If you had infinite cash at your disposal, would you do it?
Published in · 8 min read · May 7, 2024
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When Jules Verne wrote Around the World in Eighty Days, travelling around the whole globe in just eighty days was almost an unimaginable feat. Fast-forward a hundred and fifty years, and the timeline doesn’t impress modern readers as much as it once did.
Modern travelling is quick. You can wake up in your bed in the morning and sleep in another continent at night. Perhaps you’ve even done that yourself for some holidays in the past. The two times I visited my family in Brazil, that’s exactly what happened: I left my house early in the morning in Ireland, and went to sleep that night in another continent, all the way across the Atlantic.
But how long would it take to travel around the world, even with all the modern technology we have today?
The original traveller
No, I don’t mean Marco Polo. As famous as the Italian adventurer is, he never travelled around the world. I’m talking about the fictitious Phileas Fogg, the protagonist in Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days.
