Or buy a van conversion. Ours. They are small enough to travel and park most anywhere a car can, and have the amenities of a larger RV, though in smaller scale. If you were on an extended stay and didn’t want to unhook shore power every day, you could also tow a car.
As for travel: I’ve mentioned before that I traveled extensively during my working life, so there’s really no thrill in air travel for me. I fly out to see my kids/grandkids once a year, and once in a while we take a trip out to where my wife was originally from (this year, for example). But anything requiring flying overseas is very low on my want list. I was really hoping someone would have invented teleportation by now.
I travel so I can hike, bike, and ski in some amazing places. The flying and logistics, while important, are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. We’re doing more difficult trips now while we are physically able, and as we slow down into retirement there are still lots of less extreme trips we can take. And it’s nice to combine the adventure travel with a little civilization in a wonderful city or at a wonderful event before heading home.
I haven’t been more than a two hours’ drive away from my apartment in over ten years. I just don’t care about the world out there. Why should I? I have made my apartment into a place I enjoy being in. Why should I leave? The sights? Don’t care. I can look at pictures if I want to, but I don’t want to. Hiking? Camping? How terribly unpleasant. Visiting family? Most of it lives here; the rest come to me.
There is literally no reason for me to go anywhere else.
I love all kinds of travel; happy reasons and sad, scheduled or “just-do-its”, long or short. What I hate is the coming home part. If I had unlimited money I would probably do a free-form trip that lasted until my death. And then have someone else ship me home. At that point I probably won’t care.
I’m not a big fan of the planning for travel, it stresses me out, it’s gotten better but when the kids were little it was a PITA planning their suitcases, travel games, snack attacks, getting the pets ready to be left alone or bring in a pet sitter. Making sure mail and bills would not be forgotten, buttoning up the house, leave a light on, (did I remember to shut off coffee pot?). I would overpack, overstress and overspend getting ready to travel. BUT once we left the house and we’re on our way, nothing could bring me down, other than a ginormous traffic jam one hour from our destination after a 9 hour day on the road. I still stress a bit before travelling, overthinking everything as the departure date creeps closer and closer. But again once I’m on my way excitement settles in and I’m goofy happy with the idea of leaving town and just going with the flow and enjoying every moment (that is once I leave the plane, I’m a white knuckle, deep breather, focus on solitaire only kind of air traveler)
Set me up in a conversion van, I would love to take extended trips throughout the continent.
The only kind of traveling I enjoy is on my feet or on a horse, either alone or in the company of a very few friends or beloved relations. Oh, I like bicycling, but you usually have to be around cars which ruins everything. The only thing worse than car travel is plane travel, which I loathe in every possible aspect.
The only reason I travel at all is because my friends won’t always come to me, and some live very far away.
I don’t like cities, people in any quantity over a dozen, or anything with a motor in it. I think the 19th century was my last chance at my kind of travel.
I also live on a lovely secluded farm in one of the more beautiful places in the country, and do not feel restless.
I’ve had to travel quite a bit in my career, all over the US. So by this point I loathe the thought of travel. The things I like to do aren’t convenient or even available while traveling, and travel food inevitably makes me ill after only a few days, so the entire trip is miserable. Last work trip I just went to Kroger’s and made stuff to eat in the hotel room, which doesn’t make it a highlight, but at least it wasn’t diarrhea, constipation, or vomiting for once.
Fellow travelers make the airport, flight, and hotel less pleasant. And even traveling for pleasure, you end up wasting most of your time traveling, driving, and in the hotel… so you can spend a short amount of time at some scenic feature thronged with inconsiderate tourists. I was in Hangzhou a few years back, and we got to see Leifeng Pagoda which was interesting for about a half-hour. And overcrowded with tourists around the entire West Lake with gridlocked traffic day and night all through Hangzhou. Spent a lot of time in the lovely hotel room, sick after being adventurous eating interesting new foods. The most pleasant part of the trip was arriving back home.
So, yeah, not a big fan of travel. Other people want to travel, great for them, but they can shut their yap telling me how much I’d love traveling more or that I just haven’t been tot he wonderful destinations that they have been to.
As someone said, as a general rule, I don’t find the planning enjoyable. I can find it challenging to try to figure out what I want to do at the destination, given time and budget constraints.
-Too many of the major draws - the Louvre, the Sistine Chapel, etc - sound like freaking cattle drives. As though you have to plan it like a military campaign if you want to avoid being jammed elbow to asshole with a zillion other tourists.
-I’m not a tech lover, and time spent on the computer trying to figure out different hotels and other places’ websites isn’t how I like to spend my time. But I feel like if I DON’T do ENOUGH planning, I’ll miss something, spend too much money on the wrong things, etc.
-Often when I come home from a trip I think, “If I did that trip over, I’d do a whole lot differently.”
-And I do derive some comfort from knowing what my legal rights are, the language, the money, how my phone and insurance work…
-As a general rule, I abhor crowds and lines, and will go to pretty great lengths to avoid either.
Yeah, intellectually I see the appeal of placing myself somewhere that I am out of my element. But in reality, I have a hard time convincing myself to dedicate the time and money to do so. And I don’t find the activity itself sufficiently enjoyable.
I saw something the other day that really appealed to me. The Sunday car section mentioned a car that would fit a roof tent.
Flying really sucks, but I still enjoy traveling enough (for pleasure – I do not enjoy traveling for work at all) that it’s worth it. I find train travel – even on Amtrak – quite enjoyable, for the most part. Even the long 15 hour rides.
I’m torn. I’ve been to a lot of amazing places and seen some great things. It makes me sad to think I might not get to do them again.
On the other hand, during the journey to those amazing things, my anxieties are out of control. My husband is usually in a foul mood until we reach the destination. And while we’re away, I’m worried about my animals and children, and even work to some degree.
Given a reasonable budget, I’d be out on the road somewhere exploring, seeing new places and meeting new people as much as possible. While I’m very comfortable at home, I’m also bored of watching the same TV, driving the same streets, hiking and riding the same trails, shopping at the same stores, yadda yadda yadda. Now, not every day on the road is a great one, but overall they’re better than the static life of being at home.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness…" - Mark Twain
It does seem like anxiety and control issues are quite common in this thread.
The airlines are doing their best to make travelling as unpleasant as possible.
But I’ll never regret having seen Trafalgar Square or Westminster Cathedral or the Louvre or Venice or Florence or the Sistine Chapel. (I do prefer to travel in the off-seasons, but that’s hardly military-grade planning.)
These and a handful of other things are amazing things for human beings to have created. And, no, seeing a photograph of them isn’t anywhere near the same thing.
They show me that my city doesn’t have to be the drab, overcommercialized, bland, bureaucratic hellhole that it is, that life isn’t inevitable, that human beings are capable of creating great beauty, not just great atrocity. We’re capable of being better than we are, and going to places to see that really makes that apparent.
I think this is an important concept. Traveling and experiencing life in the flesh in places all over the world is an almost irreplaceable lesson in the variety of human life and society. The people I know who don’t travel tend to be the most rigid in their views on what’s good and what’s bad and how things are “supposed” to be. They also often are the ones who find it most difficult to really recognize people of all kinds as really being the same.
I enjoy travel as long as I can avoid flying. If I could afford first class air fare, that’d be OK, but being crammed into coach sucketh mightily.
I like to cruise, and I’ve taken some fun side trips in various ports. I’m OK with driving places as long as it’s not endless days on the road. I think I’d enjoy train travel. Bus tours, not so much. But I like going to new places and seeing new things.
Whereas I’ve seen a handful of things in my time (mostly the standard sightseeing sights around the west half of the US), and would be perfectly happy having just seen pictures. Or not even seeing the pictures. I mean, sure, the motorized animatronic dinosaurs at OMSI a few decades back were cool and all, but so is the book I was rereading at lunch today. Time well spent either way - so yeah, I’m good with the book.
I’m sorry that you hate where you live so much. Perhaps a potted plant would help? I don’t care for such things myself, but apparently mileages vary.
I did a lot of travelling around the US for work in the '00s and early '10s. Like on the road 20-28 days a month for about 10 years. I quit that job because I just got to the point where I hate, hate, hate travelling. Home is my happy place. I’m an aspie creature of routine, and when I’m travelling, I’m out of that routine and not happy.
My avatar will tell you that I spend about 20+ hours a week in airports, in flight, or traveling to/from airports. I’ve got status out the ying-yang (I had to get a spare ying-yang just to hold it all). There is no way I could live like I do if I hated travel. But there is travel and there is travel.
Most of mine is because I have to get from where ever I am to my destination. So, that kind is very utilitarian. The perks of status make it a tiny bit more enjoyable (just a tiny bit - airlines and hotels are fooling themselves about the marginal pleasures of upgrades to the regular commuter traveler).
My family really enjoys recreational travel, but it’s mostly about the destinations, not the traveling part. I wish we spent more time traveling and enjoying the journey - road trips and RVs and stuff like that, (“Hey, let’s stop and check this out!”) but I can’t seem to convince the others of the inherent pleasures in that.
But I know I am different than others in that many people really value home and routine. I need variety, and if I’m home too long I get itchy knowing there is a whole world out there to experience.
Well said. I too travel in the off-season (there were only like 15 people total in the Sistine Chapel in mid-December when we went!).
But there’s a lot of merit to traveling beyond just looking at the great sights- we recently had a week-long road trip to South Dakota to visit some friends, and it was a blast. With the exception of Mt. Rushmore (friends live in Rapid City), we didn’t see any ‘great sights’, but we saw a lot of interesting small-town America type stuff and a few things we didn’t expect to be nearly so cool as they were, like the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS and the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum in Cheyenne, WY.
Ultimately travel gets you outside your personal comfort zone- not necessarily physically, but mentally. You have to shop at different stores for different food, eat different food at different restaurants, see different stuff, etc… It both points out the differences between people in different places AND points out your similarities.
Mark Twain’s quote is dead-on. You can’t really travel much and not have your horizons and thoughts expanded.
Probably not. I’d be traveling pretty much by myself, and I’m not really up for wandering around strange places alone not knowing where to go or what to do.
This is why I actually like organized tours. I didn’t think I would, but I’ve found I really enjoy the kind of small group “adventure” tours offered by the likes of G Adventures. You end up traveling with a group of maybe 10-15 like minded people, and after the first few days you end up developing a sense of camaraderie with the group. And the guides often know some non-touristy places to take you. On one trip in Costa Rica one of the stops happened to be in the guide’s hometown, so he was like “Instead of going to a restaurant for dinner let’s go have a barbecue at my mom’s house”, which was an awesome opportunity to go interact with a local family and have some good food. And of course there’s the advantage of having a guide who speaks the local language.
And several people upthread said they don’t like the planning and logistics involved with travel – where to stay, how to get there, etc. A tour takes away all that hassle. You just book the tour, and all the lodging and transportation is taken care of by them. All you have to book is the tour and your flights. The only downside is that your schedule is set by someone else, so you can’t say sleep in one day if you want to.
