The New Grand Tour

National Geographic Traveler Magazine is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a special issue dedicated to The New Grand Tour, A Travel Adventure for the 21st Century. This evening Jon and I attended the National Geographic Live! Lecture detailing how to take a Grand Tour. Guest speakers included Justin Guariglia, a travel photographer who has worked on assignments for Traveler Magazine, Linnea Lundgren a “domestic engineer” and travel writer who took time off with her husband to travel around the world for 13 months,
and Edward Hasbrouck who is a travel agent with Airtreks, specializing in around the world airfares, and published author of The Practical Nomad,How To Travel Around The World.The lecture was interesting, but I found all the information old in light of all the hours I’ve spent scouring the internet. Main points put out were, S..L..O..W………D..O..W..N. No one can see the entire planet in one swoop around, or visit 100 countries in 100 days. We’ve figured this out on previous trips; even a month isn’t long enough to really delve into a country. This time however we do have the time to slow down. It’s not really a matter of time at all but money, another question that frequently gets asked about round the world travel. Edward Hasbrouck says, “The average American traveling abroad for 6 months, comes out at about $30/day”. Now if you factor in sharing rooms, taxis and other expenses this average should go down with 2 or in our case 3 people sharing things. Our first thoughts were that we could get by on $100 a day. Some would say that we could live luxuriously on that budget. Our budget allows $100 a day with plenty of cushioning for the unexpected. Obviously the less we spend the more we can travel.

I plan on buying our tickets in the next couple days!