Planning RTW Trip 2024
RTW = Round the World
Planning RTW Trip 2024 is pretty much in the bag. I’m now going to give you a rough outline of what we have planned.
We’re actually starting our trip around the world 2024 in the traditional way at Nuremberg Airport on Thursday, 11 January. We will first fly via Frankfurt to Milan, where we will spend the night in a hotel right next to the airport.
Switzerland to California
On Friday, we will then take the SWISS flight to Zurich, where we will change planes to San Francisco.
USA to Fiji
After a few days in the flower power city, we will continue our journey via New Zealand to the Fiji Islands, where we want to relax for a good five days. Whether we manage it or not (the relaxing :-)), we will then take the plane back to Auckland.
Fiji to New Zeeland
There we pick up a hire car to spend the next few days exploring the North Island. This excursion will take us on the west side via Omapere to Cap Reina, and then on the east side via the Bay of Islands back to Auckland.
Starting in Auckland, there will be a few hops with domestic flights first to Wellington, where we can look forward to a trip on the funicular railway to the botanical gardens high above the city.
We then fly via Christchurch to Hokitika on the west coast. There we pick up a hire car again, which we drive comfortably south along the wild coastline via Franz-Josef to make our first stop in Queenstown. The highlight is then reached on 28 January: this is Liza’s birthday, which we will celebrate on a large cutter on Milford Sound. We have booked a birthday dinner and, of course, an overnight stay on the ship.
New Zeeland to Japan
The next day, we return to Queenstown completely sober and fresh – here you are reading the planning (!) of the trip around the world 2024! – in the hire car to Queenstown, from where we will fly on to Tokyo, our next stop, via Auckland the following day.
Back home
After a few days in Japan, our journey is almost coming to an end: we’ll be travelling back to Milan via Zurich and, after another overnight stay, back to our Franconian homeland, Nuremberg, via Frankfurt.
A brief explanation for the strange routing via Milan: moving the start of the flight to another European country reduces the price of the flight enormously. So we book the flights NUE-FRA, FRA-MXP and back on a separate ticket as feeder flights and start the round trip ticket, booked with SWISS, not in Switzerland but in Italy. This means we get the entire journey, which we have booked completely in Business Class, at a price that nobody will believe. And that’s despite the fact that we planned long stopovers everywhere! If you want to know how this works, please feel free to contact me. Maybe I’ll tell you 🙂