Today, we landed in Greece, the last country on our first Around the World Trip. In a little more than two weeks we’ll be back home in Minnesota. We started in November with Australia and New Zealand, picked-up again in Southeast Asia after being home for the Christmas holiday… 14 countries later, we’re ready to be going home, but I’m uncertain what comes next. I know we’ll return to a full schedule of non-profit work we’ve scheduled for the summer (see www.LifeImageLLC.com\events) as well as many family functions. Technically, I’m unemployed and will need to make some decisions. I’ve been thinking about options, but don’t have any clear direction yet.

When I look back at our trip, I’m impressed with what we’ve done with our limited budget. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t an inexpensive trip, but we consciously looked for ways to save money – so we could spend it on the things that really made a difference to the experience… like the multi-day dive boat on the Great Barrier Reef, racing back/forth through Egypt via private car so we could see as much as possible (and meet up w/our friends from England), finding a quiet B&B mid-way through the trip (Israel) to recharge, adding the African excursion to the mix, etc. We’ll have a few more nights sleeping on ferries to add to our list of inexpensive overnights, but I’m sure we’ll put any savings to good use exploring the Greek islands.

We’ve had some travel challenges to deal with. As Rita mentioned, we had one of our checked bags missing when we landed in Turkey. It turned out to be one of the best places for that to happen, since we were at Collette’s (a friend’s apartment) and in the same place for a several days. Alitalia found the bag and it was delivered a couple days later. Then, as we went online to confirm our flight from Istanbul to Athens (via Prauge on Czech Air), we learned the flights were cancelled. Thank goodness Collette had a good internet connection, as we spent almost 2 hours on Skype with Delta to correct the problem (their error, as they should have caught the schedule change, but it fell through-the-cracks with the NWA/Delta system conversion). We ended up flying Alitalia again, through Rome. A few lost things here and there, but we bought stuff too. Otherwise, we’re still traveling with pretty much the same number of bags we started with (we did mail back a couple of small boxes along the way).

Now in Greece, we’re using the Euro as currency. We’ve used 18 different currencies in our travels and keeping track of exchange rates was a challenge.

• Australian Dollar
• British Pound
• Cambodian Riel
• Egyptian Pound
• EU Euro
• Israeli New Shekel
• Jordanian Dinar
• Kenyan Shilling
• Malawian Kwacha
• New Zealand Dollar
• South African Rand
• Tanzanian Shilling
• Thailand Baht
• Turkish Lira
• US Dollar
• Vietnamese Dong
• Zambian Kwacha

Better get working on some photo uploads from Turkey, so make sure you check the link.

Jeff