Travel + Collecting = Much Needed Holiday

I love to travel. I love to collect.

That's good enough reason to combine the two and get away for a holiday.

I have been collecting now for about 30 years, firstly comics and then beer cans. Along the way I have collected many more items as well but will talk about them as I pick them up whilst travelling.

I am a member of the Australian Beer Can Collectors Association (ABCCA) and am currently the national Vice President of the club which has about 400 members. We trade and swap all types of brewery items and I normally go to a swap day once a month somewhere in my home state of New South Wales. Annually there is a national meeting which is called a Canathon, these meeting are held in rotation by the 6 state divisions in Australia. The Canathon brings together members from all over Australia and also some of our clubs international members.

Meeting with these international members and using the internet for trading has allowed me to contact and meet brewery collectors from many countries and I have joined a few different collecting clubs both in England and USA.

One of the clubs I am a member of is the Brewery Collectables Club of America (BCCA) and have always wanted to attend one of their annual shows in the USA which is called a Canvention .

My good friends from Newcastle, Adam and Shirley have been to seven of them and always return talking about the wonderful time they have had. Other members of our ABCCA have also bought back stories from these meetings. I was planning to go to go to a Canvention in 2001 but at the time was working for myself and could not arrange for the time to make the journey.

In 2005 I decided to save for the trip and set myself a three year target to get to the 2008 Canvention in Orlando Florida. This target became a lot easier when I gained employment with a large company and have in over the last two years been able to accumulate eight weeks holidays.

Whilst working for myself I was able to gain frequent flyer points by using credit cards for business transactions so I knew I had enough points to get a round the world ticket (I actually have enough points left to get another one in the future as well) and decided to visit some family and friends in Singapore and England as well as going to the USA.

About 15 years ago as well as generally collecting brewery items I decided to specialise in collecting Guinness memorabilia. So if I was going to be in England I just had to go to the home of Guinness, Dublin in Ireland as well.

So the plan was set to do 7 weeks of travelling. Singapore, London, Dublin, Orlando, Las Vegas and Hawaii.

Hawaii ended up changing to driving 5 days in California, but I will explain that when I go through the experience of booking the frequent flyer plane tickets.