Our family left Canada on a trip around the world. So many great memories and experiences shared as a family. Exploring new places, going back to a few familiar spots, visiting family and making new friends. A journey of a lifetime that our family will cherish forever.

Early on in the trip, I found it difficult to keep up with the blogging about all the places we were going to on our RTW trip; the choice came down to either blogging or enjoying the moments with my husband and kids. From the lack of blog posts, you can see I choose to enjoy the moments! So as we get settled (somewhat) into a regular life I hope to share all our stories and update the below Trip Around the World Itinerary.

In case you didn’t follow us from the beginning, here is our Ultimate Around the World Itinerary.

Trip Around the World Itinerary

If you are wondering what travel gear we brought and what we packed go check out our long term travel packing checklist!

United Kingdom – July 1 – 7

• London – 5 nights
• Cambridge – 2 nights

France – July 7 – 23

• Biarritz – 14 nights
• Toulouse – 2 nights

Spain – July 20

• San Sebastian – 1 day

Croatia – July 23 – August 9

Find out more details about our 16 days in Croatia with our itinerary here!

• Dubrovnik – 5 nights
• Split – 7 nights
• Hvar Island – 1 day
• Brac Island – 1 day
• Trogir – 1 day
• Krka National Park – 1 day
• Plitvice National Park – 3 nights * Where we stayed in Plitvice National Park, Croatia

Italy – August 9 – 23

• Rome – 3 nights
• Civitanova del Sannio – 11 nights

Vatican – August 10

• Vatican City – 1 day

Czech Republic – August 23 – 26

• Prague – 3 nights * Where we stayed in Prague, Czech Republic

Austria – August 26 – 29

• Vienna – 3 nights * Where we stayed in Vienna, Austria

Hungary – August 29 – Sep 1

• Budapest – 3 nights * Where we stayed in Budapest, Hungary

Malta – September 1-14

Find out all the things we did in Malta here!

• Bugibba – 14 nights
• Gozo – 1 day
• Valletta – 1 day
• Golden Bay – 1 day
• Blue Lagoon – 1 day

Bulgaria – September 14 – 17

• Sofia – 3 nights

United Arab Emirates – September 17 – 28

• Dubai – 5 nights * Where we stayed in Dubai, UAE
• Arabian Desert – 2 nights * Where we stayed for our Desert Safari
• Abu Dhabi – 4 nights * Where we stayed for 3 nights & Where we stayed for 1 night

South Africa – September 28 – October 17

• Cape Town – 12 nights
• Kruger National Park
  • Ndabushi Safari Lodge – 4 nights * Where we stayed for this African Safari
  • Kambaku Safari Lodge – 2 nights * Where we stayed for this African Safari

Vietnam – October 18 – November 16

Check out our 4-week Vietnam Itinerary here!

• Ho Chi Minh City – 5 nights
• Hanoi – 4 nights
• Halong Bay – 2 nights
• Hue – 3 nights
• Hoi An – 2 nights
• Da Nang – 1 night
• Mekong Delta – 2 nights
• Phu Quoc Island – 10 nights

Singapore – November 16 – 19

• Singapore – 3 nights

Malaysia – November 19 – December 3

• Langkawi Island – 14 nights

Indonesia – December 3 – 29

• Sanur, Bali – 26 nights
• Ubud – 1 day
• Kuta – 2 days
• Seminyak – 1 day

Thailand – December 29 – February 18

• Bangkok – 8 nights * Where we stayed in Bangkok
• Phuket Island
  • Kamala Beach- 20 nights * Where we stayed in Kamala
  • Karon Beach – 9 nights * Where we stayed in Karon
• Phi Phi Islands – 5 nights
• Krabi – 8 nights

Cambodia – February 18 – 23

• Siem Reap – 4 nights

Australia – February 23 – March 28

Check out our full post for all the details on our 4 weeks in Australia!

• Gold Coast – 5 nights
• Hervey Bay – 1 night
• Fraser Island – 2 nights
• Sunshine Coast – 3 nights
• Airlie Beach – 8 nights
  • Whitsundays – 1 day
  • Great Barrier Reef – 1 day
• Melbourne – 3 nights
• Great Ocean Road – 4 nights
  • Lorne * Where we stayed in Lorne
  • Apollo Bay * Where we stayed in Apollo Bay
  • Port Campbell * Where we stayed in Port Campbell
  • Torquay * Where we stayed in Torquay
• Bondi Beach – 4 nights
• Sydney – 4 nights * Where we stayed in Sydney Harbour

Vanuatu – April 2

• 11-night South Pacific cruise leaving from Sydney – March 28 – April 8
  • Vanuatu – 1 day
  • Lifou, Loyalty Island – 1 day
  • Noumea, New Caledonia – 1 day

New Zealand – April 9 – May 13

• 33-Day Campervan Trip – 1 Month South Island & North Island Itinerary
• South Island
  • Christchurch – 1 night
  • Lake Pukaki – 1 night
  • Mount Cook – 1 night
  • Wanaka – 2 nights
  • Queenstown – 3 nights
  • Milford Sound – 1 night
  • Fox Glacier – 1 night
  • Motuek – 3 nights
  • Nelson – 1 night
  • Picton – 1 night
• North Island
  • Wellington – 1 night
  • Greytown – 2 nights
  • Taupo – 1 night
  • Rotorua – 2 nights
  • Waitomo – 1 night
  • Hobbiton – 1 day
  • Coromandel Penisula – 3 nights
  • Russell – 3 nights
  • Orewa – 1 night
  • Auckland – 2 nights

United States of America – May 13 – June 1

• Houston, Texas – 19 nights

Canada – June 1 – July 1

• We visited more places in Saskatchewan and spent the summer boating and enjoying lake life on the prairies.

RTW Travel Facts & Numbers:

• International Travel Dates – July 1, 2017 – June 1, 2018
• Countries Visited – 23
• Cities Visited – 81
• Continents Visited – 5
  • Europe
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Australia
  • North America
• Days Out of Canada – 336 days
• UNESCO sites – 28
• Transportation we took:
  • Flights – 37
  • Ferries – 7
  • Trains – 4
  • Car Rentals – 4
  • Cruises – 2
  • Campervan Rentals – 1
  • Taxi/Uber/TukTuk/Trams/etc – Too many to count
• Places we slept:
  • Apartment Rental – 154
  • Hotel/Resort – 82
  • Campervan – 33
  • Family & Friends – 32
  • Boats – 13
  • Safari – 6
  • Planes – 5
  • Cabin/Cottage – 8
  • Hostel – 3
• Quirky Information:
  • Broken Glasses – 2
  • Worn-out Shoes & Sandles – 10
  • Teeth Lost – 3
  • Haircuts – 16
  • Lost Wallet – 1
  • Lost Luggage – 0
  • Total Avg Weight Luggage – 62kg / 137lbs

Around the World Itinerary Planning Tips

The toughest part for me was when I started to plan the trip and how to travel around the world. I didn’t know anyone that had done an around the world trip before. I had no idea where to start and how to plan a trip around the world, so hopefully, a few tips below can get you started on the world trip planning!

• Check out our Pre Travel Checklist of Things to do Before Travelling for a Year!
• Set some clear expectations on what you want to get out of your trip around the world. We outlined what we thought would be our world trip success here before we left so we always looked back to make sure our trip was aligned with these trip goals.
• Being from Canada we knew we wanted to follow the sun and stay in warm climates! This also helped with packing for a year too. So we spent a significant amount of time in Southeast Asia, both for the temperatures and also the cost helped stretch our budget for a year.
• We looked into RTW tickets (round the world flights) and we found they would have been cheaper if we knew what our exact route was going to be. But, we wanted to have the freedom of planning out our destinations 4-6 weeks out ahead of time.
• We also were open-minded about if we needed to come back for any reason we would have only lost money for accommodations and flights for approximately 6 weeks. 
• We found that three days in major city centers were the right amount of time for us. This would give us 2 full days of sightseeing and also helped with the budget since bigger cities generally cost more money.
• We found it useful to sometimes book half-day tours or day tours to be able to see more within that timeframe and help with taking some planning away from us. We used Get Your Guide and Viator to book these tours and get some ideas. 

• We really wanted to go to South America to reach our 6th continent on the trip, we researched into it a lot but we had a budget set aside for the trip and this was not going to fit it. So we decided that we could spend a month in New Zealand to extend our trip. We had to make adjustments with closer flights to keep on track with the budget. We generally used Skyscanner to help us search for destinations and compare flights to different locations with this tool.
• Staying longer in places was just simply cheaper, so if you can travel slower you will be able to save more money and travel longer.
• We used and stayed in VRBO for most of our accommodations and overall were happy with the places we stayed at. This provided us with a home away from home feel that we needed since being away for so long. We stayed at Apartments for over 200+ nights.
• A general guiding rule we had was anything less than 3 nights we would stay in a hotel. We used mostly Booking.com to book our hotel rooms. 
• Be sure to have travel insurance for your RTW trip, we used World Nomads and were extremely happy with their services. We had to extend our coverage to the United States (as that was not originally part of the plan), and making the changes with World Nomads was extremely easy! You can read our ENTIRE review of the family travel insurance in this post here.
• Schooling for kids was a big item for us to sort out. I worked through the kid’s school plans for our world trip in detail and outlined their world school program here.
• Pre-planning for this trip around the world took approximately 1 year to put everything together and prepare to be gone from our regular life.
• Although the saving for the trip took a lot longer, you can check out more details on how we saved for the trip. 
• We started itinerary planning for our world travel with our family bucket list and mapped out the tentative travel routes with the months of the year.
• The first destination on our around the world trip we chose was London. This was to help transition our kids into travelling full-time and ease their way into it with the same language, adjust to different time zone and slowly get our kids into the rhythm.
• Don’t take anything for granted! Be in the moment and truly enjoy you are going to travel around the world! This was my dream and I learned so much by travelling with my kids and this was our tour of the world together!

Looking for more inspiration? Check out some of our favourite family travel quotes here!