Leg 1: Loveland to Seattle via rental car (3 days). This leg was easy. A one-way rental car through Hertz and a couple of hotels along the way and we're good to go. Add a night of mooching at a friends place near Seattle (thanks Diane!) and plans for this leg are complete.
Leg 2: Seattle to Vancouver via ferries (5 days). There were several different ways to get from Seattle to where the trans-pacific cruise leaves in Vancouver. We could go by train, rental car or bus but we thought the more iconic way was to do a little Pacific NW island hopping via ferries. Some easy internet booking got us ferries to and hotels in Victoria and Vancouver.
Leg 3: Vancouver to Shanghai via repositioning cruise (15 days). This was the key segment of the trip as we found only one cruise per year that crossed the Pacific. So all the dates of the trip revolved around the dates for this cruise. There may have been a way to get across by renting a cabin on a cargo ship but we have a certain accommodation which we've become accustomed :). The cheapest cabin on the cruise will do just fine.
Leg 4: Shanghai to Beijing via train (7 days). Trip Advisor reviews and Expedia searches handled accommodations in China. A few emails to an agent in China took care of booking the train to Beijing. We also found a great internet site called Viator (http://www.viator.com/) to arrange most of our excursions through the whole trip and especially in China. We'll let you know how those turn out.
Leg 5: Beijing to Moscow via Trans-Siberian train (7 days). (http://www.seat61.com/Trans-Siberian.htm#.VdD2pz2COrV) The easiest way we found to get across Asia is the Trans-Siberian train. It's pretty much a 7-day non-stop train ride across the Russian wilderness. There is only one train per week departing out of Beijing so that determined how long we got to stay in China. These tickets were purchased via the Internet through a Chinese travel agent. I hope our tickets are there waiting for us when we get to Beijing or we will have to scramble for another option!
Leg 6: Moscow to Warsaw via train (5 days). Our Eurail passes aren't valid in Russia so we needed to book an overnight train from Moscow to Warsaw through a Russian travel agency. Hopefully those tickets are waiting for us in Moscow as well! Add a couple of hotel nights in both cities to complete the planning for this leg.
Leg 7: Warsaw to Rome via Eurail (22 days). For the main Europe leg, we had to choose between city-to-city train segments or renting a car. Ultimately we decided that since neither of us got to backpack across Europe in our 20's, we'd like to have that train hopping experience in our retirement. We had friends that really enjoyed Prague and Budapest in their trip last year so we planned our travel down through eastern Europe rather than through the western countries. Again, we're trusting Trip Advisor, Expedia and Viator reviews to lead us to good hotels and tour ideas.
Leg 8: Rome to Florida via repositioning cruise (15 days). There were a lot of options here since there are many ships that move from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean in fall. We picked one that left out of Rome and departed around the time our Europe leg was finishing. It was a bonus that the cruise also includes some interesting port stops.
Leg 9: Florida to Loveland via car rental (2 days). We booked another one way car rental home with just one hotel stop in Tennessee. Power drive! We know we'll be itching to get back home!
Hotels: For hotels, we mainly relied on Trip Advisor, online pictures and reviews. We were looking for small, non-chain, authentic-ish hotels in walking distance to tourist areas but still bookable through Expedia. Pretty sure most of them have a receptionist that speaks English. Hopefully the hotels also have reliable WiFi so we are able to update the blog and connect since we're not getting international phone packages.
Visas: There are three countries that require entry visa's prior to arrival, China, Russia and Belarus (as far as we know!) We found out thanks to the state department website. It's kind of scary to ship your passport off with a large check but so far they have come back okay. Hopefully the border patrols will approve too!
Currency: As best as we could determine, we need 8 different types of currency to complete the trip. Canadian Dollar, Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan, Russian Ruble, Poland Zloty, Euro's, Czech Koruna and Hungary Forint. Wells Fargo's web site made it easy to order a stack of each these to get us started and all delivered directly to our door. We'll hit ATM's in each country if we need more.
Language: We printed off a couple of simple phrase sheets and installed the Google translate app. Hopefully with these and a lot of pointing, gestures and smiles we can stumble our way through our interactions with the locals.
Budget: So what's the price tag for all this? Obviously that depnds on what type of stuff you book. We mostly did mid-range hotels, better-class train seats, economy car rentals and the cheapest cruise cabins. Add in prices for visas, organized tours/excursions and spending cash and our total cost will probably end up in the $20k-$25k range. Not too bad for a crazy big trip like this - but definitely something that we'll only do once in our lifetime.
"All you've got to do is decide to go and the hardest part is over." - Tony Wheeler
