As I slowly woke up to the sound of birds chirping and the early morning sun peeking under my padlocked bedroom door, I had a moment or two of confusion while the jet-lagged brain cleared from 9 glorious hours of sleep.   Getting to Marrakesh was a blur…we initially feared we were forgotten in the Casablanca airport, but when 2 men in colorful robes finally walked up, we thankfully followed them to their SUV and had a dozing drive along the Moroccan highway. 

The walk to our riad was exhilarating….like stumbling through the stalls of Chinatown in New York, only instead of knock-off handbags and Tiffany jewelry, I was tempted by the aromatic pull of colorful spices sold in barrels and the twinkling Moroccan lanterns as large as my kitchen table I knew I must to find a way to ship home!  

There was no time to stop and shop however–we had to keep moving deeper and deeper into the winding cobblestone streets, following the man and push cart holding all of our worldly possessions for the next 3 months.  When he deposited us outside a small, tiled doorway and made motions for a tip, I handed the husband my wallet…I was much too tired to figure out currency today!

Breakfast was started with fresh squeezed orange juice…and chocolate cake.  And while this picture isn’t of chocolate cake, as I’m a bad blogger and was jet-lagged, it is a representation of the breakfast theme in Morocco: CARBS.   He theorized that the citizens needed to keep their energy up all day to combat the heat.   I simply think that a culture based around saffron, cinnamon and cumin had such a sweet palate they thought nothing of juice, cake, bread, and honey for breakfast each day…with sweet meats and fruits as dessert and dates and mint tea as their mid-day snack!

We’re a matter of hours and one layover from our very first stop, and already the language barrier has popped up multiple times… Maybe it’s me, but more likely it’s just France!   Leaving the plane, I tried to say a cheerful “au revoir” to the flight attendant at the door as she had wished the 5 passengers departing before me.   But no, with a soft chuckle at my attempt, she corrected me and wished us “bye bye” instead.   Oh well, I have a few weeks until we’re actually in Paris, I could practice in the airport now…

We entered the Air France lounge and when the attendant granted us access, I tried once more, a simple “merci” this time…alas, she laughed once again and said “no, no, please and thank you” and sent us on our way.

This could be a long 3 months…

Why the heck not?

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Okay, okay, joking…that is not a full post obviously!  When He and I were first dating, we talked about travel…A LOT.   And then we did travel…A LOT.   So we made a list on Google Drive and shared it.  It was separated by continent and we added in countries we wanted to visit.  Then we drilled down from there and listed places and things in each country we wanted to see or do.  And then we just started checking them off.

African Safari and hiking on Mount Kilimanjaro?  Incredible.

A cross country train journey from Chicago to Napa?  Just your typical spring break, right?

Camping with the (really loud and smelly) penguins on Antarctica?  Our engaged Christmas.

Then more places we went, the longer the list grew because of who we met.  Each new friend had been somewhere else and told us such magical stories that we had to include it in our own lives.   Suddenly this little one page list was turning into a full college style outline with website links and bullet points.   How were we ever going to be able to get everywhere?  We work 9 to 5’s, we get 2 to 3 weeks vacation a year and generally it is balked at to take more than a week at a time (darn the American work ethic…). We would be exhausted and poor trying to go to each place for a week at a time and come home again.   There had to be a better plan.

My sister was the one who first mentioned the Delta Skymiles Around the World ticket to us.   I’m not sure she was aware at the time how much of a goal she planted in our brains, but quickly we ordered new credit cards to earn miles, took the day flights to DC on milage runs to hit the next bonus level, and updated the spreadsheet (and we’ll pause here for my family to laugh and mock because there’s nothing I love more than a spreadsheet or 7 to plan my life…my wedding…my Christmas gift list) of tracking our miles down to the very last one…and then one day, while neck deep in wedding planning and not watching the miles quite as closely as we had been, we realized we did it.   We managed to save 560,000 miles and were ready to start planning our ticket.

While we focused on the weddings, the honeymoon, the upcoming holidays, Delta threw us for a loop: they announced the program was ending in 2 months and if the ticket wasn’t purchased with all dates and stops selected by that date, it would never be available again.  So we went back to our spreadsheets and figure out how to start our trip a year early…kicking our lives into hyper planning and saving mode for months to make this dream come true.

Because, why the heck not.

When I say everywhere, I’m not joking.   We are touching 4 continents, 12+ countries, and an adventurous spirit.  So the Where is hard to define.  And in part I don’t want to define it.   I want you to keep coming back to see where we are next!

But in order to peak your interest…or keep those worriers (hi Mom!) from locking us to a chair and hiding our passport in fear, here are the main stops, determined by the Delta International Flights.  The timeline is approximate as I’m not in the mood to pull up the tickets to actually verify the dates, but you can leave it up to your imagination how much trouble we can manage to get into in each place for that amount of time!

Morocco: 6 days

Europe: 28 days

Egypt: 8 days

Thailand: 10 days

China: 15 days

Australia: 21 days

To all my fellow Mathletes, I didn’t add those up…so if it’s more than 88, oops, and if it’s less than 88 then perhaps I’m omitting a stop or two just to keep things interesting!

If you ask Him when our wedding day is, he’ll tell you “Labor Day!”  with such confidence and enthusiasm you almost accept it as fact…until your brain remembers that Labor Day in fact changes every single year and is on a Monday in September.   Considering we got married on a beautiful August Saturday, the facts don’t line up.  But, it did happen to be Labor Day weekend, on a year where it fell at the very start of September, so fittingly we wanted to begin our grand adventure on that same weekend…until we talked to Delta.

Our primary flights are booked 100% using Delta Skymiles, and because of that we recognized we had to allow a lot of flexibility in our travel dates and locations.  This meant that the last long weekend of the summer was not chockfull of award ticket seats.  Thankfully, due to the funny way the calendar worked out, leaving the week before Labor Day actually allowed us to leave right after our real anniversary!  I call it fate.  He calls it confusing and will celebrate our anniversary accordingly the following Monday as I’m sure he plans to do for the rest of our life.  (And I have no problem with this because I know that means a guaranteed anniversary trip EVERY year…plus flowers when he remembers he has the date wrong. Win-Win.)

Our return flight was also decided based on Delta’s whims…but in another twist of fate, we are returning to the grand US of A on Thanksgiving Day.   We’ll stagger off our 14 hour flight from Asia straight to my parents’ house for normal food, American football, and lots and lots of free time to sleep off the jet lag.  What more could we ask for here?