I would really appreciate your collective wisdom in helping me plan a "dream" trip.

Mr. free101girl and I are seriously considering booking a RTW next year. We've been playing with itineraries and studying the stickies, so I think we're pretty clear on the rules.

I know most people here are interested in maximizing miles (well, duh, this is FT!) but in this particular case that's not our primary priority. Our priorities are:

1. Visit some interesting/offbeat/intriguing locations. We are especially interested in getting a taste of some places that we wouldn't normally make our primary destination.

2. Experience the airlines and routes with the best service and comfort. (So we'll go for the A ticket if the experience is a lot better.)

3. Have the whole "whirlwind tour" experience that a RTW ticket seems to imply.

4. Maximize mileage if possible.

In short, we want to take a really cool trip around the world, and if we get lots of extra miles, that's gravy.

We are considering starting from ARN because of the savings, but we're open to starting anywhere in North America if it works out better. We'd prefer to work our way west to minimize jet lag.

We don't want to visit Sub-Saharan Africa or South America on this trip, so this would be a *ONE3 (Europe, North America, Asia) or *ONE4 (Europe, North America, Asia, South West Pacific). We just did a trip to Tahiti, Australia, New Zealand this year so that's not a huge priority, though of course there's still plenty to see in the Pacific.

We are interested in historic cities as well as places that are kind of "wacky" and unusual (Dubai?). We would enjoy breaking up the trip with one or two beach/relaxing stops. We are willing to pay for some side trips if we can find reasonable airfares.

Anyway, sorry for the long preamble, but I would be very appreciative if any of you would be willing to suggest interesting itineraries!

So very hard to offer advice on this; often one person's dream can easily be another's nightmare, but anyway...

Some seasoned travelers here don't do it like that (I do, finishing RTWs in around a month or so, but not really by choice). Instead of one mother of all RTWs they take one or two rests, but at home, not under a palm tree somewhere (nothing wrong with that, for sure!).

What class of service do you want to fly?

I was going to suggest Easter Island as one of the best uses of a RTW ticket; very expensive to reach on paid tickets, and a fascinating place - but that's out as you don't want to go to South America.

I really enjoyed Alice Springs and Ayers Rock on my last RTW, much more than I anticipated.

I liked Talinn, Estonia, and I liked Malta. I had a great visit to Egypt last October.

I went to Sapporo in northern Japan on one trip, and then by train on to Otaru.

I highly recommend Bali.

I keep a file with the route maps of the various OneWorld airlines. I travel a lot and I read a lot of travel magazines, so I have some sense of most destinations. It makes it relatively easy then to look at a route map and see what jumps out.

Be aware of the big new gotcha where ground segments are counting towards our 20 segment total. You need to watch London in particular where some flights only go from Gatwick, but many of the transoceanic flights go from Heathrow.

Yes, we considered that. We were originally thinking of breaking the trip in half with a long stop at home, particularly if we began the RTW in ARN. But at this point we're feeling it would be more fun and a bigger adventure to do it all in one go. We've never really done a whirlwind tour and thought it might be exhilarating, though exhausting...

Sorry, thought I had mentioned that. We will do either A or D (First or Business). We're willing to shell out for First if we can cobble together an itinerary that includes some of the best routes/airlines that make flying in First worth the extra $$. (For instance, I understand Cathay and JAL are supposed to be fantastic in A.)

I love the idea of Easter Island, but the only other location in South America that currently interests us much is Buenos Aires. Not sure we'd get enough out of adding that continent...

We have not seen that part of Australia yet, so that's on our "definite maybe" list.

We were considering Talinn/St. Petersburg/Moscow but not sure how to make it work with our overall routing. Never considered Malta -- I'll have to learn more, and find out what airlines serve it.

We have not been to Egypt and I would love to see the pyramids, Luxor, etc. My husband is so-so on it. I think he's a little concerned about safety, but I'm really not too worried.

Japan is a definite on this trip. We've spent a bit over a week in Tokyo and it's one of our favorite cities, but we haven't explored much of the rest of the country.

Can you say a little more about why? I really hadn't considered Indonesia at all.

Thanks for some thought provoking suggestions.

Ha, so true.

Okay, let me try phrasing it another way. I'm trying to figure out how to put together an itinerary that will allow us to visit some interesting places AND maximize the best flight experiences. So I've been looking at the list of routes that generally have "true First Class." I'm sort of flummoxed on how to put that information together into an itinerary that works.

Of the non-North America cities with "true First" connections, we'd be especially interested in LHR, NRT, KIX, HKG, BKK, SIN, maybe CGK, DXB, CAI, maybe MAD, and anywhere in Australia/NZ.

So what's the best way to put this together to get the optimal flight experiences?

If I've missed it in a prior post, apologies.

What time of year would this travel tornado transpire?

Especially if considering the southern hemisphere, the time of year can make a big difference not only in flight experiences, but in reasonableness of some stops, routing, and lengths of stays. Ayers' Rock or Cairns might be great in August or September, too hot or too many flies or too many stingers in January or February. Skiing or fjord cruises on the South Island? White Nights or ice hotels in Scandinavia or Mother Russia?

That's a good point. We are thinking November-January, most likely, as a getaway from the long Colorado winter. We don't mind visiting Russia in the mid-winter, but would of course prefer to do the majority of stops in warmer locations.

You can't have SQ in an OW rtw (without buying a separate unrelated ticket on SQ) but I suppose you know that and were just giving an example.

If you decide to fly A class you'll quickly learn that about 95% of what people call "jet lag" after the end of a 12 hour trip in coach is fatigue due to the punishment you've had to endure. 12 hours in first class is a lot like putting in a long day at the office. Your brain will certainly be a bit confused about when to be sleepy, but if in ordinary life you can survive a late night without too much trouble, that's probably how you'll feel at your destination. Our experience has been that east-bound vs west isn't worth planning around.

The most important thing for maximizing rtw pleasure is maximizing the time you spend doing it - 12 months would be way cool, three months worthy. We usually can only eke out 5 or 6 weeks, very much on the low side of good.

You've noticed that if you live in NA and start in Europe or Asia, when you get to NA the first time you'll be "home" and have up to 8 segments to spend, valid from Alaska to Central America, California to the Caribbean. Thus you can have a European vacation, a North American vacation, and an Asian vacation, without necessarily busting one year's vacation budget.

I hold that getting travel advice from anonymous strangers is worse than going on a blind data arranged by randomly picking a name from the phone book. On the date, you can at least go home early. But, just in case any of this appeals to you:
Kruger National Park near Johannesburg is a world-class game-viewing experience, worth a week;
Santorini, especially from Firostefano (sp?), is romantic beyond words;
the train ride between Montreal and Quebec City just before Christmas has a good chance of being beautiful; stay at the Frontenac when you get there;
while we're in Canada, a few days at Chateau Lake Louise, preferably well before tourist season, can be a treat;
the train between Bombay and Goa can be "an experience";
Dusit Santiburi on Koh Samui will spoil you nicely;
Kathmandu, not a OW destination at present, is other-worldly; fly up to Lukla and walk a bit, too;

Yes, I did know that but had a momentary lapse... meant to say JAL and have fixed my post.

That hasn't been our experience. We do a fair bit of international travel, always in First or Business. We do get jet lag. (I'm an 8-hours-a-night-or-I-am-crabby girl, though.) I will agree with you that it's much less horrible than when we used to fly Coach, though!

That's an interesting take on it. We aren't restricted on time. As long as we have high-speed Internet access about every other day, we're able to travel more or less indefinitely without a problem.

The thing is, we usually tend to fly to one destination and spend a fair amount of time there. So we thought it might be fun, as a change of pace, to do a trip where we visit a lot of different places for only 2-3 days each. We can always go back to the ones we liked best and do them in depth later. I envision this trip being about 60 days long.

True, but not a factor for us.

Glad to hear it. We're going to be doing that this year.

I think the point of my original post was not clear. I am not having trouble figuring out interesting places to go -- I'm having trouble figuring out how to string them all together into a workable *ONE* itinerary that allows us to visit some of those interesting places AND maximizes the legs on great airlines, ideally with "true First" service. Make sense?

Okay, maybe this will help. Here's a *ONE4 itinerary we've considered, which is "legal" according to Mileage Monkey and uses up our 20 segments:

DEN-LAX-SFO-SYD-ADL-BNE-PER-NRT,KIX-HKG-SIN-BKK-DXB-LHR-DME-MAD-LHR-YVR-JFK-MIA-DEN

42,488 miles

However, it only uses 3 of 4 possible legs in Asia and South West Pacific. The LAX-SFO and LHR-YVR legs could be dropped if necessary. They are pretty much "filler" to add miles and legs.

Overall the destinations are ones we'd be happy with, but I'm pretty sure this isn't the optimal itinerary in terms of getting us on the best flights as well as maximum mileage. Suggestions?

A few initial observations:
1. BKK-DXB, only operates WThSaSu, and does not operate with first class.
2. To avoid losing a segment in Japan NRT,KIX I would consider taking the Shinkansen bullet train back to NRT and flying from there to HKG, which also allows you to enjoy the Kaiseki meal in F on CX.
3. Unless something has changed PER-NRT on QF is only business and economy, no F.
4. LHR-YVR and YVR-JFK isn't a bad choice since you get to fly CX F YVR-JFK, although F service on this route usually isn't up to the usual level of CX F service.

And the BKK-DXB is only regional business class. Not a good idea if maximising real F is an objective.