Ok, so first of all, I lied. There, I admit it. I hadn't planned another trip so soon after the Svalbard adventure, but with a very long weekend in honour of kicking King George out of the country, I decided it was time to check off a few more countries.

It's been quite an active travel year so far:

London to Iran and Afghanistan

Above the Artic Circle in Norway

Playing around with schedules a bit, I decided to fly into Baku, Azerbaijan (GYD) and back from Yerevan, Armenia (EVN). Sounded like a good plan for a very long weekend, and would allow me to check off two more countries. Just one small problem...I neglected to check how easy it would be to get between them.

Very atypical for me...see, there's a small problem. These two countries (while not actively shooting at each other at the moment) are still technically at war with each other, and the border is closed. Great. Oh well, I did what any (in)sane country collector would do: traveled between them via a third country! So, in the end, it ended up being three countries in five days, #92, #93, and #94 on my list.

Tickets booked, drivers and hotels set, and it was time to head off! I'm planning to split the trip reports into the following parts:

I. IAD-BRU in United First and BRU-FRA in Lufthansa Business
II. FRA-GYD in Lufthansa First
III. Baku, and the Park Inn Baku
IV. GYD-TBS on AZAL Azerbaijan Airlines and the Sheraton Tbilisi
V. Tbilisi, driving to Yerevan, and around Yerevan
VI. EVN-WAW-LHR in LOT Business
VII. LHR-IAD in United First

Of course, there's also a fair amount of drama in this trip, and unfortunately it was worse than the two trips above. When you pack so much into a very tight timeframe, there's very little room for error should things go tits up, which unfortunately this trip did in a very ugly way. At least I'm trying to get most of the drama out of the way before the big trip in a few more weeks.

Oh, and yeah, I managed to publically embarass myself for the sake of Flyertalk and actually take a few pics on planes this time. You will see champagne. You will see caviar. You will see the amazing feat of what happens when an F cabin is booked to one person alone, and a flight attendant accuses you of champagne abuse if you don't finish the bottle.

It won't be pretty...but hey, it's going to be lots of fun!