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I’m a nomad. Here are my current travel plans. Also see Late 2015 Travel, Early 2016 Travel, and Where I Slept in 2015.
I have a clear picture of where I’ll be until about October 2016. Last week, I booked a flurry of awards, mostly with obscure mileage programs to lock in my dates for 2016. Here’s what I’m planning, with links to already written Anatomy of an Award posts:
- 12,500 Delta miles + $77: May: Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro for a long weekend
- Cash ($318): Rio de Janeiro to Bonito, Brazil for three days to Sao Paulo for a long weekend
- 58,225 Singapore miles + $37: May: Sao Paulo to Barcelona in Singapore Suites for three days
- Cash ($53): May: Barcelona to Leipzig, Germany for the weekend
- Train ($33): May: Leipzig to Prague, Czech Republic for a week
- 5,000 Etihad miles + $25: May: Prague to Belgrade, Serbia for five weeks
- Cash or Etihad miles: June to September except two weeks in August: bus, train, or fly within Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia to explore while learning the Serbo-Croat language
- Cash: two weeks in August: low cost carrier (plus maybe buses and trains) to get to Spain and follow the University of Virginia men’s basketball team on its foreign summer tour
- Not booked yet: 50,000 Asiana miles (40,000 SPG points) and small fuel surcharges: September: former Yugoslavia to Virginia in Lufthansa First Class, including Lufthansa First Class Terminal, for a weekend wedding
- Not booked yet: Korean Miles to Fly Delta or Singapore Miles to Fly United: October: Virginia to Hawaii to visit family for two weeks, returning to Chicago for the Chicago Seminars where I will speak twice
I am spending a few weeks in Brazil to visit friends and position for Singapore First Class flight. I was only planning on spending four days in Brazil, but it is unseasonably cold in Buenos Aires, so I am leaving a week earlier than planned. I’ll spend the extra time in Bonito, Brazil, which looks absolutely gorgeous.
I am spending the first two weeks in Europe in Barcelona, visiting friends in Germany, and in the Czech Republic, where I can’t believe I haven’t made it to yet–Prague seems like it is right up my alley. Then the heart of the trip begins.
My main goal for the Summer of 2016 is to learn the Serbo-Croat language. I really enjoy languages. I studied Latin and Spanish in high school and am a bit of a grammar nerd in English. After years of living and traveling in South America and Spain, I am fluent in Spanish. I could, of course, improve further, but I figure that I am good enough that the amount of effort I’d need to improve in Spanish would be better spent learning a completely new language.
In the past I’ve considered Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, and Serbo-Croat. I don’t like Brazil or Portugal enough to want to spend the months there to learn the language, and Bucharest (Romania) is a step below Belgrade (Serbia) and Zagreb (Croatia) in my mind, so I eliminated those languages. Russian was my top choice, but the hassle of getting a Russian visa (I’d have to come back to the United States and wait for days or weeks while the paperwork cleared) and the fact that it rains 15 days a month in St. Petersburg and Moscow during the Summer led me to pick Serbo-Croat. (Yes, I also considered learning Russian in another country but decided against it.)
The benefit of learning Serbo-Croat is that (please don’t start a linguistics debate in the comments over this sentence) it is the language of Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia. I can travel throughout those countries while learning the language. I think I’ll spend June in Belgrade with daily language classes to get a base and September in Zagreb. July and August when European capitals thin out as people head to the sea, I’ll head to the Montenegrin and Croatian beaches, and at some point I’ll find time for at least Sarajevo, Bosnia and Plitvice Lakes National Park.
The drawback of Serbo-Croat is that it is a non-romance language with noun declensions, the Cyrillic alphabet (Serbia only), and only 12 million people speak it natively. But I’m going to give it a go and am eager to see what progress I can make in four months.
I plan to spend about 3.5 out of 4 months in Serbo-Croat-speaking countries over the heart of summer. The two weeks outside will be in Spain where I will follow the University of Virginia basketball team as it plays several games against lower division pro teams. (College basketball teams get to take a once-every-four-years international trip over the summer. They do it because it’s fun, and they get extra practices, which are especially useful for newcomers to the program, which UVA has six of this year.) I love Spain, I love UVA basketball, and I am eager to see the new players three months before I otherwise could.
Finally I’ll head back from Europe to the USA in time to catch my friends’ wedding, visit family in Hawaii, and make the Chicago Seminars. That takes me through mid-October, after which it will probably be time to head back to Southern South America as Spring heats up.
Northern Hemisphere Summer 2016 will see me:
- change hemispheres as the seasons change because everyone should live in Summer all year round
- visit family in Hawaii
- visit friends in Rio de Janeiro and Leipzig
- return to favorites like Zagreb, Belgrade, Dubrovnik (cliff jumping!), Sao Paulo, and Spain
- go to the Czech Republic, Bosnia, and Montenegro for the first time
- explore natural beauty in Bonito, Brazil; a Croatian National Park; and the Adriatic coast
- watch UVA basketball play four times in person
- speak twice at the Chicago Seminars
- …and hopefully learn the Serbo-Croat language
I’ll fly in products ranging from low-cost carrier economy to one of the world’s fanciest First Classes on the Singapore 777.
All of the awards were carefully thought out to maximize miles, so I am excited to explain why I’ve been and will be using so many Asiana and Singapore miles, and why you might want to use them also.
Some of the awards even touch on interesting problems like how long a transfer takes, what to do when there is only space in your desired cabin on some legs, and choosing which miles to use.
I still need to book the Lufthansa First Class award from Europe to the United States, and I will need to wait several months as Lufthansa only releases award space in First Class to partners within 15 days of departure. (Please don’t devalue in the next five months, Asiana!)
I still need to book Virginia-Hawaii-Chicago. Right now the award space isn’t very good, but I expect that it improves dramatically as my dates approach.
Hopefully your mid-2016 travel schedule excites you as much as mine excites me. Where are you headed?
I’ll crank out the rest of the Anatomy of an Award posts soon–where I break down how to search the award, how to book the award, what miles to use, and how to get those miles–and I’ll keep this post updated as I do.
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I am headed this coming weekend to Montego Bay with the family. Next month I am going for 10 days to Israel and also to Jordan. I may head to Medellin and Cartagena in July. In August I will be in Hawaii KOA and LIH. Then I will be going to Northern California to climb Mt Shasta and later to Colorado to climb five 14ers.
Enjoy that climbing. Glad your Summer is full.
Thank you. Forgot to throw in there a probable trip to Cabo San Lucas too. By the way, I live in Miami.
Scott, how much will the fuel surcharges be on your Lufthansa award? I don’t see any former Yugoslav cities on the list in your linked post.
Maury, sounds like a lot of awesome trips, although Cartagena in July sounds like a soupy nightmare.
I think about $300 based on looking at ITA Matrix, so $100 more than the lowest possible. I think 40k SPG + $300 is a very good deal for Lufthansa First Class + First Class Terminal. It’s only a shame I am going to the East Coast. It would be the same miles all the way to Hawaii (with United First Class for the flights within USA.)
Great itinerary. Do you ever worry about your pipeline of miles drying up, or are there still enough new offers in this game to keep you in the air indefinitely?
The quality of your writing is a big reason I keep coming back to your blog, so I’m not surprised to learn that you’re an admitted grammar nerd.
My summer plans include PHX-FRA and then DUS-PHX in AA business class with my dad. It’s my first international redemption since I started stockpiling miles. Would have liked to fly a European airline, but couldn’t find the award space I needed.
P.S. We’re spending a week in Berlin and then 5 days in Lucerne. I paid cash for our regional flights on Lufthansa.
You’ll have a great trip with your dad. I don’t worry about the pipeline of miles drying up. There are always new and bigger offers, and you can get the same offer/bonus every so often from many banks.
We leave in 2 weeks from Toronto to Zagreb (KLM/Croatia Airlines) on a deal we saw awhile back for $420 round trip pp, coach.. From Zagreb, we’ll take trains to Budapest, Krakow, Prague, Berlin, Munich, Bratislava, Vienna, then fly via Air Serbia to Dubrovnik via Belgrade. Staying in Dubrovnik for 8 nights, before we fly back to Zagreb and head back to Toronto via CDG on Air France. We will then drive to a friend’s summer home in the Muskoka Lakes area of Ontario to spend a few days, then head over to Sarasota NY to see some friends who own a winery there. We’ll return home (N.C.) mid July. We are using 4th night free liberally for our summer trip. BTW, Sheraton Dubrovnik is a steal at 4000 SPG points per night; with SPG’s 5th night free redemption offer, it’s a crazy cheap use of points.
That sounds fantastic. Vienna and Bratislava are VERY close to each other. I really want to walk or bike between the two one day (and then boat back.)
Hi Scott
I live in Sao Paulo. email me if you want to meet up or want some tips for best places to enjoy.
Tim
I love this plan, especially the 3.5 months you plan for the former Yugoslavia area. I could suggest so many additional beautiful places to visit, including my home town of Mostar, only a couple of hours drive from Sarajevo. You have at least one native speaker of Serbo-Croatian, so feel free to reach out. Enjoy the time there! I will only get to spend 2weeks with my family in Serbia and B-H, so you got me beat.
What would I do in Mostar?
Jump off the bridge 🙂 i know you like cliff diving, but look up bridge jumping into the Neretva. Not for the faint-hearted. Beautiful city.
By the way, kudos to you for learning our language. It is not easy, but you will win many friends among the 20 million or so worldwide who do speak it.
Here is a start:
Dobro došao u Beograd – uživaj i lepo se provedi. Ako hoćeš da vežbaš u junu ili julu, javi se.
Puno pozdrava!
AHHHHH. Definitely not jumping off that bridge! Thanks for the invitation. I’d be coming through in mid-July if I make that way.
In Mostar, you can spend a day exploring the Old City which dates back to the Ottoman era (16th-19th century). As Darije said, the main feature is the Old Bridge, built by the celebrated Ottoman architect Mimar Hayruddin in the 16th century. The current bridge is, tragically, merely a reconstruction, as the original was destroyed in the war in 1993. You can explore the shops in the area, most of which are run by artisans who still use traditional techniques of coppersmithing, textile making, etc. I would also recommend grabbing a portion of ćevapi, a local specialty of small sausages made of mixture of lamb, pork, and/or beef, served in a lepinja (pita-like bread) with onions and with or without kajmak (fresh milk skim cheese-like spread). There’s a great restaurant under the Old Bridge which serves this and other local specialties and has great views of the bridge and the river (Neretva). In July, the annual bridge diving competition is held (now part of the Red Bull-sponsored extreme sports series), which is always awesome to watch. The rest of the city is also great to explore with the more recent (heh, relatively speaking) Austro-Hungarian architecture along the Neretva and especially on the west bank. Mostar is one of the few cities where the signs of the war from the ’90s are still rather visible due to the divided nature of the city, where a large portion, mostly on the east bank, has not yet been rennovated/repaired.
Just outside of the city (in Bijeli Brijeg), you can see, now in poor repair, the old Partisan Memorial Cemetery, built in the ’60s as a memorial for all the young people who died fighting against the Nazi occupation in WW2. It was designed by one of the most famous Serbian architect, Bogdan Bogdanović, who is still working on efforts to repair and restore it.
The 2015 event looks awesome, but it doesn’t appear on the 2016 schedule: http://www.redbullcliffdiving.com/en_US/event/mostar
It looks like it is roughly on the way from Sarajevo to the Montenegro/Croatia beaches, so if I take that route overland then it is a definite possibility.
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