Best of the Rest – The Weekly Roundup

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Allllmost bought this raunchy bear to add to our Christmas decorations for the casa!

Tony has been out of the corporate world for the past month, but this week marked the last week of work for me.  Now that we are both out of the rat race, I feel like our RTW journey has already begun on some level.  It is incredibly refreshing, exciting, and scary all at the same time! 

To kickoff our lives as nomads, we spent this week shopping for gear to pack for our trip, decorating the house for Christmas, and spending quality time with friends & family.  When we weren’t incredibly busy being jobless, we were able to catch up on some of our favorite travel blogs.  Here is this week’s weekly roundup:

• As Christmas is fast approaching (as well as our RTW trip), our families are scrambling trying to figure out what to get Tony and I for our yearlong trip abroad.  The Traveling Canucks provides a list of great holiday gifts for travel enthusiasts.  Do you have anything to add to this list?
•  Beth from Wanderlust and Lipstick also has a list of travel clothes to buy the ladies this holiday season – I haven’t bought ANY clothing for our RTW trip yet (starting January 4^th), so this list is my new Bible!
• London isn’t on my list of must-see places for next year, but now that I know that The Halkin hotel in London launched a new Couture Chocolate Afternoon Tea, I might be changing next year’s itinerary… I will fly ANYWHERE in the world for chocolate.  Fact.
• Our first stop on our RTW trip is Santiago, Chile so I loved reading this article on this wonderful South American city from Solo Traveler.
• Tony is shamelessly in love with the movie Moulin Rouge, so I am sure he will do just about anything to see the The Feerie Show At Moulin Rouge in Paris when we are in Europe next year.
• For our trip, we will be mostly staying in hostels to save money and to interact with other backpackers.  In this article, Nomadic Matt discusses his favorite hostels around the globe that we will certainly have to reference if we travel to any of these cities.  Thanks Matt for sharing!
• Runaway Jane has the life I dream of.  Here is her story.
• I have traveled EVERY SINGLE week for the past 4.5 years for my job.  This lifestyle sucked and it meant only seeing Tony on the weekends.  On the bright side, I have acquired a buttload of travel points and miles from various hotels and airlines that we plan to leverage on our upcoming travels around the world.  Canada’s Adventure Couple also swears by using travel rewards to book travel.  Here is how they do it.
• As I am becoming more and more immersed in the travel blogging community, I have discovered some great new travel blogs… well, new to me at least!  Nomads on the Road , by mountain and adventure travel enthusiast, Mike, is one of my new favortes!