Where
I am always planning my next travel adventure. In the earliest planning stages, the first question is always, “Where?”
There are thousands of possible answers to “where.” I’ve been to all 50 of the United States, all 10 Canadian Provinces, and 46 other countries on six continents, so finding new places to visit is getting more difficult.
In 2021, I met Alice. Her son and his family live in Tokyo, Japan.
I visited the Dubia World’s Fair in 2022. (It was named the 2020 World’s Fair but was delayed due to COVID-19.) The next World’s Fair will be the Osaka World’s Fair in 2025.
Alice and I immediately started making plans to visit Japan in 2025. We would travel to Tokyo to visit Alice’s son and his family and Osaka to attend the 2025 World’s Fair.
That gave us three years to plan our big trip. That’s a long time to wait. In the meantime, Alice and I visited Istanbul and Italy.
With three years to plan, our trip kept getting more and more complex!
When
Another big question is “when” to go. The Osaka World’s Fair will last 184 days, from April 13 to October 13, 2025. It’s best to avoid the beginning and end of any World’s Fair. I avoid traveling during the height of the tourist season (June, July, and August). That left May or September.
There are three single-day back-to-back Japanese holidays in May: Constitution Day, Greenery Day, and Children’s Day. Collectively, they call that week “Golden Week”. Alice’s family would have more time to visit with us that week.
So, the “when” in Japan will be May.
How
The last advance planning question to answer is “how.” Some cruise ships cross the Pacific Ocean, but not many, so flying is the only reasonable choice.
The big problem is that Japan is a 14-hour flight from Boston! Alice and I are not getting any younger. I’ve had a bad back for decades. If I had to sit in economy class for 14 hours, I’d wind up in traction in a hospital. Economy class wasn’t an option.
Airlines offer a little-known airfare called an RTW (Round The World). Essentially, you must travel continuously East or continuously West until you get home. A Business Class RTW airfare costs approximately the same as a Business Class round-trip airfare between Boston and Tokyo.
With RTW airfare, virtually every location in the world is only a short side trip away, and nearly free.
There are three international airline groups:
- Star Alliance (29 member airlines, including Air Canada, Lufthansa, and United Airlines)
- SkyTeam (19 member airlines, including Delta Air Lines, Air France, and KLM)
- OneWorld (13 member airlines, including American Airlines, British Airways, and Qantas)
The SkyTeam alliance recently suspended its Round the World pass, leaving us with two RTW choices: Star Alliance and SkyTeam. Our decision depended on which countries we decided to visit.
Second Major Stop
For the next year, I researched potential additional destinations to visit.
There are many restrictions on RTW fares, such as the limit of three cities in one country or only one visit to a particular city. It takes time to find a route that meets all of the rules. Even when flights exist, the airline might not allow the flight as part of an RTW fare.
I eventually found several valid RTW routes that included a popular tourist destination like:
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Cairo, Egypt
- Helsinki, Finland
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
I also found valid RTW routes to rarely visited areas, including:
- Tashkent, Uzbekistan
- Almaty, Kazakhstan
- Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
None of these appealed to us at this particular time, but we might visit some of them in the future.
One part of the world that I’ve never visited but have always wanted to visit is the South Pacific.
Bora Bora has always been a dream vacation for me. Unfortunately, none of the three alliances fly to Bora Bora.
Two other fantastic South Pacific islands are Fiji and Tahiti. Unfortunately, OneWorld no longer offers an RTW fare, and SkyTeam has no flights to either Fiji or Tahiti.
That left only Star Alliance.
There is a ferry between Tahiti and Bora Bora, allowing us to visit both. That confirmed that Tahiti would be our second major destination.
Other Major Stops
In the meantime, Alice confirmed reservations for a rental house in Lady Lake, part of The Villages. If you’ve never heard of The Villages, it’s a vast 55+ community, sometimes called “Disney World for Seniors”. We travel everywhere by electric golf cart, including the grocery store.
Our flight plan outline was now Boston -> Florida -> Tahiti ->Japan.
I found a valid route that includes Bali, a popular South Pacific island featured in the musical South Pacific.
After more research, I discovered that originating our trip in Canada would be significantly cheaper than originating the journey in the United States, even after including the flights to/ from Boston as separate tickets.
Since we have a full year to complete our RTW trip, we decided to “visit” New England for the summer before returning to Canada to complete our trip.
The airlines allow booking flights one year in advance. After two years of research, I was able to book the following flight sequence:
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Toronto, Canada
- Orlando, Florida
- Tahiti, French Polynesia (via San Francisco)
- Bora Bora, French Polynesia
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Bali, Indonesia
- Bangkok, Thailand
- Tokyo, Japan
- Osaka, Japan
- Munich, Germany
- Boston, Mass
- Halifax, Canada
- Montreal, Canada
- Boston, Massachusetts
For a map of our route see: My Maps
That wasn’t the end of trip planning. In the year since we initially booked our flights, several of the flights have been cancelled. With effort, we were able to find alternative flights the same day or the same flight a day later or a day earlier. Fortunately, the flight changes were caused by the airline cancellations so there were no change fees.
