We are solidly within the two-week mark, and this should all be feeling quite a bit more real.  Yet it still does not, and I’m thinking that’s due to our plans (or lack thereof).  At the time that I write this, we have  the following actually ‘planned’ (read: paid for):

• 2 one-way tickets from SF to Paris departing
• 5 nights in an airbnb in Paris
• 1 week on a Habitat for Humanity project in Ethiopia in mid-October

Already, this trip has brought out one of my least attractive qualities (supreme indecisiveness) and pranced it in front of me repeatedly.  I’ve spent hours researching, both in analogue form (sitting on the hard floor of a local bookstore and thumbing through more travel books than would ever make sense to purchase) and also clicking my way across the interwebs, reading blogs, Lonely Planet articles, National Geographic articles and, okay, occasionally Travel+Leisure.com.  And so all of this has produced lots of ideas – big great beautiful ideas.  But very few plans.

I’m learning to come to terms with this.

Our strategy is to ‘chunk’ our itinerary – meaning we will leave here with a loose plan for the first month or so (heaven help me), during which we’ll continue collecting ideas and information that will inform the following month.  Seems like a good approach, yes, but meanwhile the planner in me is growing apprehensive.

The over-arching vision for this trip is to see less for longer.  We agreed early on that this was more about gaining perspective on the world and ourselves and less about checking off as many countries as humanly possible – though I’ll admit to having gotten caught up in the numbers-game; it’s a little hard not to.  What will this look like?  I envision fewer flights and more train rides.  Fewer tours and more afternoons spent in markets and cafes.  Fewer one-day-stop-overs and more five-night stints.  If we like a place, we’ll stay stay longer – and if we don’t, we’ll leave sooner.

To enable this flexibility, we chose not to purchase Round-The-World tickets as many travelers do.  David created an impressively detailed spreadsheet that compared the potential price ranges of most of the flights we’ll be taking and, in the end, we determined that the savings with the RTW tickets was not worth the hassle of having to solidify an itinerary up front (and constantly move in one direction, east or west) as those tickets require.

But I do wonder: would all of this feel more real if we’d been forced into a more solidified plan?  Probably.  Though, if that is the price I pay for spontaneity – I think I can learn to cope.  Most likely.