Uplifting News

   Punny! I swear I didn't try to do that. ...Alright, I spent five minutes thinking of a catchy title.

 The biggest expense of the whole trip, is the initial ticket to actually get us to Europe and back...now there's always the option of a cargo ship but...I prefer planes. I'm not quite that adventurous. Yet. Though, my penpal, Katharina, has told me she's considering charting a plane across Russia to get here via Alaska. She has guts, man. I wouldn't try that unless I had my sabre with me! And, possibly, spoke Russian.

   Right. So I asked my dad to look into getting wholesale tickets for us. Beacuse he's an awesome travel agent and "knows people" and he gave me some good news!

   Tessa and I are going to use what are called "open jaw" airline tickets. I've recently learned about them, and they're pretty wicked; exactly what we need. Here's the route I'd take using Delta (the cheapest) Air...Well, first I'd have to get a ticket from Phoenix to NY, because I'm flying there early for a national book conference a few days before. (I know, right? It's a BOOK conference. And as a blogger, I get a freakin' media ticket. Very neat. :)) Tessa is meeting me in New York, from Seattle.

   I just realized I don't actually remember my actual route...oops. So, here's Tessa's would-be itinerary:
(flying in from Seattle on another ticket) On Icelandic Airlines: New York--Reykjavik--London--(travel for four months with moi! Then make our way back to...)--London--Seattle.

   It's cheaper to do this than a single round trip, or one-way in two different cities. Because she's leaving from New York, but coming back to Seattle. Make sense? And it's called an open jaw ticket, because if you look at a map, it's like a big ">" see? Now you're getting it. My route would be similar. Not sure if we'd be able to get on the same flights though, because coming from Phoenix, I'd use Delta, and she'd be on Icelandic...but we have a couple months to figure it out!

   The ticket cost is about $300 less than we'd looked at before, so that's encouraging. Still over a thousand, but every dollar counts. This is good news, and we are happy. Now, for luggage restrictions...gotta look those up, especially for small airlines within Europe. But that's a project for another day.

   I have a feeling I'll be saying that a lot.

   Leah

  Post Script: I hope that wasn't all too dry to read. Learning all this stuff and especially new travel terms is fun to me. :)
And speaking of, I love how while researching all this, I'm avidly watching Lost on Netflix...