Focusing on our preference
May the truth be told, we are not thrill seekers but we rather value long lasting memories from our travel experiences. And for us, when we look back at our 100-day South East Asia backpacking trip of 2023 with our 115-day Europe cycling trip in 2022, we feel the latter trip gave way to more long lasting memories. Our sentiment seems to hold true also when we compare our other previous cycling and backpacking trips.
Why South Korea and Japan?
We kind of stumbled on the fact that South Korea had a popular cycling route called the Four-River path – a 630+kms route which crosses the country. This cycling path reminded up of the many EuroVelo cycling paths that criss-crosses all of Europe. It was an easy decision to extend our cycling plan to include Japan – a destination we had plan to visit at some point. Based on our readings of a various travel information resources on the internet, it seems like Japan is a very popular/trendy destination in 2024.
Some lengthy trip preparation
As we had plenty of time to prepare for this trip, we undertook a number of tasks and activities that contributed to making it our lengthiest trip preparation. Our first blog post tried to capture all the details of our preparation.
The big picture
As the most significant event of the summer 2024 is the wedding of our older daughter to her fiance. The twist is that the wedding is to be held June 1st at a venue in Italy. Hence we’ll be pausing our cycling trip to join in the wedding celebration. We’ve already secured the air travel to accommodate our following summer itinerary.
- Fly from Ottawa to Seoul (early April)
- Cycle from Seoul to Busan (~ 630 – 830 kms)
- Ferry to Japan (Fukuoka
- Cycle from Fukuoka to Osaka ( ~ 930 kms)
- Fly from Japan to Italy (Rome)
- Attend family wedding (8 days – May/June)
- Fly from Italy to Japan (Osaka)
- Continue cycling north in Japan
- Return home when “done”(late August)
Overview of our planned flights and cycling route
