After meeting on an overseas holiday, travelling together always seemed like a foregone conclusion when discussing the future. In fact, the first time the future was even discussed it was travel related, when Jaz asked me to join him on his sabbatical trip at the end of 2011. After e-mailing and talking for ridiculous lengths of time for almost 5 months, Jaz made the trip to Detroit in January. Nearing the end of his visit, after a fabulous (if I say so myself) dinner of homemade chicken pot pie, we were relaxing on the couch and Jaz said he wanted me to go on his trip with him. Obviously my first thought was that I’d love to go but practicality set in rather quickly, and I said I’d have to figure out how much time I could take off from work, I wasn’t real optimistic.

Sadly the attitude to vacation time in the U.S. is far behind Europe and the rest of the world as most people know. Over the next 3 months it came up several times, and by April, we had decided it would be more feasible if I asked for 3 months off and just accompanied Jaz to Australia and New Zealand. This was perfect, since both were already on my travel agenda for either 2011 or 2012. By June, I was trying to plan the basic outlines of the 3 month trip without getting too excited because I didn’t have an official answer from work yet.

Finally, I got the go ahead from work, and after jumping up and down a whole bunch of times, I went full steam ahead on the trip planning. Jaz was impressed/apprehensive after seeing my spreadsheet, but I told him he did give me free reign! After 5 months of research and finding out all of the cool things we are going to see, both of us are thrilled to be embarking on this journey, and we hope you’ll enjoy our updates as much as we will enjoy posting them!