# where do you go for a geek vacation? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 2, 2009, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047 "2009-05-02T01:09:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/21 "2009-05-03T19:28:14Z")
Legoland in Denmark. London Science Museum to view the working replica Difference Engine. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2009, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/22 "2009-05-03T19:40:24Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > Las Vegas just keeps coming up, doesn’t it? Who’d have thought. Does it get to be the geek capital of the US? Come for the geekiness, stay for the hookers and gambling? It does seem an odd mix. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2009, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/23 "2009-05-03T19:51:42Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The Galileo museum in Venice was pretty cool Er, Florence. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/24 "2009-05-03T19:55:23Z")
I went to the National Cryptologic Museum by NSA HQ when I was in DC a few years back: [http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic\_heritage/museum/index.shtml](http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/index.shtml) Very cool place and the museum docents were fun to talk to since they’re former spooks. I met one of the guys who works on a railroad museum out here in California where you can actually drive the locomotives! I’m thinking of taking my dad for a surprise birthday present (he’s an engineer, albeit of the non-train variety). [http://wplives.org/ral.html](http://wplives.org/ral.html) ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2009, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/25 "2009-05-03T22:59:58Z")
The Dayton, Ohio amateur radio festival: > **[Home - Hamvention](https://hamvention.org/)** > > \[vc\_row type=”in\_container” full\_screen\_row\_position=”middle” column\_margin=”default” column\_direction=”default” column\_direction\_tablet=”default” column\_direction\_phone=”default” scene\_position=”center” text\_color=”dark” text\_align=”left”... It’s coming up in just 2 weeks!! ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/26 "2009-05-04T00:48:47Z")
Man. I think this is going to inspire me to take more vacations. I acrue it without using it much because I usually can’t think of anywhere I’d particularly like to go. These suggestions are inspiring. ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/27 "2009-05-04T02:14:26Z")
I think I just went on one. The gentleman and I spent last weekend at [Mind Games](http://mindgames.us.mensa.org//AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home10), a weekend-long event during which members of Mensa test board games and give five of them the Mensa Select seal. What may make it even geekier is last weekend was our first anniversary. We had a blast playing some good and not-so-good games with a couple of hundred like-minded people, including some good friends. On our last vacation we visited [Cranbrook Institute of Science](http://science.cranbrook.edu/) and our first Valentine’s Day was spent at the [Carnegie Science Center](http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/) here in town. He’s an engineer; I’m a programmer; we may be geeks, but we’re happy ones! ---
**Author:** ![Locrian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/locrian/32/14146_2.png) [@Locrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Locrian)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/28 "2009-05-04T03:39:46Z")
My DREAM geek vacation is Oak Island. [(From the master)](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/614/whats-the-scoop-on-the-mysterious-buried-treasure-at-oak-island) Always put it at the top of my nerd/geek list. Bonus: Condos are cheap to rent! ---
**Author:** ![askeptic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb9ed0/32.png) [@askeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/askeptic)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/29 "2009-05-04T03:48:31Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > Geece. You bastard! I came in here to post that… ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/30 "2009-05-04T04:10:23Z")
Me too. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/31 "2009-05-04T04:32:00Z")
Silicon Valley and the Bay Area is clearly the best place for a geek vacation. We have [the Computer History Museum](http://www.computerhistory.org/), the [Intel museum](http://www.intel.com/museum/) in the lobby of the Noyce building in Santa Clara, (look up to the 6th floor and spend a moment of silence for a year of my career when I was enslaved there) and [the Tech Museum in San Jose](http://www.thetech.org/). In San Francisco we have [The Cable Car Museum](http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/info.html) which is free and awesome. All the cables for the cars go through here, and you can learn how they get fixed. Even cooler, on Pier 45, is the [MUSÉE MÉCANIQUE](http://www.museemechanique.org/news100103.html) with tons of coin operated machines you can put money in. ---
**Author:** ![Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/32 "2009-05-04T05:10:29Z")
[The museum of Jurassic Technology](http://www.mjt.org/) in Los Angeles, and [Sir John Soane’s Museum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_John_Soane%27s_Museum) in London are both pretty awesome. Also, the [Huntington Library](http://www.huntington.org/), garden and tea room (in Pasadena, CA) was about the most geek fun I’ve had. But then I really like tea. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/33 "2009-05-04T13:17:04Z")
Astronomy geek fun: I went to [Kitt Peak](http://www.noao.edu/kpno/) near Tucson and [Lowell Observatory](http://www.lowell.edu/) in Flagstaff on a trip to Arizona. I also went to [Meteor Crater](http://www.meteorcrater.com/index.php) on that same trip. I’ve been to [Lick Observatory](http://www.ucolick.org/) near San Jose as well, and to [Griffith Observatory](http://www.griffithobs.org/) in LA. I’d like to go to [Palomar Observatory](http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/) and [Keck Observatory](http://www.keckobservatory.org/) some day. In England, there’s [Greenwich Observatory](http://www.nmm.ac.uk/places/royal-observatory/). Not only do they have cool exhibits there, you can also stand with one foot on either side of the Greenwich meridian- they have a line marked in the pavement for this purpose. While you’re there, you can also go to [Westminster Abbey](http://www.westminster-abbey.org/) to see Isaac Newton’s grave, as well as stuff of great interest to geeks interested in history or English royalty (am I the only astro geek interested in that stuff as well?). Prague is a good destination for astro geeks as well. There’s the famous [Astronomical Clock](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Astronomical_Clock), [Tycho Brahe’s tomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe#Death) and a [monument to Tycho and Kepler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler#Historical_and_cultural_legacy). If you’re Jewish or just interested in the Golem legend, the [synagogue where the remains of the Golem are supposedly in the attic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_New_Synagogue) is also in Prague. Scale models of the Solar System, with the size of the planets to the same scale as the distances, are also fun and geeky. I’ve been to the [Sagan Planet Walk in Ithaca, NY](http://www.sciencenter.org/saganpw/) and the one in [Boulder, Colorado](http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM5389). Don’t forget the [National Air and Space Museum](http://www.nasm.si.edu/) in Washington, DC and [Kennedy Space Center](http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/home/index.html) in Florida. I went to Australia in November of 2005. Seeing Southern Hemisphere stars was a large part of the purpose of that trip. We went to Alice Springs to get a good view of the Magellanic Clouds, and I got up before sunrise one morning to see the Southern Cross and Alpha and Beta Centauri (they weren’t up in the evening). This summer, we’re going on an eclipse tour to China to see the total solar eclipse in July. There’s [an observatory here in Pittsburgh](http://www.pitt.edu/~aobsvtry/), with lots of old telescopes, that I’ve been to. There’s also the [Carnegie Museum of Natural History](http://www.carnegiemnh.org/). I’ve been there, but not since they put up the new [T-Rex Vs T-Rex](http://www.carnegiemnh.org/dinosaurs/index.htm) exhibit. I have to go back sometime to see that. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/34 "2009-05-04T14:08:50Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > Come for the geekiness, stay for the hookers and gambling? It does seem an odd mix. I was hanging out at a local game store where Dave Arneson was a regular and we were taking a break from playtesting a game, and he was talking about how back in the day, Lake Geneva had a pretty popular Playboy Club for a community of that size. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/35 "2009-05-04T14:16:42Z")
I’m sort of a geology/geography nerd: I’m not intelligent enough about it to have ascended to _geekdom_, but I still have the obsession with it sometimes that still qualifies as nerddom. For instance my brother collects rocks and I had a hard time classifying most of them besides the completely obvious one and sometimes not even then. But when I visited him in his home near the Smokies we were looking at a map for a hike and he thought it would be rugged and without a good view, but just from the way the path curved I could tell it was closely hugging the level so it would be a gradual incline, with an added bonus helping of many tiny little streams that weren’t on the map. I’d count as a geekcation whenever I go on hikes and I feel like I have already been there due to reading the topo map so much. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/36 "2009-05-04T14:29:24Z")
GenCon game fair when it still was in Milwaukee. Though it was more of a pilgrimage then a vacation. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/37 "2009-05-04T14:49:41Z")
Riverside Iowa, [the birthplace of Captain Kirk](http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/actor-William-Shatner/photo//090504/photos_ts_afp/fa95b109c748a880372e68b2c305f1eb/;_ylt=AibTZHwL3OclUURnTR1kQrwDW7oF) ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/38 "2009-05-04T17:23:57Z")
Any geeks who are going to be in Pittsburgh the next few days might be interested in this: [Pittsburgh to implode Davis Avenue Bridge on Wednesday.](http://www.postgazette.com/pg/09124/967617-100.stm) I wish I didn’t have to work and could go see it. I bet imploding a bridge would look cool. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/39 "2009-05-04T18:40:34Z")
Might I suggest the Casualty Actuarial Society fall meeting? Oh, I see. You meant “geeky”, but not _that_ geeky. Gotta agree with **Anne Neville** on Greenwich–where else can you find history, geography, and science all in the same place? I wish I would have had a GPS device when I went there, just to watch the zeroes blink on and off. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2009, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047/40 "2009-05-04T19:03:30Z")
Brewery, winery, and distillery tours are also fun for geeks who like a drink. One of the coolest things about visiting Dublin in June of 2004 for me was going with a tour to a bunch of different pubs, and seeing the sun still up at almost 10 PM. I would love to go to St Petersburg, Russia, and see the [White Nights](http://www.saint-petersburg.com/virtual-tour/whitenights.asp), and to Alaska or some other northern location to see the midnight sun. I know Mr. Neville would have a hard time sleeping (he had this problem in Copenhagen when we went there in the summer of 2006- the sun was rising very early and woke him up), but it would be so _cool_. And then there was seeing that the moon really does look upside down (relative to what I’m used to) in Australia. I almost fell into Sydney Harbor because I was walking around with my head tipped way over, to see if the moon looked like it did at home when I did that (it did). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-you-go-for-a-geek-vacation/495047.md?page=3)