2 Days to go - Clouds clear over Europe!

First flight: SFO - HKK - San Francisco to Hong Kong, saved the longest one for first! Seemed like a good starting point. Weather doesn’t seem to be too good there at the moment, hope I’ll find a break for photo panoramas. #ashtag volcano chaos in Europe seems to me mostly cleared up at the moment, so hopefully my planning will have paid off.

I’ve completed booking on all hotels, planes and trains. Hong Kong, Singapore, Cairo, Istanbul, Venice, Zurich, Bruges, London, Paris here I come! Feels good to have put aside the procrastination and commit to each location. Train tickets are in the mail, as, apparently, is the camera connection kit for my iPad. Weight is critical on this trip and I am really trying to avoid bringing the laptop, but, if the camera connect kit doesn’t arrive, my photographs must be saved, organized and posted as I go, and the laptop will have to come along for the ride.This is a big commitment for me, to not bring a full horse-power laptop on a trip. I do need to work, and to post blog items, upload images galleries, but 2lb is a big weight difference, and I like traveling light! — Update on this one, apparently the Camera Connection Kits are now shipping. I’ll believe it when I see it and, hopefully, be traveling light! UPDATE: No camera connect kit, and I have to keep up with committments while traveling so this laptop is going instead. I was looking forward to road-testing the iPad, but just can’t afford to a: not have somewhere to download and organize my photos, and b: just can’t make it work. It was worth a try. Maybe next Spin, I’ll have everythingI need to road test it.

I am looking forward to revisiting places I’ve spent time before (London and Zurich) and very excited about discovering all the new places (everywhere else!). I owe a lot to the good people at Lonely Planet for their in-depth travel information, as well as the many travelers who have taken the time to post reviews at tripadvisor.com and also at Expedia.com — these reviews, matched with price needs and location desires, have really helped me sort out what was at first an overwhelming choice of places to stay and see. I will be posting my hotel and travel experiences here as well as at the above links, because, as travelers, I feel a responsiblity to share the good and the bad of travel in the hope that others can take advantage of what I experience. That’s what this trip is all about!

SpinFirst.com has started to receive thousands of mailing list sign ups — did you know we’re giving away the world?! Just sign up to join our mailing list (include your mailing address) and we’ll send 20 lucky Spinners their own inflatable beach-ball globe every month! Offer is limited by supplies, we’ll be getting more soon, please be patient. I’m taking a bunch of these with me on the Round the World Trip, looking forward to giving them away along the way. More soon…

This entry was posted on 20. April 2010 at 17:07 and is filed under Travel Tips, Cities, Destinations, Travel Blog, Countries, Around the World, International, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.