Tues Oct 6, 2026
Hi Gang! Yes, the Wandering Italian and his Co-Pilot Kathy are channeling their best Willie Nelson and are “on the road again”! This time to the magical and mystical East Asia lands of Japan and South Korea. Also called the Land of the Rising Sun! And yes, we didn’t hit these countries on our around-the-world cruise earlier this year so we had to circle back!
We’ll be gone 33 days which included leaving today, Tues Oct 6th, and flying to San Francisco and spending the night to break up the super long flight to Tokyo! We’ll fly from San Fran to Tokyo on Wed Oct 7 but arrive in Tokyo on Thurs Oct 8 since we lose a whole day crossing the international date line!
We’ll spend 3 nights in Tokyo checking out that amazing city (3rd most populated in the world with 33 million people!!) and then board our cruise ship on Sun Oct 11 for a 28 night cruise around Japan and South Korea. We’ll be on the Holland America Westerdam cruise ship enjoying the good food, great entertainment and daily free laundry!
Having never been there it will be fun to explore a new place on this amazing planet! Thanks for following along!
So far, our trip has been almost free! For our flight to San Fran, we flew standby (free due to Kathy’s employer American Airlines!). For our hotel, we used credit card points (sorta free). For our flight to Tokyo tomorrow, we used miles (sorta free) and were able to get Premium Economy seats on Japan Airlines, which is supposed to be pretty nice. Then for our hotel in Tokyo we’ll use credit card miles (free again!). So the lesson is, travel does not have to be expensive!
Hope everyone had a great day! Check out the pic of our fun cruise itinerary after we spend three days in Tokyo. Can’t wait!
Sayonara!
