Our flights to and from the USA cost us just under £400 each and bizarrely it was cheaper for us to fly via London than actually starting and ending our travels in London. Our outbound journey begins at Paris Orly with an early flight travelling with British Airways to London Heathrow at 0735 where we then have a little over three hours to change terminals and join the US Airways 3,999 mile flight across the Atlantic Ocean to Charlotte, North Carolina. Our third flight of the day will see us make a short hop of just over an hour to Jacksonville in north Florida arriving at around 1910 local time.

Before we catch our homeward flight we have about 4,000 miles of driving to do as we travel across ten US States from Florida to California taking over four and a half weeks. Very little of this trip will be a repeat of any of our previous USA holidays with the exception of visiting Las Vegas which we last did ten or so years ago so it will be good to see what has changed. This should see us at least be able to dip our toes in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, gain four new States and see some great natural sights as well as visit some interesting US cities on this massive transcontinental road trip.

Our flight back to the UK will start in Los Angeles travelling with American Airlines to Dallas Fort Worth where we board a transatlantic Boeing 777 flight back to Heathrow again with American Airlines. From London it made our overall fare lower to fly the extra 157 miles to Manchester with British Airways rather than finish our journey at Heathrow. Our flights will see us travel a total of 10,694 miles for a cost of £397 each or a little over 3.5p per mile.

It took some time to find this fare but having tried various combinations of destinations and origins and weighing that up against getting to and from the airport and hotel options it seemed sensible to tie the start of the trip in with a short visit to Malestroit in order to check on our house in Brittany. Malestroit was very quiet but our few days here allowed us to catch up with friends and enjoy a little bit of French culture before heading stateside. Our French neighbours loaded us up with cake and biscuits for the journey ahead of us so we might need to get a photograph for them of us eating Breton biscuits in front of the Hollywood sign, or another US icon if we get a chance!

Our time in France did however coincide with the terrible terrorist acts that took place in Paris, fortunately we avoided any of the troubles as we crossed the French capital from Gare du Nord to Montparnasse railway stations on our outward journey on the Wednesday. We also watched this play out on TV being able to swap between various international news channels. These events will undoubtedly have a marked impact on Paris, France and the wider world.