Taking the road more or less traveled

So how does a vacation happen? You're tired, fed up of the same old routine, need a change, and so decide its time for a good ol' vacation. Right? Right, but this is not exactly what I asked. My question is more in the lines of "How do you plan for a vacation?", rather than "Why do you need a vacation?".
From about last two weeks (or maybe more), I've been trying to plan a vacation. And not just any vacation- A great vacation which has all that I and hubby dearest want. Now just so you don't get any ideas, me and my hubby (let's call him D) are quite compatible and all, but as it turns out, planning a vacation together has become a clash of the titans. I'm pretty sure most of you must have gone through this at least once, if not every time you plan a vacation. Seems that when it comes to holiday planning, me and D are two ends of a magnet. I want to go to all the godforsaken places on this earth, he will only go where there is Internet connectivity. I'm thinking of shopping in exotic bazaars, he thinks we should take all we need from home so that we don't have to go shopping there. I want to stay disconnected from everybody during the vacation, he's thinking how to stay connected with his work all that time; and the most troublesome of them all; I'm set on 5 star accommodations, and he wants a budget trip. This list seems to be endless, however, there's a tiny ray of light. Both of us agree on two things- one: we don't want travel in a huge group shepherded like cattle from one touristy site to another; and two: we both agree that the trip cannot be less than ten days.
So, taking that as a good omen, I start to plan our trip. It seems that this is no joke. While banging my head searching for tour operators and travel packages it comes to me that it was so much better when as a youngster I used to go on vacations with my family. Absolutely no headaches. Well........for me and my sibling at least. I'm quite sure my parents got enough headaches planning a trip every year.
Anyway, coming to the topic, how do you plan your vacation? I did it by going to Google. Yes, that was my first step. Next, finding a place to go. Mind you, all this time I and D were fighting over the trip, there was no set destination. So, the next step is finding a place to go. The world is huge, and being a huge fan of Michael Palin, I'm willing to travel to the most distant corners of this earth. However, if I'm to travel with D, I have to find a more habitable place. After reading many travel blogs, and visiting an equal number of travel forums, we decided not to go to Europe (which was our first choice). I'll not give the reasons here, maybe in another post. I was also quite sure that I did not want to tour the USA now, nor was I interested in greater Asia, and having traveled most of India, I left that out too.
Thus being decided on where not to go, I focused my attention to the world map, and discovered that the options that were left to me were Latin America, Mexico, Africa, Middle East and South East Asia. For some time we (I and D) were quite exited about SE Asia, but to our utter dismay found the tour packages (even the cheapest ones available) becoming quite pricey and way beyond our budget when combined with the airfares from USA. So SE Asia too was struck off the map, and I did not even look at Latin America, rather set my eyes, mind and heart straight at the Middle East and Africa. Or should I say more appropriately Jordan and Egypt.
Egypt jumped out at me from all the other places (even scored over the African safaris )simply because right from the time I first read about the Egyptian civilization at the age of 7 or 8, I'd dreamt of living there. Well, if I cannot live with the pharaohs, at least I can visit them. As for Jordan, that's D's choice. He says he wants to see Queen Rania (which I doubt he will), and I'm not complaining.

Having finalized our destinations, I now set out on a mission to find a tour operator who would meet our expectations as well as budgets. And mind you, this is no easy task. While I fell in love with a tour itinerary provided by Abercrombie & Kent, I also realized that the price for covering the said itinerary was a few thousand dollars over our budget. I did not tell this to D obviously, he might have had some sort of a heart attack.
So, I was or am back to square one, but it's getting late here, and having been searching for a tour package almost the entire day, have now got my stomach growling angrily. Will let you know the updates to my great trip planning adventure in my next post. Till then, au revoir.