I was looking at some old travel books, and it seems that travel was a lot more formal in the old days. For example, Egypt in 1935-tourists wore white suits, and were escorted by guides. Nowadays, western tourists go about dressed in cutoffs and sneakers -hardly a "classy"image.
Of course, people are less formal today-but don’t local people appreciate a little respect from visitors? If I were the spirit of old king Tutankhamen, I’d appreciate it if people showed some respect.
The only people who could afford trips like that until very recently were very, very rich. Your average American wasn’t popping off to wander around the pyramids in 1935.
Well, you could argue that going round dressed in formal attire and interacting with the natives as little as possible (except the “guide”) is no more respectful than today’s tourism.
I do have a little hankering for the “golden age of travel”, though, when flying seemed like a glamorous, jet-set thing to do, and people got dressed up for the occasion and sipped cocktails at 30,000 feet, served to them by mini-skirted stewardesses (no “flight attendants” in those days!), rather than today’s flying experience, which is like going on a bus only with much longer queues and slightly smaller seats.
Having said that, if today’s travel were like that, I wouldn’t be one of the people doing it. 
Edit: my definition of “golden age” is rather different from the OP’s, at least in terms of mini-skirts. I guess 1950s and 1960s, and maybe even into the 1970s, counts, before package holidays took over.
Local people still appreciate respect. It’s just that it’s now judged by your actions, not your clothes.
Its also judged by your clothes. Respect includes dressing in accordance with local standards.
Here’s a photo of the 1949 All-Star Game in Brooklyn. Notice that nearly every man in the crowd is wearing a tie, and some of them are even wearing suit coats.
At a baseball game.
In the summer.
In the daytime.
People wore suits when they traveled because people wore suits. It didn’t have anything to do with respect any more than our wearing jeans has anything to do with working on a ranch.
Hardly. My hunting yielded nothing when I failed to hit the buffalo, and my daughter died of dysentery.
Yeah, and half my oxen died when I tried to ford the river!
I just reserved a couple of books on dining in the railroad cars in days past, including recipes and menues. What fun it must have been to board the Orange Blossom Special in Boston, get off in Florida, and have gourmet meals whipped up by talented chefs all the way! I suppose now you get pre-made sandwiches and little bags of chips, if anything.
Here is a really cool website that has all sorts of documents related to steamship travel from the 1850’s to the 1950’s. You can see that in the late 20’s it cost around $200 for one-way, 3rd class passage from Europe to the US. There are a number of ways you can calculate the value of that much money in today’s currency, but suffice it to say it cost the equivalent of a few thousand dollars to cross the Atlantic back then, if you were willing to travel in steerage. Passage would probably take about a week. So right there you’d have to shell out $5,000-10,000 per person, and take 2 weeks off from work, just to get to Europe and back. Seeing the pyramids would require a month’s vacation and thousands of dollars more.
Air travel in the pre-jet age was a similar story. Planes were small and noisy, and comparatively slow with short ranges. Capacity was limited. The engines weren’t as reliable, so delays would be common. They couldn’t fly above the weather, so flights were very rough. They were also very expensive. A round-trip Pan-Am clipper flight from Miami to Rio cost $665 (between $10,000 and $20,000 in today’s money) in 1941, and took about 5 days each way.
Nowadays you can travel from NYC to Southampton on the Queen Mary II in comparative luxury for about $1000. You can easily find roundtrip airfare across the Atlantic for ~$1000, less if you’re willing to scrounge for a bargain. Miami to Rio de Janeiro costs about $1,000 RT as well, and you’ll get there in a day. So the unwashed masses are significantly better off today: we can actually afford to travel the world, and can get there, have some fun, and get home in a two-week vacation.
To compare the “golden age” of travel with today, you really have to compare travel then with 1st-class travel now.
Are you old enough to remember a summer vacation in a station wagon that didn’t have air conditioning?
If you think travel was better when men wore suits, I don’t think anything is stopping you from wearing one.
Heh! Through the Arizona desert, too! Ya roll down the windows, munch on crushed ice, keep a damp towel on your lap, and apply “zen” techniques to cope.
Nowadays, I have a car with air conditioning – and don’t use it!
(Think of it as a mobile sweat lodge!)
Oh, true, but I meant that wearing a fancy western-style suit is not a factor.
Damned right I did. I never saw an air-conditioned car of any stripe until 1961 when I visited my kid brother who was stationed at an air base in western Louisiana. That was by far the furthest I had ever traveled (from Philadelphia) and it was a hellish 48 hours by bus. Now the hardest part is getting through airport security and hoping your bags don’t disappear. In three days I will be traveling through Denver and praying my bags make it too.
Pre-car-airconditioner days - the parents of a friend of mine owned a motel in Arizona.
He recalls that people would rent the rooms and sleep by day, and then travel at night when it was “cooler”.
Lots of people talk about how cool it was to fly back then, with real silverware and plates, real food to put on the plates, and great service all around while flying. But as mentioned, the planes were really loud, they vibrated, shook horribly in storms, stunk of oil and gas and it cost a fortune to go anywhere and could take days to get from point A to point Z.
Selective memory always makes the good old days glorious.
Not “gourmet meals whipped up by talented chefs” anymore, but not merely “sandwiches and little bags of chips, if anything” either. :rolleyes:
Here are the dining-car menus for the various Amtrak long-distance trains. Yes, there are (pre-made) sandwiches with potato chips in there, especially in the lunch menu. There’s also seafood, chicken, pasta, and steak dishes, with a side of vegetables, a salad and roll.
My fantasy was always travelling around the world in luxury, on a Zeppelin in 1935.
'Course, all those guys likely just came from their white-collar office jobs.
By far the most pleasant plane trip I ever made was in 1951, in a Boeing Stratoliner between Seattle and Minneapolis. Took 8 hours, but in solid comfort. And I don’t remember it being a bit rough or noisy. Don’t remember what the tickets cost, but it couldn’t have been too outlandish.
If it were available today I would choose it in a heartbeat over the horrible sardine tubes we have now.