After a year of scouring hotel websites, reading travel magazines and blogs, camping out on the United Airlines website to nab the best reward flights and consulting a few travel experts, my niece, Kelly, and I are headed around the world June 1! Kelly is wrapping up her doctorate in music and we decided a trip was the perfect way to celebrate. Since she has two months off from teaching high school orchestra, we figured “let’s go for it!”

On our journey, every flight over four hours is free and BUSINESS CLASS! Yes, free!!! Well, we did have to pay the usual taxes, but I have become a slut for frequent flyer points by buying everything possible on United credit cards. (That’s a story for another post.)

We’ll visit Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Dubai, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Israel, Turkey and Portugal.