Around The World
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eyeonFI
Recycles dryer sheets
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I'd guess it depends on what kinds of things you like to do. Personally, I'm into the outdoorsy stuff (camping, hiking, biking, white water rafting, etc). A few of my favorite places have been Mt. Kilimanjaro and Arusha National ParK in Tanzania, The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, and the Amazon in Bolivia. La Paz was also a really neat city. Happy to provide more details if any of those catch your eye. Can't comment on the around-the-world ticket though - it's something I've had my mind on doing but haven't managed to take that much time off yet (just as soon as I reach FIRE... 
)
)Been to Scotland, London, Rome, and the Tuscany region of Italy. Loved every place.
check www.labellatoscana.com for rentals in Tuscany.
check www.labellatoscana.com for rentals in Tuscany.
retire@40
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I can't believe the number of people in this forum that always point to Tuscany, Italy as one of their favorite destinations. I've been there myself and also have to put it in the top 3 places I've ever been.
yakers
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Hey bennevis,
>>Been to Scotland, London, Rome, and the Tuscany region of Italy. Loved every place.
Are you from Scotland? Have you been up Ben Nevis? While it is the highest point in Scotland (& the UK) it is not a great mountain but good views on one of the few days that it is not overcast or raining. I have also been up Scarfel Pikes (highest point in England) and Mt Snowdon (highest point in Wales) courtesy of a US Navy tour in the UK.
Cheap way to travel around the world, US Navy....
>>Been to Scotland, London, Rome, and the Tuscany region of Italy. Loved every place.
Are you from Scotland? Have you been up Ben Nevis? While it is the highest point in Scotland (& the UK) it is not a great mountain but good views on one of the few days that it is not overcast or raining. I have also been up Scarfel Pikes (highest point in England) and Mt Snowdon (highest point in Wales) courtesy of a US Navy tour in the UK.
Cheap way to travel around the world, US Navy....
eyeonFI
Recycles dryer sheets
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hi yakers, I went up Ben Nevis last May, but didn't catch any view. It was snowing - with visibility about 4 feet, I almost wandered off the side - oops... at least I got to use all that gortex stuff I carried up.
BigMoneyJim
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Not really in the spirit of the thread, but: I had the chance for quite a while to take a free 24-hour round-the-world plane trip. Cargo plane, several stops. I wouldn't have had time to visit anywhere, but a few times I thought it would be neat to do it...how many people have circled the globe in 24 hrs? (Not counting the rotation of the Earth...cheaters.) Doesn't take long for me to realize that after a couple of hours on the plane it will be DULL DULL DULL and I probably wouldn't return with any sanity left.
Hyperborea
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I knew some guys from undergrad days who did it. They had a great time. It was pretty cheap and they did some work as they went to finance the trip. The flights weren't too badly priced (I don't remember the exact cost but IIRC it was somewhere between 2 and 3 round trip tickets in price). They had restrictions on how many stops, no "back travel" (must always keep going in the same direction), and it all had to be done within a year.
I did do an around the world trip for business once. I left from San Francisco went to Frankfurt, then to Mumbai (Bombay), then to Singapore, Bangkok, and back to SF through Hong Kong. Did it in just over 2 weeks - got in some site seeing but far too much work to really enjoy myself.
What do you want to see? What kinds of things? Some of the best experiences have been just meeting people - 36 hour train ride in China spent chatting with various passengers; some nuns on a train between Pisa and Florence; eating lunch with some Thai computer folks; sitting in a "brown cafe" in Amsterdam talking with the locals (a brown cafe is the Dutch version of a pub). The best thing to do IMNSHO is to keep out of the clutches of the "tourism industry" as much as possible - you have to deal with it some if you are going to see the important major sites but don't go with packages, stay in the hotels that the locals will use, take regular transit, etc.
dory36
Early-Retirement.org Founder, Developer of FIRECal
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I have done that a half dozen times or so, when I was living overseas. For us, it was about as cheap that way as a round trip, so we usually went RTW unless time was a factor.
We opted to spend time in the places that we expected to be harder to get to later, on cheap tickets after retirement. So we saw places like Thailand, Singapore, Bali, Hong Kong, and Istanbul.
My only advice - allow lots and lots of time. With the possible exception of Amsterdam and pre-takeover Hong Kong, there was no place that we stopped for less than a week that was satisfactory. We eventually reached the point that we'd either stop for a week or more, or not make a stop at all.
Dory36
