baudot

I'm having my mind soundly blown tonight.

I've started plotting the tentative stops for my round-the-world jaunt. I'm working under the assumption that I'll buy my ticket as a Star Alliance Round The World Fare.(1) This ticket would limit to me to 15 flights, total.

15 flights.

Anywhere in the world.

Where would you go?

I pulled a fresh copy of Google Earth. This may have been a mistake. On the one hand, it's an awesome tool for figuring out where and in what order. (I have to keep heading the same direction - clockwise or counterclockwise.) On the other hand, it drives home the enormity of it all. A whole planet. @#$%. Fifteen stops to sample the world. I've been scribbling down essential stops, and already I'm up to 25. Every time Google Earth zooms in on one, dozens of countries I'd forgotten existed slip by. Brunei? I didn't know it was there. Oh, right, Fiji. Won't be stopping there. No time. Just to name a few more places I can't justify putting in my fifteen:

• Kerguelen, aka Desolation Island, aka French Antarctica. You have to wonder what an island in the middle of nowhere populated by a handful of scientists is like. Their local celebrities are the cabbage girls. That's a couple of girls who study unusual arctic cabbages all day.
• Funafuti, Tuvalu takes the award for middle of nowhere. Tuvalu is the smallest nation in the U.N. The biggest city in the place is maybe 20 buildings wide at it's widest point, and then it's pacific ocean to either side.
• Reykjavik, Iceland. Just.. because. I don't know. Maybe I'll be washed in unreasonable levels of Bjork-Radiation and be overcome with atavistic viking urges to grow a giant mustache and pillage? Maybe best I'm skipping this one.
• Nuuk, Greenland. There can't be much there, but at the rate it's falling into the ocean, it might not even be there next time around. Screw you, global warming.

With all the places I'm not going, the budget still seems amazingly thin. How many stops do you dedicate to Australia? I mean, I'm a daft American. I don't even know what's in Australia other than Sydney and cane toads. I'm ashamed to even contact an Australian friend.

"Hey, look, I'm dropping in on your continent and I think I'm only making one stop, so where should it be? Yes. One stop for the whole continent. That's right. So what's awesome?"

I mean, it's a whole bloody continent. I'm sure there are around 37,000 charming coffeehouses and dozens of World Heritage Sites and rock bands that I've never heard of, not once, even though they positively RULE. But never mind that. One continent, one stop. Boil it down for me: One place is going to be Australia in my mind, so where should that be?

I find myself thinking, "Well, as long as I'm in Scotland, I can just hop from Lagavulin to Dollar. It's not far from there to London, either. Maybe I can save a stop there." No. Idiot. It's a bloody whole country. Sure, it's a country that's smaller than some US states but.. Hmm. Well. Google Earth can do directions in Scotland. That's mind-blow #578 for the evening. 168 miles including the ferry, eh? I wonder if there's a bus?

(Two points to anyone who knows why I want to visit Dollar. I'll be stunned if anyone beats Manda to guessing it.)

I often feel like a jerk for having an American view of geography, but this trip really drives it home.


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Footnotes:
(1)
StarAlliance's offering seems the most flexible and classic, The OneWorld Explorer is temptingly cheap, however, and the online tool for changing bookings? Convenient.