And so it begins ....

---

well pretty much as the title says and not lol!! Well myself and Mr M have decided after much discussion over the past seven years that we'll just go for it so the saving in earnest begins and we are now looking at the atlas picking out places we want to go to and watching every show on the travel channel to get ideas.

I've always wanted to travel from as far back as I can remember. My parents took us all over Europe when our friends in school were getting their two weeks in Spain and we had the best craic even though it was camping - I absolutely hate camping its the confined space not the roughing it bit. At times i longed for the package holidays my friends went on - lying at the pool for days on end but having had a couple of those kind of holidays while they are great as a switch off from work they aren't exactly adventures. One really memorable holiday we had as a family was doing seven countries in a month and everytime we got to a new country we all jumped out of the car to get photographed at the official EU sign for the country - those pictures are still in the family album. My parents always made sure we saw the culture and didn't do a mad american style dash round places so we went to museums, beautiful churches, non tourist towns (including the place where they told us the restaurant was shut at 9 pm when we turned up for dinner - very uneuropean lol) I have the most beautiful memory of a really hot summer night in Luxemburg sitting on the steps of a building which was being used as a gallery for a Dali exhibition. The building was in a square and I'm not much of a Dali fan so my dad and i just sat on these steps which were really warm due to the July weather. All around the square were little cafes and restaurants and in the middle was an orchestra playing the phantom of the opera. Magical and just one of those moments you can't create.

So anyway circumstances being what they were i left school got a job, got a house, got a career and before i know it ten years are up and i've still not got round to doing the travelling i always wanted to do. Then four years ago flicking through the tv i found this programme that i ended up hooked to. It was called around the world in 1080 days. Basically a documentary spread over 3 years by a guy from belfast (my home city) charting his travels around the world using his redundancy money from his job. This guy was in his late 30s and it got me thinking that its never too late. I mean people spend years striving to buy a house, get a nicer car, have their two weeks abroad and at the end of it all they end up doing the same thing day in day out for years and years with material goods round them and nothing too exciting to show for it.

Well we have now been married nearly two years and decided its about time we had our adventure instead of talking about it. I think the big trigger was on our honeymoon in Canada where we spent all the time walking around and discovering things and wishing we had longer to explore.

So the saving begins and we have a date and amount we are aiming for but we are keeping that too ourselves so to avoid the inevitable questions from family and friends enquiring how the saving is going and telling us off if we have the odd luxury (life can't stop altogether cos you are saving or we'll end up depressed lol!!!)

So we are probably far too early starting a blog but it'll be nice looking back to when it all began and seeing how our plans develop and change as we go along so here is the list so far we've got of where we'd like to go in no particular order:

Thailand
China
Tibet
Cambodia - Mr M not too sure on that one though
Japan
Australia
New Zealand
India - again Mr M not too sure on this one
Canada
Peru
Brazil
Russia
Cuba
Polynesia

so thats the initial list to be amended naturally.

Anyway i've waffled enough so thats me over and out for now !!

---