Round The World and other travels

Background

This trip took shape during September 2012, when I was in the early stages of recovery following a major operation. My friend Bruce was visiting to help out with my recuperation effort and it didn't take long for us to start thinking about a trip for May 2013. Although I had been to the USA numerous times - I stopped counting at 20 and was confident that the number of visits was now over 30 - I still had some glaring gaps in my knowledge of the country. One of these was that part of the Eastern Seaboard lying between Washington DC and Florida.

The city of Charleston made news in 2011 when it toppled San Francisco from its established position as 'Top City in the United States' in the Condé Nast Traveler Reader’s Choice Awards. (It would go on to consolidate the achievement later in 2012.) So that was one destination settled. Bruce had a feeling that I would enjoy the beautiful architecture and gracious civility of Savannah, so that was another major building block put in place. As our most recent attempt to enjoy a joint visit to New York City had just been unravelled by my medical situation, we decided to end the May 2013 trip there.

With the last bmi Diamond Club miles already spent, my journey to the US would centre around the more conventional, but still very worthwhile technique of buying a premium economy ticket and upgrading it to business class using the new British Airways frequent-flyer scheme currency, avios.

Then it was simply a matter of sitting around and waiting for eight months. Well, maybe not so much of the sitting around. There were, after all, one or two interesting diversions along the way.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: Special thanks to Bruce for preparing a detailed and well-researched plan for each destination, without which we would never have seen as much as we did in the time available. I have freely drawn on this, sometimes heavily, in compiling this trip report.

Home | Major Trips | Short Trips | About this site | Index