I went to my first ever baseball game on Friday night. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it. It seems too similar to cricket, a game so long and boring that it feels like training for life in a nursing home.
But I was pleasantly surprised. Baseball’s a fast moving battle of nerves. When it comes down to three “balls” and two “strikes,” the guy at the bat has the world on his shoulders. If he takes another strike, his head hangs low. If he knocks it out of the park, he stands among the gods. The rules are simple and any confusion is cleared up by more beer. After two hours, I graduated from total novice to seasoned pro – shouting, “You could see the ball better if you got a haircut, hippie!” and “Hit it, don’t swat it, Zimmerman!” [That Zimmerman really bugged me. His whole technique seemed to rely on the pitcher not being able to throw. Is the man allergic to running?]
...Another, more stark, reminder of that truth is the role that military pageantry plays at a baseball game. At the start of the contest, the CIA honour guard trooped the colours and we were all invited to stand and applaud the folks serving in the US military. But nothing prepared me for the moving rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, as sung by a female soldier in combat fatigues. The stadium stood proudly – hats clasped to chests – as she powerfully, beautifully sang the national anthem. “Does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave/ O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” It sure does.
In contrast, American patriotism is sharper and more certain – and more fixedly about ideas. Its promise is individual freedom. But that freedom is guaranteed – just like victory in a baseball game – by thinking and acting as a team or a nation. One of the reasons why civil society works in the US slightly better than it does in Britain is that they understand the balance of rights and responsibilities between the individual and the group. Without the security of a welfare state, Americans are acculturated to risk and sacrifice, and so (ironically) they can be a little more charitable than us. They are certainly more free.
After the game we moved to a bar and got chatting with some young marines, who were talking excitedly about the fact that they are going to present the flag at one of the ballgames next week. After that, they will fly off to war. We are lucky to share the world with a nation that produces men like these.
Repoz
Posted: April 18, 2012 at 02:23 PM |
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This really isn't an improvement, since they used to have these things called payphones back then.
I suppose with the smartphone you can compare the El Paso prices with the Las Cruces prices and decide how far you want to go that night.
Really? A cellphone isn't an improvement over a payphone?
The rooms are typically going to have been cleaned that day and are much less likely to have bedbugs. There's also a 50/50 shot at free WiFi.
This is good for consumers.
Then somebody else would just come over and either blow it all the #### up, or kill the people in charge and take over the place.
As someone who has actually been stuck in the middle of an anti American protest in China, I wish I had a "I'm Canadian" tee shirt in Chinese.
I did a two-week version of this a couple years ago when I moved from New Hampshire to the Bay Area. Total expenses were MAYBE a thousand bucks. Probably a good deal less.
The secret is that we live in the 21st century so we're connected to a massive number of people outside our local community. Which meant we had friends and family to crash with pretty much everywhere we went. That's what you can't duplicate in 1969.
Which would save you money if you don't mind crashing with strangers. I'm not sure why you think that people who wanted to couldn't connect with family and friends in 1969. We did that plenty of other times, but we decided not to do that on this particular trip. It might have saved us maybe a hundred bucks (in 1969 dollars) but we didn't think it was worth it. We could also have camped out for a buck or two a night and saved a fair amount of money, but we didn't want to do that this time around. (That was for another trip along U.S. 2 which we did six years later.)
BTW if your only goal is to get from point A to point Z as cheaply as possible, there was another well-used way of travel (for men, anyway) available in 1969 that was about to die out within a few years for a variety of reasons: Hitchhiking. Before I got a car in 1965 (when I turned 21), I routinely hitchhiked all over the East Coast, from DC to Durham, Atlanta, Hanover (NH), Cambridge (MD) and pretty much all points in between. And when I bought a car I returned the favor and picked up many hitchhikers myself. If you confine yourself to a few big cities today the Chinese buses are dirt cheap, even cheaper than Greyhound was 42 years ago, but you don't get either the flexibility or the adventure** that you did when all that was required was to stick your thumb out on the highway.
**And spare us the J. Edgar Hoover horror stories about hitchhiking. If you were a reasonably able bodied man the danger percentage per mile was likely less than it is crossing the street or driving while texting.
---------------------------------------------
Side of the highway motels are also of much greater quality in general than those in the 1960's.
The rooms are typically going to have been cleaned that day and are much less likely to have bedbugs. There's also a 50/50 shot at free WiFi.
This is good for consumers.
You mean it's good for consumers who can afford them. The inability of many Primates to see beyond their own particular set of circumstances is one of the enduring (if not endearing) features of BTF. Sometimes this site can read like a conversation between David Brooks and Mitt Romney, where people below a certain income level simply don't exist.
Having just stayed in Nashville, I think this excludes taxes, but that's a rant for another day.
And, no, cellphones aren't any better than payphones when it comes to hotel reservations.
And then I could mock you mercilessly for being the type of landless peasant who stays in a Days Inn! Proles.
Do you understand how cellphones work?
At this point it looks like the argument is that Andy thinks only 1%ers can afford to stay at roadside motels while others do not share that opinion.
History is not on your side here.
Thanks for being the first person to understand that the latter doesn't negate the former, and that I'm not disputing the latter. You can judge the costs and benefits of the tradeoff according to your personal prefeence, but that's a completely separate issue.
Similarly, I love my ExtraInnings package, but that doesn't mean that I don't realize that the inflation-adjusted price of most baseball tickets hasn't skyrocketed in the same time period. If I had to choose either today's ticket prices and other viewing options or the 1969 package of cheap lower deck seats and a severely limited number of games on TV, I'd choose today's package without blinking an eye. But I wouldn't try to claim that a few cheap bleacher or nosebleed seats negates the fact that for any game today with the slightest amount of demand, any good seat is many times more expensive in constant dollars than it was 40 years ago.
Whereas you apparently think that a person on a median income (~$27,000) can afford to take a one month cross-country driving vacation by simply using his smartphone fairy.
- well well well
If this ain't the 100% completel unbullshtted truth i don't know what is.
It isn't possible to just mind your own damm business and let other people do whatever they want - war/killing etc that humans just can't seem to stop doing - unless you can and will defend yourself against them when they decide that you are just a sucka waiting to be mugged.
There always has been and always will be war because it seems to be part of our species that
1 - you want what someone else got and try to take it from them using some excuse like - hey, how come THEYYYYYYY get to have it??? or, well I (or some "prophet") just heard it straight from our god that we are bettern them so we deserve it.
(No I am not limiting this to men because us females do the same damm thing without the "god" excuse - we just try to get more things and more expensive males.)
2 - we don't like how you guys look/think/live your lives. We can't deal with the fact that you are different so you have to change or die. Of course, wimmen aren't really people and have no minds to use or change, so we'll just kill all yall and enslave them.
After 10 years here I have long since given up any hope that people have any chance whatsoever of saying/thinking - well, yall other men and women got a right to think what you want/live how you like and we'll just work out some compromises and like whatever. Because you won't stop thinking that the other persons are "wrong" and something needs to be done about it. (For example, see all the people here who don't think that snapper has a right to believe that gay sex is sinful. an opinion is one thing - trying to make laws/rules because you think your opinion is "right" is another thing.)
sigh
I don't know how family trips were done BITGOD but I would bet that these days it is cheaper and easier to just fly somewheres that is more than 1 days drive away. Those cheap motel prices don't include taxes which are sometimes around 1/3 or more of the posted cost, or the extra money they charge for more than 2 people. I would also add that the rugs on the floor are FILTHY and the blankets and bedspreads aren't washed unless the cleaning ladies find blood, piss, poop or barf on them, and the filters in the AC are also beyond disgusting.
Anyway, traveling around is for people with money and or without kids. Almost everyone here is at least comfortably well off and you just don't think of it as having money.
This is a good point. Air travel is by far the cheapest it's ever been (adjusted for inflation). That's probably part of the reason why roadside motels are slightly more expensive.
It's pretty much better for everyone to have a much lower risk of disease or injury. If you can't afford the difference between a $25.00 and $45.00 motel, you can always camp out.
camp out? you mean have to go and buy expensive camping equipment and tents to save money? this is cheaper than motels HOW? and you DO have to pay to go to campgrounds too, you know, unless you think that a family is just going to go down some dirt road and pull out blankets and sleep on the side of the road. No bathrooms, insects, animals, human predators?
Technology, as always, is a tool that you can use for beneficial purposes or for silly ones. But it's hardly pointless.
They can't afford the time off from work, first of all. Secondly, median family income is what you want to go with, which is ~$50K, since traveling alone, by car is hugely inefficient.
In any case, travel in general is far cheaper than it was, so I don't see why it matters if one particular trip is more expensive.
For my grandparents and great aunts and uncles generation (born ~1912-24), it was hugely common for a middle class person never to set foot on an airplane, and never to leave the US.
That entire generation on my Mom's side didn't count one airplane trip between them, and they may have visited Canada, by car, once in their lives. Vacation was two week at the Jersey Shore on in the Adirondacks.
Today middle class people routinely fly all over the country, to the Caribbean, to Europe, etc., etc.
There is zero argument that travel has become anything except massively cheaper.
I really don't have much money these days (yay grad school) but I managed to scrimp and save enough to hit Ecuador this coming June on my two weeks off from work. This wasn't a thing a 25 year old without trust funding just decided to do many years ago.
My view has always been that if I can't afford to increase my standard of living on vacation, I can't afford to go.
It makes no sense to me to pay to stay someplace that's not as nice as the home I'm paying for already.
That wasn't a thing a middle aged upper middle class professional did 40 years ago.
Prior to the 1980's (airline deregulation, and strong dollar b/c of high interest rates) even a relatively affluent American (top-10%) could count on one hand the number of times they'd expect to leave the US.
A trip to Europe was maybe a twice in a lifetime event. No one ever went to Asia, Africa or South America unless you were in the military, gov't, or a very tiny sliver of int'l businesses.
It makes no sense to me to pay to stay someplace that's not as nice as the home I'm paying for already.
Generally the good part of vacationing is what is OUTSIDE the hotel room, right?
That's the philosophy the Germans have, which is why when Germans use their vacation days from work, their employers are required to pay them 150% of their normal salary.
And after this trip, I will have been to all three.
Oceania someday...
That said, I don't think I'll ever catch my mother and her 50 countries until long after she has passed. (And yep, she didn't do any of that before the 1980s).
Not if you stay in really nice Hotels :-)
My wife and I take a very leisurely approach to vacationing. Up at 10, brunch at 11, probably get out of the Hotel around noon. 5 hours of sightseeing, but then everything shuts down a 5 or 5:30, so you've got two hours to kill before dinner. So that means back to the hotel room, or hotel bar, typically.
Plus, hotel concierge services are key for making plans in countries where you don't speak the languages. Concierges at top-end hotels are awesome.
Why would I think that at any point in time an adult could take one month off and also spend one month's worth of pre-tax salary easily?
Ever been to Winnipeg?
i just looked and unless you found something cheaper a long time ago, the plane alone is 800-900 bucks. i have no idea what you are doing for a place to stay, but quito doesn't look cheap and i am not even counting food. and if you are leaving quito, the rentacars are expensive unless you plan on using local buses or hitchhiking somewheres.
where do you get that kind of $$$ on a grad student salary? of course i don't know how much you get paid for being a grad student in your department, but you already got to pay for housing and food in NYC and i don't know how you do THAT unless you are living in some really small place with a lot of other people
I'm a teacher, too. I teach part time and I study part time. I live in a nice apt with two roommates, two bathrooms, balcony, in Manhattan. I'll also be done with grad school in a month and working more.
Look, the entire trip, including everything, is about 1700 if I want to shop (which I don't but I bring enough in case it happens). That includes, airfare, the jungle tour, lodging, spending money, etc.
I'm good at planning ahead, I saved my money since December.
It's a bit of an initial investment but a camping trip is a great family activity. When I was a kid my parents took us on month+ long camping trips every other summer. Toronto to BC and back (though we did stay in a hotel for one night in Duluth, we felt like kings!), and down to the Atlantic Ocean a few times. After you pay for your camper (ours was just a rusty old thing we dragged behind the car that folded out) the added costs are pretty low. Canadian National Parks were (are?) free to stay in, I'm not sure how it's done in the US. My parents still do almost all their traveling with a pull-out tent trailer they carry behind the car (except when they go to Europe). Obviously not everyone can afford to travel (not least of which is having a job where you can take a month+ off to take your kids around. Luckily my dad was a teacher).
Very debatable. You get steered to tourist restaurants (and there's generally a quid pro quo relationship there).
1. Camping equipment isn't that expensive.
2. You can re-use the camping equipment.
3. Camping today offers roughly the same amenities as a roadside motel 40 years ago. The extra $20.00 per night for staying at a motel isn't lining anyone's pockets--it's just going towards bare essentials.
Belize is a great, cheap and fun travel destination. It's roughly $500.00 from most US gateways, everyone speaks English and is very safe.
They can't afford the time off from work, first of all.
I suppose you think this is a telling point against what I've been saying.
Secondly, median family income is what you want to go with, which is ~$50K, since traveling alone, by car is hugely inefficient.
So how many other things do you want to alter in my original scenario in order to prove your point? Is maximum "efficiency" now one of the required rules of vacations?
In any case, travel in general is far cheaper than it was, so I don't see why it matters if one particular trip is more expensive.
No, SOME types of travel are cheaper: Air fares (when they're on sale) and Chinese buses, to be specific. That is not the sort of travel I was describing before the discussion got sidetracked into smartphones and mooching off friends.
For my grandparents and great aunts and uncles generation (born ~1912-24), it was hugely common for a middle class person never to set foot on an airplane, and never to leave the US.
That entire generation on my Mom's side didn't count one airplane trip between them, and they may have visited Canada, by car, once in their lives. Vacation was two week at the Jersey Shore on in the Adirondacks.
Snapper, that was your parents' choice, because if they could have afforded a two week beach or mountain vacation, they could have afforded to fly. Two weeks at the beach or in the mountains was not something that was within the reach of median income families back then---their beach of choice back then was Jones or Coney.
Today middle class people routinely fly all over the country, to the Caribbean, to Europe, etc., etc.
If median income people "routinely fly all over the country, to the Caribbean, to Europe, etc., etc.", I'd love to see their tax returns. Your concept of "middle class" has little to do with the median income level. It seems to take in people like yourself with six figure incomes but not people who actually have incomes in the 50th percentile.
FYI the cheapest 2 week trip to France (incl. airfare & hotel) listed on Expedia during the Summer (June 25 - July 9) is $7108 for two adults, NOT including transportation and meals once you arrive. That's very affordable for a family with our median household income of just under $49,000. Of course if you want to put you and your wife up in youth hostels, you can probably save some money that way, or maybe you and the Mrs. can take off two weeks in the offseason.
(EDIT: I'm not sure what Blastin's actual income is, but I do know that most people's idea of a vacation doesn't consist of flying into an Ecuadorian jungle for a few days and then returning back home. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but all it proves is that different people have different ideas of a vacation.)
I used to really cheap out and stay at shared room hostels (which kind of inspired me to spend 95% of my waking hours out and about in the place I'm in.) I spoil myself a bit now and usually try to get a private room, or more often shared with the people I'm travelin with. A typical day is up at 8-9 for the complimentary breakfast, exploring/wandering until lunch, more exploring/wandering, a snack, then drink until I magically end up where I started. I usually try to see the sights, but walking aimlessly forms a massive part of my tourist itenerary. When I'm in a new city I estimate I probably walk around for an average of 8+ hours a day.
(Note: not that I'm saying one way of vacationing is better than another. Far from it, I just think it's interesting that there are so many different styles of travel.)
Yep. He said he traveled with another person and between them they spent $500. An unmarried couple in 1969 made just under 8 grand. A white couple between the age of 25-29 in 2010 made about $61,000.
$500 is is 6.25% of 8 grand and 6.25% of $61,000 is $3812.5 which would is $610 in 1969 dollars. A 22% increase in available dollars*.
*To make it more accurate one would need to account for the tax rates as well.
It's an 11 day vacation, and the jungle is the middle 4 days.
And yes, if I wanted to go live in luxury, it would be more expensive, but if all I want to do is relax I just stay the hell home. When I go someplace I want to do something I can't do at home.
When I am older and presumably have a spouse and we want to go enjoy a city while staying in the nicest spots, we will. But I'm 25 and I want to see ####### anacondas.
That just seems insane. I know that as a grad student my idea of travel is probably a bit more frugal than the average, but I've twice done long trips across Europe (one for 5 weeks, another for 4). Total expenses for the flights, hotels, food, drink, train tickets between usually around 10 European cities per trip came out well under $3000 both times. To be mroe accurate include the other person I was travelling with both times and I guess $5000-5500 isn't too far off your quoted figure. But that's also for double the time and getting to see some combination of Scotland/England/France/Belgium/Germany/Switzerland/Italy/Spain. Just as a note on how ridiculously cheap travel within Europe is. Spain was actually tacked on as an emergency addition while we were already in Europe. Had a spare weekend with no plans, and just popped on to RyanAir.com to see where the cheap flights were. £7 UK to Seville.
Well, yeah. Just because you did something when you were young and didn't have a career does that mean every single adult in America should be able to replicate that experience nowadays. Most 35 year olds in 1969 couldn't take a month off of work and spend a month's worth of salary on a vacation. There is a reason travel like that is done by the young and without careers.
But I will say this, nowadays I can take a 1 or 2 week at a time vacation and I'll still draw a salary and that is thanks to the career I decided to have instead of backpacking through Europe for a decade.
Yeah, you can get a lot cheaper than that, I'm pretty sure. $1.2k each for flights on the dates you mention (Delta from New York to Paris), then you need to shop around for deals on hotels/B&Bs;, but if you're willing to put in the research, very do-able. Especially if you're content to get around the country by train rather than car (incredibly cheap if you book ahead), and then use local transport once you're at your destination.
So it's $2.4k for flights, maybe another $100/night for hotels (higher in Paris, but you can cut costs elsewhere), then throw in $50/day for transport, $75/day for meals and $25/day walking-around money. I make that $5900 for both if you book far enough in advance. If you want to buy tacky souvenirs, though, I guess that's extra, and more than 2-3 days in Paris might unbalance the budget. But I reckon you can get safe 3* for that kind of cash, and get a couple decent meals too.
I have a career! But you're right, I couldn't go for a month. I get a two week break and that's what I'm using (and only using 11 days so as not to be exhausted on my return to work).
Gotta agree with snapper on this one - a concierge in our honeymoon in Brussels found us a restaurant that was simply out of this world
Concierges seem like one of those things made irrelevant by Chowhound. I would never take some shmo's restaurant rec when I could get a variety of opinions from CHers.
Well, the problem is that you are picking exact dates. For instance from 6/1 to 6/14 you can go from DC to Paris for $4,830 (including taxes and fees) Or you can go for as little as $4,000 if you want to be just outside of Paris. The absolute cheapest trip would be $3,000 for two to Paris 10 miles out of city center.
Take your trip on September 1st and you'll have a ton of options at above and below $3,000.
People of median income (50K) fly all over the country. They fly to the Caribbean, they fly to Europe if they want to. Two years ago, flights to London and Paris were $500 per person. They're much more expensive now, due to the rising cost of jet fuel.
Really? Paris in the summer? No. If you make 50K you don't go to Paris in the summer.
Airline flight costs have fallen 44% in real terms since deregulation. I can't find a cite for the cost of DC-Paris, but I'm certain that it was more expensive in real dollars than it is today (roughly $1,000.). For flight costs to be equivalent, according to a CPI calculator, the cost of a flight would have had to be $137.50 in 1965 to be as cheap as it is today.
edit:
I lol'd.
Um, what? I didn't crash with strangers. I crashed with friends.
The reason this would not have been available in 1969 is: 1) I wouldn't have known people in 100 cities around the country in the first place, 2) even if I did know them, it would be incredibly difficult to keep in touch over the years due to lack of convenient communication technology, 3) even if I did feel reasonably close to the same set of people it just would be hard to actually communicate my desire to stay with them. Thanks to Facebook, I could just post a general comment like 'driving across the US. If you are anywhere between New Hampshire, Atlanta, Houston, and the Bay Area let me know if I can spend a night at your place.'
In this thread you seem very dismissive of the very concept of reasonably cheap travel in the 21st century, despite a number of folks providing very clear examples of actually having engaged in it. It's strange. For example:
That's crazy expensive. Like Greg, I took a whirlwind month-long trip to Europe and the whole thing (including tickets, food, lodging, Europass, etc.) cost about $2000. Now, this was back when the dollar was pretty strong compared to Euro, and when plane tickets were cheaper. But still, I am confident I could do it again for $3500 without too much trouble. It did include staying in some hostels, but it also included a nice little hotel here and there.
Mathematician Stephen Smale got his grant revoked when he said he had done his best work "on the beaches of Rio". So it probably helps to be a discrete mathematician.
Funny. I once won a semester long dissertation fellowship that paid a full stipend with no teaching required. I then got offered a visiting job at a prestigious liberal arts college. I took the job even though it meant violating the terms of my fellowship (no work except research/writing). I didn't get caught, banked the extra pay, and, fitting for this thread, used some of the money to take my wife to Paris for her 30th birthday.
It would be a happier story, but I still haven't finished my dissertation. This summer=dissertation summer.
Oh, man. I'm getting hungry thinking about it right now. (It was Italian, in case you couldn't tell from the name . . .)
But the comment then reminded me of Belgo's in London. Not so much the food as the beer menu; I should not be thinking about this stuff when I've just eaten an excellent home-cooked meal.
Anyway, I highly recommend apartment rentals for even weekly stays. Live like a Parisian (who doesn't work)!
But the comment then reminded me of Belgo's in London. Not so much the food as the beer menu; I should not be thinking about this stuff when I've just eaten an excellent home-cooked meal.
Those Belgian beers really knock you on your ass, don't they. One Duvel at a sidewalk cafe in Bruges more or less ruined me for sightseeing the rest of the day.
Depends on your tastes and what you are willing to risk. Most concierges are going to steer you towards pretty safe neighborhoods and guide you to them in a safeway. Going into an unknown city and only using Chowhound to make your picks can lead to some "interesting" experiences. That isn't to say one shouldn't use Chowhound.
You can see why the Europeans are so much more disciplined at drinking slowly, and only with meals. Only really becoming aware of how good beer can be over the last 5 years or so, I've been pleasantly surprised how many pubs near me stock some interesting ales. Even a pretty anonymous cornershop in a so-so neighborhood of SE London turned out to have two shelves of quirky stuff.
Also, www.crackedkettle.com looks excellent, but has been 'down for maintenance' for a worrying length of time.
Hang on: You flew to Paris via Moscow and it was economy class on Aeroflot?!? Was that flight really the cheapest you could find or was Dushanbe your point of departure?
edit: the service was what you would expect: a combination of brusque, stern looking matrons and taciturn, smoking hot Ukrainian girls. But they have cut down on their drunk pilot problems, and for the most part it was a pretty average flight experience, though without the personal entertainment systems most big airlines have now.
And kids no longer get to fly (the plane) for free, right?
$1700 x 5 = $8500 for my family which is more than gas + electric. It's a fortune. And, no offense, but spending 11 days in a jungle with insects and snakes and without toilets or showers with a bunch of people who also are without toilets or showers - and i have NO idea what you are going to get to eat in the jungle - well, we just have very different idea of what "vacation" actually IS.
gregUK
we can't spend a month driving around - he doesn't get a month off. also, sleeping with my kids in a small cramped camper or tent for 1 month straight is NOT my idea of vacation. checking out campgrounds, i see they have bathrooms and pay showers. you also have a lot more money than we do because $5500 bucks a month for 2 people, which is $13,000+ for 5, is not a small sum of money - not sure where exactly you put your wife and 3 kids neither.
it would take a minimum of 6G for us to just FLY into france. i can't even begin to imagine how expensive it would be to try to feed 4 males - and my youngest already eats like a teenager. they aren't going to agree to eat just bread and whatever a substitute for cheese is (because 3 of em can't eat
cheese) and hotels for 5? that cost is gonna be???
- and we are going to explain exactly what to CPS/school - we pulled them out of skool to go traveling in september for 2 weeks because it is cheaper?
- yes i suppose we COULD dump them off with various relatives for a few weeks and hope that shtt doesn't happen
i know it is very very hard for you to understand this, but 15 large for a 2 week vacation is a fortune to a whole lot of families - like mine. especially if we are going to a place where we don't speak the language and people don't like us because of where we grew up. and they think americans are rude? coming up to a stranger and announcing - i hate george bush - like they want to pick a fight for??? i wouldn't never think of going up to some foreigner and telling them right off to their face that i hate some politician in their country - or any part of their country.
Internationally Aeroflot has always had a good safety standard, all the horror stories are from domestic flights. Just in case somebody is afraid of getting a drunken crew who forgot the maps.
It's REALLY difficult to eat an affordable meal in Paris at dinner time, but this comes close.
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187147-d719090-Reviews-Le_Comptoir_du_Relais-Paris_Ile_de_France.html
The disaster that I had referred to above was an international flight.
Ha, we take the "not allowed to work" stipulations of grants a bit differently. Since I am uber-lazy I use it as an excuse to do nothing all day and not feel guilty. Though I still also manage to take long trips every year...huzzah for living in Europe!
Someone didn't read what I said. It's four days in the jungle, 7 days in the city. And there are toilets and showers. And there is a bar and meals (mostly fruit-based, which is fine for me, but fish too, it being a big river and all).
And yeah... this is a trip I'm taking now because I can.
Going to an entirely new continent for 11 days (only 4 in the jungle, in a lodge, with a bed, and a mosquito net, because I am not dumb) for 1700 isn't so bad. But of course I wouldn't bring young children. The lodge doesn't let you because you have to hike.
We did go to Zambia when my sister was 9 but we knew the family that owned that place so we didn't have to pay nearly as much. Anyway, I'm paying for this one myself.
As I said above, I'm 25 and I go on vacations for new experiences, not to relax. I can relax in my chair in my room with a book. Or in the park.
The French have always been nice to me.
I have never pretended Paris was cheap though. Paris is $$$$$$.
Yeah I mean just some random jerks around but I haven't found any place where, if I was kind, people were just generally awful.
Oh, I've heard people complain about Bush, but it wasn't random, we had already been talking politics, and we had gotten to a point where we could chat about leaders.
Probably the happiest night of my life was spent in a little pub in Antwerp. The owner seemingly went through his entire roster of beers and whenever he hit on one I hadn't had in Canada he gave me a free one. At one point he was describing the aging process of trappist beers and said "here I'll show you". He gets me a fresh Chimay, and a Chimay he's had in his cellar for 7 years to taste the difference. It was quite staggering how strong the Chimay was. I also got a handy lesson in Belgian pub etiquette. When someone buys a round for the bar (which is apparently every 5 minutes), if you already have a hefty pint, you put your coaster on top of your glass and get the bartender to sign it. It now acts as a voucher for a pint at any point in the future at that pub. I mentioned I was going to Ghent the next day and one of the regulars handed me a bunch of coasters out of his pocket good for some pints at recommended pubs there.
Yeah, obviously travelling as a single student is a lot easier than with a family. As I said, I got a bit lucky as my dad was a teacher and got months off at a time. You can take shorter trips. I've moved back and forth between Toronto and Saskatchewn a few times. My parents and I would often go on re-location camping trips when we did that. If you push it you can do the return trip in under a week. The trip to New Brunswick also could be a week-long one, or a leisurely two week trip.
As for whether it's a fun vacation or not...to each his/her own. I can see how some people wouldn't love it. I think I also lucked out in that Canada has some beautiful parks and forests to hang out in. My brother and I certainly loved it, I'm sure it wasn't all a bed of roses but my parents seemed to enjoy it as well (they kept driving us around every year after all!...and they've kept up the camping trips with just the two of them now that they've retired).
I certainly wouldn't want to suggest there's a one-size-fits all strategy to family vacations. I can only imagine what parents have to go through to plan and execute one. Just saying what worked for us.
Yep. We went camping too but not for a month. A week or so.
We went whitewater rafting, hiking, and this is all from a family entirely based in giant cities.
But it's not for everyone.
I'm not really sure I understand BBC's points here. I'm very clearly stating I'm a single 25 year old who likes adventures and my original point was that even those adventures that aren't exactly luxurious would not have been possible 30 years ago at my level of income etc.
And differently families like different things, and those with more flexibility for one reason or another (which can be financial or just the nature of one's career) can do different things. And some folks don't like the jungle or the forest. I'm bigger on the jungle than the forest, but I also love big cities, so my trip is new big city, new continent, and jungle. Yay.
bbc, actually, I was responding to a post which was planning a holiday for 2 adults only, so in that context I think my advice was sound. (I also included the qualifier "if you can")
Having children with you massively complicates and increases the cost, I agree. (EDIT - it probably also makes some awesome memories, but that's only if you can get it organised in the first place.) The wife and I don't have children, and many of our friends don't, but many of our friends do. My post is really only relevant to the first group.
As a matter of information, in the UK there has been a trend of parents taking their kids out of school for precisely the reason you mention. I think that's pretty silly, myself, but it does happen, and the government has started to look at ways to punish parents who do this.
I'm not being dismissive of it. All I've been saying is that it's not what my GF and I did in 1969: Spending a month traveling cross-country via (among other places) Boston, Montreal, Chicago, Madison, the Badlands, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Ritzville (WA) and Seattle, winding up in Berkeley, staying in motels until arriving in Berkeley to stay with a college friend for a month. It cost us $500, or about $100 a day in 2012 dollars, and I seriously doubt that two people could do that today without either staying with friends or skipping the ballgames that we went to in Boston, Montreal (yes, I know) and Chicago. They could come closer with advance planning, but if we'd wanted to do nothing but cut our expenses we could've saved a lot of that ourselves by staying with friends or not going to restaurants for every meal.
Whether or not the thrill of having your smartphone and your wi-fi connection with you wherever you go beats going to ballgames and just enjoying the Badlands and Montana skies at night is a matter of personal preference, and if I (or my wife and I) decided to do the cross-country bit we'd obviously do it differently and sleep under better conditions. But it'd cost us more to do it, and that's all I'm saying.
FYI the cheapest 2 week trip to France (incl. airfare & hotel) listed on Expedia during the Summer (June 25 - July 9) is $7108 for two adults, NOT including transportation and meals once you arrive.
That's crazy expensive. Like Greg, I took a whirlwind month-long trip to Europe and the whole thing (including tickets, food, lodging, Europass, etc.) cost about $2000. Now, this was back when the dollar was pretty strong compared to Euro, and when plane tickets were cheaper. But still, I am confident I could do it again for $3500 without too much trouble. It did include staying in some hostels, but it also included a nice little hotel here and there.
Yes, try searching on one of those travel sites today, with today's exchange rates and with real hotels instead of hostels. IOW compare apples to apples and not to raisins. Put in Summer dates to France, not Winter dates in Budapest.
And BTW those high plane fares of yore were only half of the story, since everything else in Europe BITD was a lot cheaper than it was back here. If you wanted to see Europe on the cheap, there were bestselling guide books like Frommer's Europe on Five Dollars a Day to guide you through. It's not as if the style of travel that you're describing is exactly a 21st century invention. There have always been ways to see the world cheaply if you had the time to do it.
not sure how you are getting showers and toilets in the jungle, or what exactly you are sleeping on/in, but have a good time.
and the rest of all yall,
families making 50K/year are not spending $6000+ on vacations to europe, 1 week or 2 weks or 4 weeks. like i keep saying, the plane fare for 5 people alone is gonna be thousands and youth hostels are not gonna allow kids and i am not going to stay anywhere i don't have a bathroom or shower and me sharing it with 25 strangers is not happening.
fact is that you guys have a lot of money, or are single/kidless or are just living high on debt.
Sleeping on a bed.
I've taken hot showers in the jungle before, in 01, and in 10. They've got this er'where now. I'm roughing it compared to luxury, but not really.
But yes, single/kidless. And taking advantage.
That's a good perspective. When I was 25, I could have easily gotten from here (DC) to California and back without spending a dime on transportation, and seen a hell of a lot more of "the real America" while doing it than I could have done on Southwest Airlines while plugged into a smartphone. The scare stories put the kibosh on that particular mode of transportation, but it was used by many millions of people BITD. Not sure if it's still done much in Europe---anyone know about that.
No direct experience, but it's very unlikely based on where I've been. I'd chance it in a few countries, but unfortunately the countries with the natives probably best-suited to it in terms of temperament are probably also the nations with a heavy bike culture. I'm thinking of the Dutch here.
I think the only time I've seen hitchhiking in Europe, even as a concept, is Alexis Kanner at the end of 'The Prisoner'.
I'm not an expert, but the line's getting a bit blurry I think. I've stayed at "hostels" that I would have difficulty differentiating from hotels. There's the option of the shared 4 person room, but also the option for a private room, with a TV and a fridge.
Last year I planned out a month-long Europe trip in a couple hours on google. Glasgow, Seville, London, Antwerp, Zurich, Milan, Florence, Venice. I think most rooms were in the $25-30 range and only Antwerp and Venice were shared accomadation. Hell, Milan turned out to actually be an apartment. Which saved a ton of money on dinners.
I guess your point is just that you had a very specific kind of vacation in 1969 and those precise events cannot be reproduced now. Which is probably true, but is the difference all that significant? My parents take road trips all the time (whether in Canada or with a rented car in Europe) and their policy is to drive until my dad is tired and then find a place to stop, which sounds roughly like your 1969 trip. I don't really know their budget, but let's just say when it comes to frugality the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree. Cheap, enjoyable travel has always been an option. I'm sure things have changed, but in the grand scheme of things how much?
Travel 3,500 miles, at 35 MPG, at $4.15 per gallon: $415
Leaves $1,210 for everthing else or $40 a day. Tight but certainly doable. Or we can use the $4,000 number that more closely resembles the % of income dedicated to the 1969 trip which would leave $2,085 and $70 a day left over for everything else. Could you go to a major league ballpark at every single major city and sit in boxed seats? No but you could go to minor league games and buy the occasional cheap seat to a major league game. Now you won't want to hear this but the magic smartphone fairy would help you do this thanks to Stubhub being online.
This "cheaper how"? I will have to dispute. We grew up with three kids and one parent working a normal not-great rural public school teaching job and for vacationing, camping was absolutely, positively cheaper, which was expressly why we did it. I remember the conversations my parents had on this very topic. Of course you have to pay for a campground but even then it was absolutely cheaper than motels - talking here late 70s/early 80s. I think probably the equipment has gone up, but now the campgrounds are way cheaper as hotels and motels have seemingly increased in price quite a bit. (And as was already mentioned, you can re-use the equipment.)
Oddly enough I sort of did this. My month-long Europe trip last year was with an ex-girlfriend. (EDIT: as in, ex at the time).
Yeah. The hostel I'm staying in in Ecuador is free wifi, TV, has a bar....
I took an ex-at-the-time trip to Vietnam and Cambodia in 09 (when I was living in Korea). Fun times. My dad popped through too.
Although you are a bit more adventerous in your travels. The height of my thrills usually come from finding a door that Catherine de Medici possibly walked through one day. No anacondas for me.
EDIT: Though Lassus in 393 sounds exactly like me as well. However, I seem to recall reading that he can sing, so he can't be me.
But I like to emotionally challenge myself, as well as physically. If all I want is a break, yeah, I can go to Jones Beach and sit.
EDIT: Which is to say that I spend a lot of my time in the jungle being touched by a leaf and going WHAT WAS THAT.
huhuhhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh
As a preface, I realize this goes against all I've said so far about my parent's budget-concious holidaying...but here goes.
A few years ago my parents got peer-pressured into a group vacation with some of their friends (who are of the "go big or go home" school of vacations) wherein about 12 people pooled money to rent out a villa in Provence for 2 weeks. Since I had just finished my BA and wasn't doing anything my parents asked if I wanted to come along. It was actually a pretty big estate with these terraced groves. And on one terrace was a pool. One day as I was swimming I surfaced and noticed a scorpion floating right near my face. After that I stopped wearing sandals outdoors.
On another note, my friend lived in Australia for a year* and from his stories of the creepy-crallers that saunter around that place I never, ever want to go to Australia.
*Speaking of travel stories...he's spent the last three years or so wandering from Arctic Canada to Australia and all points inbetween, and is coming home to Alberta this summer to get married. The girl is an Australian he met in Scotland while they were both doing the professional traveller thing, and they've been globe wandering together for almost two years since.
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