Clapp Radical Sabbatical

How much luggage are you bringing?

We are each bringing a carry on sized suitcase and a backpack. If you are interested in knowing the details of what we are bringing leave us a comment and we will do a blog post on it.

Are you staying in hostels or hotels?

So far we are staying primarily in Airbnbs. We do have a couple of hotels booked but no hostels yet. We’ve chosen Airbnbs because we like the idea of having a kitchen so that we don’t have to eat out all the time (this will save us time and money and ensure we don’t get too fat!) We’ve been able to book better locations with Airbnbs too for much less than hotels in the same place. Additionally we are trying to make sure we have laundry every 2-3 places and Airbnb has made that pretty easy.

Are you planning out the whole trip ahead of time?

No, but we are trying to plan about 1-2 months ahead of time because we will be in Europe in Spring and Summer which is the busy seasons so if we don’t book ahead of time we run the risk of having to stay in a really horrible hostel or a super expensive hotel. We aren’t booking the whole trip ahead of time because we do want to have some flexibility and we are hoping lots of friends and family will join us.

If you are booking ahead of time what will you do if you LOVE a place?

We are looking at this trip as a way to see a large portion of the world and although 6 months sounds like a long time we know it will fly by. If we really love a place we will come back to it on another trip.

What’s your budget?

We are budgeting about $300 per day. This includes accommodations, food, local transportation and sightseeing. In the UK this budget is definitely going to be hard to stick to however our awesome families gave us a bunch of Airbnb gift cards this past Christmas so we used those to subsidies that part of the trip. We are also budgeting $1000 a month for major transportation – flights or trains to new countries. Things we didn’t include in this budget are our first flights to Europe, our travel health insurance, our storage unit cost, the yearly cost for this site and our picture site or our international phone data plan (which is $80 a month).

Where are you going first?

We will be heading to London first. We were able to find some great direct flight deals from LAX to London. After that we will go to Edinburgh, Inverness, Dublin, Limerick, Madrid, Marrakech, Tenerife, Lisbon, Lagos, Sevilla, and Barcelona. That’s about all we have planned however we think we will head along the Mediterranean eventually making our way over to Turkey. After Europe we will head to Southeast Asia.

What are you doing with your house and stuff?

We are lucky to live in San Diego which has an incredibly strong rental market. We were able to find a renter really quickly for our place. We downsized a large portion of our stuff – the criteria for keeping things was: sentimental, new, or expensive to replace. Everything we kept fit easily into a 10’x15′ storage unit. Our cars are both 12 years old and my parents were nice enough to let us keep them at their place.