The art of being both bold and prudent is the art of success.
Napoléon Bonaparte
If Lewis wanted to have an enjoyable trip then he needed to be both adventurous and careful. Or as one of Lewis’ best friends, had often told him, “Fail to prepare; prepare to fail!” With this thought in mind, Lewis had a lot of planning and preparation to do before his big journey.
Firstly, the most important thing of all, he needed to work out how much money he had to pay for his journey. He was going to have to budget carefully if he was to fulfil his dream of travelling to lots of different countries.
Luckily for Lewis, as we know he is one very lucky lion, he was travelling with his friend, Helen, who had managed to save money from working hard in her job. Helen had always told Lewis that it was important to “work hard and play hard”. Without working hard, you couldn’t then go on to enjoy the fun things in life like being able to afford to pay for things, for example nice holidays. Lewis felt extremely lucky to have a friend like Helen to accompany him on his journey!
To help accumulate some extra funds, Lewis helped Helen in a decluttering exercise. He woke up early one Sunday morning and helped Helen fill up her car: they were off to a carboot sale! They displayed their items on a fold-out table and hoped for some customers. January probably wasn’t a good time of year for to try to sell things as it was so cold that some of their goods even started to frost over as they lay there. There weren’t too many cutomers but luckily for Lewis it did mean that he was able to sell a pair of gloves to a lady who had forgotten hers! Can you spot Lewis as he tries to sell things in his carboot sale?
Have you ever done a carboot sale before?
Lewis knew that his adventure wouldn’t be like going on a posh holiday where he’d get to stay in a fancy hotel and eat meals in extravagant restaurants. He would be travelling on a shoestring! Have you heard of that strange expression before? It means that he had a “limited budget or a small amount of money” so he’d be doing things as cheaply as possible. Lewis was going to have to be very careful about how he spent his money. Therefore, he would be staying in basic accommodation such as youth hostels and he would be buying his food in supermarkets and preparing it himself. Lewis didn’t really mind this as he thought it might be more fun anyway, especially if he had to share a bedroom or dormitory with lots of different people in the hostels; people who were travelling from lots of different countries like Lewis himself. Lewis wondered how many different people he might meet on his travels and made a mental note to himself that he would try to keep a record of all of the different nationalities of people that he met en route.
So, the first thing that Lewis did after he dreamed his big dream was that he knew he would have to do some serious research. He started off by studying the world atlas…
and then bought a guide book called “A Rough Guide to: First Time Around the World – A Trip Planner for the Ultimate Journey.”
This book was crammed full of good advice and information for people who wanted to embark on their own global journeys. Lewis couldn’t believe it when he read that the world population is over 6.5 billion or that there are over six thousand languages spoken! Oh how he was going to have fun meeting so many different people and trying to learn so many different languages!
Lewis then consulted with some of his well-travelled friends who also had stories of adventures and tips for what to do and things to avoid in some of the countries he was going to visit. He then continued his research on the internet where he was able to read about other people adventures on travel blogs.
The next thing that Lewis did was made a list of all of the things that he wanted to do or see on his journey. He knew realistically that he could never see every corner of the globe so he made a note of the most important places he wanted to go to, e.g. Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to see the famous Mardi Gras Carnival and The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. (You can see Lewis’ full list of where he would really like to visit on the home page).
After he’d done this, he had to go to the travel agents who could help him to book his flights and travel insurance.
Ok have a great life time happy bday. xx 😉 Love Holly.