I can’t remember what Andrew and I used to talk about before we started planning our round the world trip. I really can’t.  Nowadays, everything revolves around trip planning – plotting our itinerary, reading travel blogs, sourcing gear, building up our savings, booking flights, organising visas…the list goes on.  I have become totally, utterly obsessed with our travel plans.
Some of the most tedious and frustrating tasks on our travel checklist are the financial ones. After much research, we finally found the best travel credit card on offer, but we then had to consider how we were going to access our money while we’re away. Turns out that the fees for using your debit card abroad can end up seriously eating into your savings, so we set out to find the cheapest option. So, what's the best debit card to use abroad? 
Stunning scenery, glaciers, skydiving and glow worm caves – it’s no wonder New Zealand is near the top of our travel wish-list. When it came to planning the itinerary for our round the world trip, New Zealand came first for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s an English speaking small-ish country that’s simple to get around in, so we can ease ourselves into our new travelling lifestyle. Since we’re leaving in March, it also makes sense to stop in New Zealand first to catch the end of their summer before we travel on to Australia and Asia.
You may not realise just how much work is involved in planning a round the world trip – we certainly didn’t. Now, with only 19 weeks left until we leave, our pre-travel checklist seems to be growing, rather than shrinking. I like to think I’m an organised person but somehow I’ve got multiple travel lists scrawled in notebooks, typed up on spreadsheets and scribbled on random bits of paper and yes, I am starting to panic.
Once upon a time, a traveller’s backpack wasn’t made up of expensive gadgets and shiny technological tools – or so I hear. Truth is, I can’t remember how I used to get through daily life without my phone or laptop, so imagining travelling the world without them is a pretty difficult task.However, part of the reason we’re going travelling is to get away from this kind of westernised, commercialised lifestyle – shouldn’t that include stripping away the gadgets? Well, not if I want to keep up this blog, for a start. As much as we’re trying to limit the amount of gadgets that make it into our backpacks, we’ve accepted that there are some things we can’t go without – that includes a new travel laptop.
I’ve thought long and hard about whether I should even write this post – but I think it’s only right to talk about the lows, as well as the highs of planning a massive life change like leaving everything behind to travel the world.  Right now, aside from being crazy excited that our departure date is only 20 weeks away and losing sleep over how much we still have left to do before we leave; I’m experiencing a case of travel guilt.
We’ve been saving to go travelling for years and have a fair bit in the bank by now, so why do we need a credit card? It all started when we were researching New Zealand car rental prices. We found a cheap company and were ready to book – until they informed us we’d need a travel credit card to proceed. So now what?
Time seems to be disappearing scarily fast in a haze of planning, working and panicking right now and I'm starting to lose sleep over the never-ending list of travel tasks that have yet to be completed in preparation for our trip. One thing I'm desperately trying to find time for is visiting and taking pictures of all the places I love in London before we leave. So here's the first of a few picture posts I'm going to publish of the places I'll miss when we leave.