Continued planning and lack thereof....

We've been investigating travel arrangements (well Mary more than me, but she informs me). Normally in the peak seasons we'd have to worry a bit more about train tickets, but since we're going later we're finding advice saying to just buy tickets as we go. The major ticket that we were concerned about was the Bejing to Ulaan Bataar, but people report that if your in Bejing for 10 or more days, there's no problem getting a ticket when you arrive (that's in the regular tourist season too). Also, there are multiple means to get where we're going if train alone provides troublesome.

Initially when I started planning (on a spreadsheet - geek) I was trying to plan day-by-day. This is pointeless for so much travel time; we will not be very restricted by time so we can makes plans as we go. This applies more for Europe since we're not limited by visas; we simply have to be in Ireland sometime before our flight departs.

We've been debating a Eurail pass too. Unfortunately, they don't cover some of the countries we're traveling to, and it limits us mostly to train which equates to less flexibility (no buses or hitch-hiking). We've also read in Lonely-Planet guide books that since we're under 26 we'll get 10-30% discounts on our tickets anyway. So we might forego the Eurail pass and buy as we go...

we've got time.