The tickets have arrived!!!!

Tomorrow I'm 33. Not entirely sure how I got to this age this quickly! But anyway I have and so my birthday also marks 3 weeks until I go. Got the tickets this morning and have to say, I was incredibly excited when I saw them and started reading them. Bizarrely I am travelling on paper tickets and so I have a veritable thesis to take with me. I really don't understand it to be perfectly honest, it seems a ridiculous system to me. Why is it that when you only travel on short hop trips you can do it on an e-ticket yet when you travel round the world, don't really want to take too many valuable bits of paper and could do with having as much stuff electronic as possible, they give you a paper ticket? I'm sure someone somewhere can explain that one to me!

Anyway, in honour of the fact that the tickets have now arrived I decided to post my finalised itinerary on my blog! So here goes:

1st August: fly to Philadelphia
From here I plan to go to on to New York and Boston going by bus between cities
18th August: Boston to Chicago
24th August: Train to Minneapolis
29th August: Vancouver
3rd September: Bus to Seattle, fly to San Francisco
7th September: Fly to Auckland
Will be travelling around the North and then South Islands of New Zealand although no firm plan as to where and for how long in each place
16th October: Fly to Sydney
16th October - 13th November travelling round from Sydney through Blue Mountains, Melbourne, Adelaide and then up to Uluru/Alice Springs
13th November: Alice Springs to Cairns
In Cairns I have a 3 day SCUBA diving trip booked on the Great Barrier Reef on a liveaboard boat.
After that I travel down to Brisbane via the Whitsundays
26th November: Brisbane to Singapore
1st December: Hong Kong
5th December: Tokyo
10th/11th Tokyo to Cape Town
from 15th December-24th January: Africa tour
27th December: Fly home

This is the liveaboard in Cairns that I'm doing.

http://www.spiritoffreedom.com.au/3_Day_Monday_Departure_Cod_Hole,_Ribbon_Reefs_Itinerary.htm

This is the Africa tour:

http://www.acacia-africa.com/OVERLAND_CTK41.htm

As many of my friends from work will laugh at me for having such a fixed itinerary, I remind them that I have had to put dates to flights but I can change them if I want to as I go round. I think they and me know that's unlikely to happen but you never know! Hey, I've still not booked any more hostels so I'm doing fairly well on the spontaneity thing so far!!

This weekend I'm planning to go get my entire wardrobe for the trip. Planning on taking 2 pairs of zip off trousers and about 6 tops. Need to buy new underwear for the adventure but am going to Fosse Park with Mum on Thursday so will hit M&S there! Have left buying clothes as was hoping to shed a few pounds before buying them but that's not happened and I can't be naked on my trip so guess I'll have to bite the bullet and buy a bigger size!

Have really enjoyed being at home the last 3 weeks and whilst I'm starting to get just a teensy bit nervous about the trip now I have to say I'm also starting to look forward to going. I've really enjoyed being at home with my parents and whilst I've done that because I really wanted to spend some time with them before I go, it's definitely going to make it harder to leave. Has to be done though. I really need this time for myself.

I also got my new phone today. Think it's going to take a bit of getting used to but not guessing I'll be using it all that often though I may be wrong! Have worked out about setting Mum and Dad up on BT international so they can call me when I'm away and for Christmas when that won't work we'll just load up my mobile and can chat on that, that was the point of getting it after all!

Right, well will post closer to the leaving date when I'm starting to get more than a little bit stressed about it all knowing me!