Welly
We arrived in Wellington after a six hour quite pleasent journey. It was extremely windy and if you stood against the wind with your bag on your ba... Continue reading »
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17
Nelson
We arrived in Nelson around 3pm and got to our hostel easily as it was literally just on the other side of the road. The hostel was nice and the pe... Continue reading »
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18
Wellington - Nelson
We arrived at the terminal early to discover that the ferry was sailing, but due to incredible lack of forsight by Interislander (not the first in... Continue reading »
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19
'Hoki'
After an early start on the coach from Nelson we arrived in Hokitika at 2pm. Along the way the coach had stopped for lunch at Punakaiki, which has... Continue reading »
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20
Franz Josef Glacier
We arrived in Franz Josef just before 6pm, the coach dropping us right at the door of the hostel. There are only really two streets in Franz Josef... Continue reading »
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21
Queenstown
We arrived in Queenstown late afternoon and after finding our hostel we went exploring the town centre. We really liked the look of Queenstown. Its... Continue reading »
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22
Milford Sound
We had to get up early to catch our coach to Milford Sound. It was a 5 hour coach journey there but they stopped off at lots of points along the wa... Continue reading »
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23
Queenstown again
On our fourth day in Queenstown we did our riversurfing. Once we’d got togged up in all our safety gear we were given a quick lesson and then heade... Continue reading »
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24
Road Trip - The Southern Scenic Route
Throughout our travels in New Zealand we thought about how much fun it would be to rent a car, prices were cheap, as was petrol (50 pence a litre).... Continue reading »
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25
Road Trip - Dunedin & The Otago Peninsula
We reached Dunedin late evening and headed straight through the town and onto the Otago Peninsula, a stretch of land jutting out from the mainland... Continue reading »
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26
Queenstown one last time
After our road trip we arrived back in Queenstown and booked into the same hostel we had been in previously.
The next day we decided to just... Continue reading »
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27
Mount Cook Village
We left Queenstown bright and early for the last leg of our coach trip. The journey to Christchurch would have taken the best part of a day so we d... Continue reading »
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28
Settling in.
We arrived in Christchurch on a Sunday evening. We plan to base ourselves here until the end of January, so our first thoughts turned to jobs... Continue reading »
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29
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to everyone! Hope everyone had a good one.
We have not written the blog for a few weeks now. This is mainly because we haven'... Continue reading »
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30
Road Trip - Banks Peninsula
As renting a car proved so easy to do in Queenstown, we decided to do the same again in Christchurch. We again rented for four days,planning to hea... Continue reading »
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31
Road trip - Arthurs Pass, Reefton, Hanmer Springs
We set off on our road trip on New Years day in the rain again. We headed over the Canterbury plains towards the mountains. After a couple of hours... Continue reading »
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32
Road Trip - Kaikoura (twice)
We arrived in Kaikoura late on New Year's Day. The small town is supposed to be in one of the most picturesque landscapes in NZ. However, all we co... Continue reading »
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33
World Buskers Festival 2007
For the last few days Christchurch has been hosting the World Buskers Festival where buskers from all over the world come and perform. We’ve been t... Continue reading »
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34
Sydney
We're back on the move again. We arrived in Oz in the evening. Finding our hostel was a fairly painless experience, we are staying in the King's Cr... Continue reading »
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35
Canberra - The Capital
After dragging our bags through the heat to Sydney Central Station we got on the air conditioned train to Canberra (Jon and I are loving air con in... Continue reading »
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36
Wagga Wagga
We arrived in "Wagga" to a wall of heat after we got off the air-conditioned train. After finding out hotel we went for a stroll around the town an... Continue reading »
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37
Melbourne
Our first day in Melbourne was a little uncomfortable. This was mainly because we had both been bitten to death by mosquitoes in Wagga, and the bit... Continue reading »
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38
Bathurst
After a fairly long journey of both train and coach we arrived in Bathurst. We'd treated ourselves to a hotel as there were no hostels in the town... Continue reading »
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39
The Outback
We left Bathurst early in the morning for a full days journey to Broken Hill. We went by train to the town of Dubbo at lunch, and then by coach for... Continue reading »
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40
Blue Mountains
We arrived in Katoomba quite late so just got some food in town and had a quick look around the area. The next day we headed to Echo Point, the loo... Continue reading »
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41
Sydney again
After the Blue Mountains we intended to head up the east coast to Brisbane. However, to do this we had to go via Sydney. Since we had a recieved a... Continue reading »
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42
Brisbane
We arrived in Brisbane at 6am Queensland time after having had no sleep on the train overnight. We had breakfast at the transit centre before headi... Continue reading »
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43
Port
We arrived in Port Macquaire mid-afternoon after a very early morning train departure from Brisbane. We didn't really got up to much after arriving... Continue reading »
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44
A quick stopover.
We returned to Sydney one last time to catch our flight out to Perth on the west coast. A journey that will take almost five hours.
We had on... Continue reading »
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45
Perth
We arrived at Perth airport to cloudy weather with sporadic showers and a cool 17 degrees. It seemed that finally our luck with the weather in Oz h... Continue reading »
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46
Singapore
We arrived in Singapore after a bit of a long flight as there was a lot of turbulance. We found the hostel after travelling on the ultra clean MRT... Continue reading »
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47
Hong Kong
We arrived at Hong Kong to a very foggy evening. Our bus into the city took us over the Tsing Ma Bridge, at 2.2km it is the longest road and rail b... Continue reading »
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48
Guilin and the Li River
After crossing the border into China we headed to the Shenzen train station to buy our ticket to Guilin. Thinking we were organised we'd got an Eng... Continue reading »
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49
Xi'an and the Terracotta Army
Our flight into Xi'an was easy enough, arriving about 30 minutes late. It was quite late in the evening when we got to our hostel, so the only thin... Continue reading »
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50
Beijing
We arrived in Beijing around 6.40am. The train journey was comfortable and we both slept a reasonable amount. We got a taxi to our hostel as Beijin... Continue reading »
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51
Trans-Mongolian Railway to Ulaanbaatar
The Trans-Mongolian railway runs for 7865 kilometres from Beijing through to Moscow. To do in the journey in one go takes arounds five and a half d... Continue reading »
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52
Trans-Mongolian Railway to Irkutsk & Lake Baikal
The journey to Irkutsk wasn't quite as pleasant as the journey to Ulaanbaatar due to having to spend basically all day at the Mongolian-Russian bor... Continue reading »
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53
Trans-Mongolian Railway to Moscow
We left Irkutsk at around 16:30 in the afternoon, for what was by far the longest leg of the journey so far. The trip across five time zones took j... Continue reading »
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54
Saint Petersburg
We arrived in St Petersburg at about 8am and after being taken to our homestay we headed out for a wander around the city. We walked along the cana... Continue reading »
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55
Helsinki
The train journey from Russia into the EU went very smoothly, the Finnish custom control officer seemed more interested in whether or not we liked... Continue reading »
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56
Stockholm
We arrived in Stockholm at 9.40am after a very nice ferry ride. The views going into Stockholm were really stunning. We found our hostel easily alt... Continue reading »
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57
Oslo
A six hour, very comfortable train journey took us to our final, and probably most expensive destination, the Norweigan capitol, Oslo. Due to the r... Continue reading »
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58
Back in the UK.
After 7 months and quite a lot of countries we are back in the UK and have completed our round the world trip.
We've been back less than 24... Continue reading »
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