Say cheese! (by Karen)

As some of you may have guessed, Thomarga is the rather cheesy, rather cliched combination of Thompson and Varga.  But what you didn't know is that it's origins were not actually related to our exTRAVELganza.

One afternoon a rather pushy friend of ours wanted both Rone and I to declare on the spot whether we wanted children, and if so who would bear them and whose surname they would have.  So I rather creatively came up with our new marriage name of 'Thomarga', however when I told Rone she looked at me as though I was crazy, and so it's been demoted from a proposed marriage name to the name of our trip!

Thomarga has been in the planning since May 2010, when Rone and I had a long chat about my sanity levels being in the UK and how I needed to know that there was some plan to move toward a warmer climate at some point in the near future.  We set a deal that once the London 2012 Olympics was achieved, we would go off traveling for (at least) 6 months and during that time decide on what we wanted to do with our lives and where we wanted to be.  Wow, can't believe that time has finally arrived.

Last year we finally got round to pulling out a map and deciding on where we wanted to go.  Of course, most of that changes when you sit down with a travel agent and find out what is actually possible and within the budget.  It all went fairly smoothly and there wasn't too much bickering about who gets to do what, and eventually we managed to produce the monster itinerary as shown below.

exTRAVELganza itinerary

I know we've said this before, but I really want to make sure you guys don't forget ... we would LOVE to have you join us at any point along our travels.  So please please pull out the map and your calendars and the credit card and let's get traveling!