Days 1 & 2 were really all about the journey, having left home around 7:00am on Tuesday morning and arriving at our hotel around 8:30pm on Wednesday night. Given a good deal for miles on DeltaOne, we flew to Shanghai up front, which was a real treat for the gals (despite it being in one of Delta’s old 777 cabins before adding the suites).

I also booked us a 1 bedroom suite at the Marriott City Centre. Very nice room. This also proved to be a wise decision as some of us could sleep while others used the living room.

The transfer from airport (usual dystopian environment after spending half a day on a plane) to the hotel was very smooth. After dropping off our luggage, we went to Starbucks for a coffee and headed out to the neon lights of Nanjing Road to find some dinner (ate some really good, spicy Sichuan dishes).

The big challenge with this journey is getting onto the right sleep schedule. Emerson suffered the worst, as she got the best night’s sleep on the way over. Libby and I managed to fall asleep by 2 or and were up again by 6 or 7 (after a pretty restless night). Emerson didn’t sleep at all.

Day #3, which was Thursday, started with complimentary breakfast at the executive lounge (a great perk of my Marriott lifetime status). We then returned to the room and let Emerson sleep for about 3 hours before waking her up (really unwelcome!) and heading out for the day.

We didn’t do too much on Thursday — explored the area around The Bund & People’s Square and visited the Shanghai Museum. Honestly, our main mission was fighting exhaustion and staying awake during the day. Dinner was less successful this night–not that the food was bad. It’s just difficult to enjoy a meal on the verge of collapse. Indeed, even walking back to the hotel a few short blocks felt like a struggle.

We did have one of the funnier moments of the trip at the restaurant. The wait staff didn’t speak English. But, our waitress really wanted to ask us a question. When we didn’t understand the Chinese (despite speaking it too us more loudly), she got a piece of paper and then proceeded to write the question down in Chinese for us (as if that was likely to help). LOL

Thankfully, the Internet came through with real-time translation. Thus, we established that Emerson did not want ice in her water. And, as it turned out, she didn’t want the water either since it was “with bubbles.”

We were all fast asleep by 8:00pm or so.

Day #4 started early… I was up at one o’clock in the morning, and the girls weren’t too far behind me a couple of hours later. Today was our visit to Shanghai Disneyland. I booked our tickets online (quite cheap compared to US prices) and paid a bit more for early access to the park. This paid off as we were able to do many rides (some twice) first thing in the morning and then spent the rest of the day at a more leisurely pace moving around the park.

We had a late lunch at a Wolfgang Puck’s in their version of Disney Springs, called Disneytown. We also did some shopping there and had salted custard egg bao from Crystal Jade.

We left the park around 5:30 and made it back to the hotel by around 7:00 (traffic was heavy). Emerson fell asleep in the car, despite our best efforts to keep her up. We then fell asleep in the car, despite our best efforts to keep each other awake. Dinner consisted of snacks from the nearby convenience store, as we mostly just wanted to go to bed.

Day #5 saw us awake fairly early, which enabled us to grab coffees and a light breakfast at 6am. We then relaxed for a bit before heading out on a dumpling tour and class, which started at 10:30am. This was a blast. The food tasted excellent (the pan-fried soup dumplings were especially revelatory), and the dumpling-making class was a lot of fun too. We also had a nice, small group with us including a New Zealand / South African expat couple living and teaching in Shanghai.

After the tour, we wandered back to our hotel through the French Concession, which felt far more “Upper East Side” than “Midtown” to us. We didn’t see a lot of hotels (at least not big, international chains) in this area, but it looked like a nice spot for eating and drinking (not to mention a short walk to the exquisite dumpling and bao spots). We came upon a market that was oddly celebrating Thanksgiving, as well as a number of historically important sights related to the founding of the PRC (which admittedly were largely meaningless to us).

Dinner was a light meal from room service, as we still had many dumplings in our belly.

Overall, Shanghai was a joy despite our being in a bit of a jet lag induced fog. It’s probably not a fair comparison because I go to Beijing for business, not pleasure, but I personally liked it Shanghai a lot more. We could have probably used one more day to really see the city, but this worked out well. We’d happily come back here.

Today’s just a travel day: Tampa to Atlanta, Atlanta to Shanghai.

Due to the length of the flight and departure time from Atlanta, we left Tampa around 9:45 in the morning, which meant driving to the airport in rush hour. Thankfully, that was the only real “lowlight” of he day.

We boarded our plane in Tampa on time, and Emerson was very pleased to see that we’d secured first class seats. She also quickly tumbled to the fact that that might mean we had first class seats to Asia too. And, she was right! I’d booked us in Delta One on the route over, which was a real treat for the gals.

In Atlanta, we visited the Sky Club before boarding our flight aboard a Delta 777 (sadly one of the planes not yet retrofitted with the Delta One Suites). It’s probably Delta’s worst business class hard product in my opinion, as I prefer even the 767-300s. But, the ladies were happy, which made me happy.

The onward flight to Rome was pleasant enough even in economy class, which admittedly I’ve grown unaccustomed to given my amount of travel for work in business class these days.

It was great (and a little surreal) to be picking them up at the airport in Europe. The plan for the day was to drive to Würzburg, which is kind of the northern gateway to the Romantic Road in Germany. The drive in our sleek, new Volvo V90 station wagon was pleasant, though the car’s technology was mildly confounding initially — even to me. We checked into our hotel (a Mecure — similar to an Aloft) around 11am and received our rooms right away — two very comfortable suites.

We dropped our stuff in the rooms and immediately headed into the center of town (a short stroll along the river and over the Alte Mainbrucke):

We grabbed some strawberries for Emerson (so fresh and succulent!) and proceeded on a walking tour of the city using the local map vs. Rick Steves’ guidebook (the local tour of the old town is more comprehensive, which might be good or bad — we had the time).

Some highlights included…

The Neumunster Basilica:

The old buildings of the University of Würzburg:

The Residenz:

With its magnificent interior (this was an ill gotten photo on my iPhone — I was too smitten with the silver overlay and silver sage walls to resist the temptation):

And its charming gardens:

The Residenz was clearly a highlight:

We had some time after our walking tour before a reasonable dinner hour; so, Libby and I followed another local tradition of having a glass of wine on the bridge. Libby enjoyed a Aperol Spritz (a wine- and aperitif-based cocktail), and I had a glass of the local rose wine (called a Rotling) — both where quite quaffable and got us in the spirit of the local wine festival that was happening.

After this, we headed to a local biergarten for dinner:

All in all, we had a great first day together in Germany, and we came away from Würzburg suitably impressed. Candidly, I picked it as a stop simply because I’d assumed it wouldn’t be too much for a first day and due to its proximity to “what we really wanted to see” tomorrow. But, it turned out to be a great place to visit and somewhere I’d happily return to again.

My meetings having wrapped up yesterday, I departed the Cotswolds around mid-day for my 3:30pm flight to Frankfurt. It was about a 2 hour drive to London Heathrow under cloudy skies with light rain — more typical of English weather than I’d seen during the week (which had been simply gorgeous):

I arrived at LHR in plenty of time to check-in, go through security, and visit the business class lounge before departure.

Unfortunately, my flight ended up being delayed. First, my inbound plane was late to arrive — thereby delaying our boarding time. Once we were all on board, the pilot reported that we had a potential mechanical issue that needed to be checked out. That concern was sorted out, but the delay cost us our take-off slot, which caused us a further delay. All told, I landed in Frankfurt about 2 hours late — not great, could’ve been much worse.

In the meantime, the ladies had managed to travel to Tampa airport, catch their flight to Atlanta, and were a couple of hours away from departing to rendezvous with me in Germany in the morning.

I spent the evening at the oh-so-conveniently located airport Hilton, which was part of a train station/business park complex attached to the airport terminal. The facility included a number of restaurants, and I opted for the “biergarten” (such as it was in an office block):

Really, it’s difficult to go wrong with German specialities and beer.

After dinner, I stayed up until my crew was airborne and headed toward me. Thankfully, they were on-time in departing, and I drifted to sleep while they raced toward me at 500+ miles per hour.

Our flights were on time and (relatively) uneventful. I say “relatively” because we initially had some difficulty in Tampa. We inherited a broken airplane from an earlier Cincinnati flight, but it was fixed in a surprisingly timely manner (especially as we were watching a couple of guys repair the rear stabilizer on the tail from a lift) and wouldn’t have mattered anyway since I got us confirmed seats on the next flight to Atlanta an hour later. 
The transatlantic flight was pleasant enough in Economy Comfort. We arrived in London a little late due to holding for air traffic over England for 30 minutes. For our onward journey to Copenhagen, we managed to get through the arrivals process, change terminals, and checked in with British Airways in about an hour and a half. We wasted a couple of hours at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 (which feels more like a high end mall than an airplane terminal) and flew on to Copenhagen. 

On arrival in Copenhagen, we took a taxi into the city center (about $45) to our hotel, The Square. Although, I’m usually a Marriott guy, it had a better location across the street from the city hall and about a block from Tivoli Gardens. The hotel itself was typically European of a Scandinavian persuasion–fairly modern design in the lobby, functional but small (by American standards) rooms. 

As we only made it to the hotel around 6:30pm, we headed out for dinner after checking into the hotel. Having wandered about the city center for a bit, we settled upon the “Cock’s and Cow” (a name that seems dirty and ungrammatical, though more likely just lost in translation). It’s a sort of high-end, independent burger and chicken joint, which we thought would appeal to Emerson. The food–salads, burgers, and fries–were all pretty good (great for Europe) and not wildly expensive for Scandinavia (about $70 for the four of us). After dinner, we walked around the city a bit more and took Emerson past Tivoli (which she’s excited now to visit, not remembering her first visit at 16 months of age). 

Note: I’ve been trying to troubleshoot an inability to upload pictures to the blog. Unfortunately, the problem (which seems to involve file permissions on my web server) isn’t likely easily fixed while traveling, especially since I left my laptop at home. So, a thousand words might have to be worth a picture until we get home.

Sure enough, our inbound flight landed on time but got trapped on the taxiway due to gridlock at LAX. So, I called Delta and reserved us seats on a later flight. The fact that I could secure these seats seemed to cause the airline gods to see the futility in their endeavor to thwart me and thus they delayed our outbound flight by 30 minutes. So, despite the added stress and mad sprinting between terminals, we ended up boarding with time to spare.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, even pleasant, aboard a newly retrofitted Delta 757. We arrived in Honolulu about 30 minutes late and proceeded to our hotel in Waikiki. The Marriott gave us a free upgrade (nice) to a “premium oceanview room,” which was a nice touch. 

Arriving in Honolulu

After contemplating dining options (Cheesecake Factory? P.F. Chang?), we settled on Roy’s, which at least comes from Hawaii and represents its regional cuisine. Dinner was generally very good (ultra fresh seafood), albeit a bit pricey. We strolled back to our hotel and called it a night, generally feeling good to be (back, for me) in Hawaii. 

Flight to NY-JFK was uneventful.

It was a little frantic getting ready for this trip given my new job and business travel, but I’m looking forward to the vacation now.

Next stop is LHR…

We’d originally been scheduled to fly to Rome via New York on Alitalia. However, flight schedules changed making the connection too precarious. As a result, Delta agreed to re-route us through Atlanta. This created the happy accident of being on the same overseas flight as Libby’s parents, who we met up with in Atlanta.

A spending a couple of leisurely hours, we boarded our 4:30 flight and took off for Rome. As usual, Emerson sat with me and began to enjoy her “sleepover” on the airplane. On our way…

We witnessed a rather disturbing scene at the Sydney security checkpoint this morning. As we arrived at the magnetometer, I saw an older woman–likely from some island in the South Pacific, seemingly traveling alone–sitting on a bench being assisted by airport security staff. Another passenger said that she was “having trouble breathing.” By the time we’d passed to the other side, an airport staffer rushed by saying that she’d fainted. Sadly, this wasn’t the case… the woman had gone into cardiac arrest. As I turned around, security staff were already starting CPR. I thought about offering assistance until the cavalry arrived, but a doctor rushed back through security to lend a hand.

I have no idea why she was traveling or where she was going. I don’t know what happened to her. Clearly, she wasn’t going to be flying wherever today. Perhaps, the Sydney airport was ultimately going to be her “final destination.” However, I’m willing to bet that someone, somewhere is either worried about or mourning her tonight. In either case, my thoughts are with her and her family as I jet over the Pacific.

The whole incident sort of underscores a conversation Libby and I were having last night about travel. We don’t think a lot of people “get” our travel desires. Why the 157×50 goal? Why do we go where we go? Why travel with Emerson when she’s so young? Why take expensive, extended trips in the midst of our careers?

The short answer is “because we can.” We might not be able to later in life. We could suffer from illness or injury. We could experience economic or financial misfortunes. We could find the world a less hospitable place due to geopolitical conflicts. Who knows? And, even if we’re fortunate enough to continue traveling well into our dotage (as we would hope), I still have yet to meet a person who told me someone’s last words were “gee, I really wish I’d spent more time in the office or earned more money.”

The longer answer is that I think that the key to happiness on this ride we call life is really about the journey and not the destination. For example, I don’t derive a huge amount of pleasure or even a strong sense of accomplishment from having visited all seven continents. Yes, it’s nice to have ticked the box. But, I’ve loved the process of planning to make it happen most. The same is true of “collecting” countries: it’s the journey and experience that’s cool.

It’s fun to be “kidnapped” and then “hit by a car” in Slovenia. It’s awesome to make friends with a guy in Oman whose looks would cause the average American to think about scurrying for the exit of an airplane if he boarded after them. It’s priceless to take a baby to Antarctica, even if only to suffer whiteout conditions on arrival at the cost of four days in heavy seas. We’re fortunate to have seen and done so much, and we want to do much more. I can honestly say that there’s no place we’ve visited that we wouldn’t return to. Indeed, most places we’d like to go back to visit again and explore in more depth.

In the end, the best part of the 157×50 goal isn’t that we’ll eventually have been to 100 countries, 50 states, and 7 continents. No, the best part is that the goal has forced us to expand our horizons and then keep going. We’ve now been to places that we laughed at the thought of going to not that many years ago!

So, we’re making plans for completing the 157 goal over the next couple of years. And, we’re working on sorting out our future projects.

Enough philosophical musings.

Here are some statistics for RTW 2013:

Continents: 4
Countries (UN): 7 [5 new]
Countries (TCC): 9 [7 new]
Flight Segments: 10
Flight Miles: Approx. 26,000
Flight Hours: Approx. 50

Impressions

This is something of an homage to our friends Dick and Frank, who write up a fun Q&A summary at the end of their trips

Highlight(s):

Paul–Maritime museum in Sydney. Vila/private pool in Phuket.

Libby–Natural History Museum in London with Dinosaur-crazy Preschooler; Singapore Zoo; riding with no seatbelt on an elephant in Phuket.
Emerson–Spending time w/ Mommy and Daddy. Dinosaurs and zoos!

Lowlight(s):

Paul–Nagging illnesses and fatigue. Thankfully, we were never overly sick… just enough to be annoying.

Libby–the western toilets in SE Asia.

Best meal:

Paul–Take-out from Singapore’s hawker centers. Excellent flavor; low price; huge value.

Emerson–“Mexico” in Sydney and (gourmet) popcorn in Singapore.

Favorite (new) destination:

Libby–Singapore. Vibrant city with lots to do…. and the cleanest toilets in SE Asia!!

Paul–Shockingly: Bali. While we had some of our worst days there, and I didn’t like the resort’s location… the island has a certain allure and undefinable quality. Clearly, we didn’t see everything anywhere else either, but Bali is the one place I didn’t feel like I “got” in our tapas-sized visit.

Would you do it again:

Paul–Most certainly!

Libby–Sure

What would you do differently:

Paul–either a longer trip or 1-2 fewer stops. The long-haul flights weren’t the killers. Moving through SE Asia at 3 nights per city was too fast. Interestingly, this is a very comfortable pace when training or driving. With flying? Not so much. I actually wouldn’t have changed this trip, but I won’t repeat this pace with flights in the future.

Libby–more time in each place if I could. Thank goodness Emerson likes going on planes!

Update from Tampa:

Our flights were uneventful. Emerson was golden, as usual on airplanes, despite a lack of sleep and lengthy journey. We arrived home at 7pm on Saturday about 24 hours after our departure from Sydney. While we love travel, it’s good to be home too.

Round the world: done!

Sitting at our dinette table last night munching on our dinner, I said to Libby that “maybe we should make traveling around the world at least a once per decade thing for us? This could be our 30s trip!” Munch. Playful eye roll. “Ok, dear.”