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The premise of cheap tickets to Australia this week has been awfully tantalizing.  The chance to revisit old haunts (Sydney, Balmoral Beach, Hobart) and find new ones; catching up with my former roommate Lulu; just being in Australia again; getting dark chocolate Tim Tams).  But one of two things holding me back is I’d be afraid i wouldn’t want to come home (which is itself an up-in-the-air concept as I attempt to figure out my next move).  I was so disappointed with the fact that I came home after only four months last time; I still think about Australia all the time (it doesn’t help that it’s all over my Instagram feed).  The other:  I’ve done a terrible job saving money.  I haven’t had a car loan for six months and haven’t taken advantage of that fact.
But the flights are so cheap i almost can’t help myself.  I was actually able to find the sale fares on United because I searched for it as soon as The Flight Deal tweeted it out (I happened to still be awake and on my phone after 11 pm last night).  Two tickets for an 18-day trip starting November 1 were less than $1200 roundtrip from Seattle.  (Sure there were day-long layovers in San Francisco on some of these flights.  Still not much of a downside there.)  Even my parents agreed it was almost too good to pass up.  That’s cheaper than one normally-priced roundtrip ticket!

But would I go back to Australia for a fourth time when there are still so many other places I haven’t been?  I’ve been to two countries in Europe.  That’s it.  (Yes, I know. #privileged) And for the money I’d spend in Australia, could I stretch it further somewhere else?  (Well, probably not anywhere on the Euro…which eliminates most of the places high on my list.) Currency exchange rates now are $1 American to $1.32 Australian (compare that to €.88)…but it’s still an expensive country.  But it’s Australia, a country I’ve been obsessed with since I first visited in 2001, nearly half my lifetime ago.

Like most things worth considering in life, there is no easy answer.

To be continued…?

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