Comments on: How I Planned a Year of Travel in Less Than 2 Weeks

By: Nora Dunn

Nora Dunn — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 10:50:35 +0000

In reply to Marie-France (a.k.a. BigTravelNut).

Hi Marie,
Thanks so much for the head’s up! I’ve removed the link…..I guess at some point I culled the post and didn’t remove links. (Me thinks it’s time to do a wee site clean-up….which given 8 years of content is no small task)….!

By: Marie-France (a.k.a. BigTravelNut)

Marie-France (a.k.a. BigTravelNut) — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 06:23:03 +0000

Hi Nora! Just thought I would mention that the “Reader Survey results” link above goes nowhere! Cheers.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:52:07 +0000

Nora, cool stuff – I will look for Hawaii as well as OZ / NZ 🙂

I see what you mean about the Schengen visa, that’s tough. Probably for extended tourism you could get a better visa from one country like Germany? I’m not sure. Just make sure you can make some part of the Fest. I’ve got a Sep-2009 post about what it’s like on my blog somewhere. 🙂

By: theprofessionalhobo

theprofessionalhobo — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 04:48:55 +0000

@Dave – Ooh…Oktoberfest…great idea! I have more and more friends cropping up in Germany who have invited me to stay with them. The only slight change to my plans is that I may have to skip over to the UK for about a month in order not to violate the 90 day Schengen zone visa…we’ll see.
Enjoy your upcoming RTW trip…and hopefully you can get some more good ideas for Hawaii, Australia, and NZ from my site! Cheers…

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 10:20:11 +0000

Great info! I used 200k FF miles (collected over about 14 years) for a 5-destination RTW ticket. I’ll check on this e-book on how to collect for my next big trip! 🙂

You should try to make it to Oktoberfest in Munich (last 2 weeks of September), it’s amazing. We can meet up for a beer.

By: theprofessionalhobo

theprofessionalhobo — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 22:51:10 +0000

@Brian – I’m hearing more and more about work-trading for sure…it’s a great way to travel.

By: brian

brian — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:32:03 +0000

Nice summary of what you’ve done Nora. The work for accommodations movement is small but growing as more people become aware of it.

By: theprofessionalhobo

theprofessionalhobo — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:39:59 +0000

@Carlo – Cheers!

As for Kelly’s work visa, it’s a special employer-sponsored rural skills visa (or something like that), and I have no idea if the company uses an agent or not. His fees are something like $300 for the application, then mandatory insurance premiums that the company insists on for liability purposes – at something like $80/bi-weekly, it adds up.

And considering I don’t work for the company but would have had to pay the same $80/bi-weekly even though I may not be in the country for the entire time, it seemed ludicrous. Throw in an additional $2500 for expat medical insurance for both of us, and it just isn’t worth it.

I’ll be arriving in Madrid in June and leaving from Amsterdam in October. Who knows – maybe we’ll meet in Europe!

By: Carlo

Carlo — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:44:18 +0000

You have some sweet-ass suggestions in this post! I am bookmarking the Mana Retreat and Vaughan Systems, they both sound phenomenal.

Some questions for you…how is Kelly applying for his work visa? (It’s a 457 right?) Does he go through an agent? Isn’t the company involved in it at all? Why aren’t they paying?

When I got sponsored by my employer, I ended up footing the bill, but we didn’t go through an agent, just filled out the immigration forms ourselves (they were already an approved sponsor and had remaining spots).

We filled out Yvonne’s on our own too and paid something like $400 for both of us. Insurance wasn’t that much either (who are you using?). $2000 each sounds like a lot for applications and insurance.

So when will you be in Europe then? We fly NYC to London May 12…still not sure what we’ll be doing though! Unemployed and homeless…gotta love it.