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Post by Cartermrc on Feb 24, 2022 6:23:35 GMT
Being an American, vacations were car trips. Anywhere else is overseas and expensive. That said, my folks and I drove from California to Arkansas the summer of 1968 (in a 1961 VW beetle) when I was 17 to visit family friends. This was before many interstate highways existed and I loved it. Went through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, down western Missouri into Arkansas. We dodged prairie dogs, climbed the Rockies, crossed the continental divide and half the midwest plains, crossed the Missouri river and I was awed by the beauty of the Ozark Mountains and the quaint small towns that we passed through.
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Post by lindsaywhit on Feb 25, 2022 0:03:05 GMT
Cartermrc, what an awesome trip!
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Post by dolem on Mar 7, 2022 17:15:28 GMT
I just got back from Kauai and it was amazing. I'd been to Oahu and Maui before and Kauai is so different. Feels small and quaint in the best way. It has absolutely stunning scenery and great food. We did a helicopter tour of the Wiamea Canyon and Na Pali Coast, kayaking, hiking, eating and relaxing. It was amazing. Bonus - we left the kids at home as we are going to Mexico in a bit and they're already missing school for that.
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Post by heidiho on Mar 11, 2022 10:38:47 GMT
Well l have been to Bali,Fiji,England,France/Paris,Sicily,Rome,Berlin, Amsterdam and Hawaii. My favourite of all was Sicily. The vibe was so great and the beaches. But I live in Australia and l have visited every state in my Country. Melbourne is by far the best.
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Post by beeyotch on Mar 15, 2022 17:33:22 GMT
I've always wondered what parts of Sicily are the best for tourism? I don't remember from being too young and mainly staying near the Naval base there. I think about going back for fun sometimes.
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chaz
Full Member
BANNED
Posts: 294
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Post by chaz on Apr 16, 2022 21:35:52 GMT
I love traveling! Cuba Japan Bali Have been highlights
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Post by sputnik on Apr 18, 2022 14:58:10 GMT
i've been super lucky and privileged to get to live in different countries see amazing places but these are the trips that really stand out (apologies for the wall of text lol):
Eastern Europe/Greece/Turkey, for almost 8 weeks. this was the first and only time in my life i traveled for that long. i was 20 and living in vienna and with money from my first 'real' job me and two friends bought interrail tickets (unlimited train trips, and you can save money by taking night trains with sleeper wagons instead of paying for a hotel or rather a hostel in our case) and traveled through slovenia, croatia, montenegro, serbia and north macedonia, down to greece. stopping along the way in ljubljana, zagreb, several spots on the dalmatian coast including split and dubrovnik and some of the coast in montenegro, sarajevo, etc. this was still the late 90s, the balkans war was still pretty recent and there were definitely still signs of it, from damage to signs warning of landmines, and the tourism boom in croatia hadn't really started yet, not like it is now. in split, there was basically one hotel and it was too expensive for us so you had to walk around town looking for houses with a 'sobe' sign in the window which meant they had rooms to rent and you would get taken in by a local, shown your room, fed dinner, all that without speaking a single word in common lol. after that we headed down to greece through what's now north macedonia, down to the peloponnese to see all the sites, then athens where we memorably stayed in a hostel that let you choose between regular, shared rooms, or a bed on the rooftop terrace (we chose the terrace because it was actually cooler than the rooms, and there was a heatwave when we were there). from there we took ferries and went to a bunch of islands including santorini, mykonos, kos, rhodes, etc. we saved money by taking night ferries and spent a few nights sleeping on the deck, out in the open surrounded by the aegean sea which is a fucking unforgettable experience even if you're in a sleeping bag on the floor lol from kos we took a boat that i thought was going to sink, to bodrum in turkey and then traveled up the coast until istanbul where we spent about 5 days, then took the train again and headed back to vienna, with a couple of stops in bulgaria and romania along the way but we were running out of money by then and by the final train ride, we were basically broke and some old ladies took pity on us and gave us bags of plums from their gardens and we basically ate only that and water for the last 36 hours lol we stayed in hostels, campgrounds, slept on rooftops, ferries, trains, ate mostly in markets and carried everything with us in backpacks so it was far from being any kind of luxury vacation but we had the luxury of basically all the time in the world, no cell phones or internet (i think i called home once a week) just our rough guides but it was such an amazing trip and a really incredible moment in time to be in that particular part of the world. we met loads of people along the way, made friends, and just basically had the time of our lives.
also, Morocco when I was 18, during my last year of high school in switzerland. traditionally high schools there (or at least in the city i lived in) have organized trips the last year. they split you into groups depending on which place you want to visit. my senior year the options were the usual: barcelona, vienna, Munich, and i forget which other european cities, and then also morocco for some reason so of course i picked that one since it was the most exotic and i'd never been to north Africa. we were there for 10 days, went to marrakech, fez, essaouira, and then a road trip in the atlas mountains (if you saw Babel, that's where we went) including a night sleeping in tents in a berber encampment surrounded by dunes and where you had to ride camels to get anywhere. it was amazing and i think the sort of trip that only happened because it was the 90s and my school was kind of artsy/out there because there's no way any school would do that now lol
the other one is the crazy hiking trip i took in peru for over two weeks with my new zealand mountain climber/journalist friend. that one stands out because i saw some of the craziest landscapes i've ever seen, i hiked at difficulty levels i'd never done before, or really since, and really roughed it and camped in places where you wouldn't run into another human for days, slept at over 4500m altitude, saw glacier lakes, etc. it was incredible and unlike any trip i ever took before, or since (except for torres del paine and the atacama desert in chile, in terms of scenery, though both of those are a lot more accessible), and which i was only able to do because i was with someone who basically does this full time, and he's also a photographer so i also got basically private photography lessons the whole time. one of those trips that changes you forever.
ETA: actually, looking back, the eastern europe/greece/turkey trip was closer to 10 weeks!!! just the thought of having that much time off right now seems surreal but back then it didn't seem like a big deal and i remember thinking i wish i could travel even longer because i had friends who took off and traveled around for 5-6 months, mostly to asia or latin America.
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Post by lindsaywhit on Apr 18, 2022 16:32:20 GMT
Wow, Sput - those trips sound amazing! Turkey is on my bucket list. I want to visit Istanbul so much. Your other trips sound fantastic, too. I'd never make it on the hiking trip, though, lol. Maybe 30 years ago.
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Post by waterslide on Apr 26, 2022 6:51:25 GMT
I'm living vicariously through everyone. Sigh. I always thought I'd have a career that would take me all over the world and uh...no. I always wanted to travel everywhere. Like cartermrc said, American vacations are often road trips. The other thing is, I never had a fear of flying until the worst aviation accident in US history happened at our local airport and I suddenly was petrified of flying. I got older and got over it, give or take, because I knew that flying was the only way I was going to see anything. But before that, all of our trips were car trips and I'm thankful for that. I've been to every southern state except Alabama (and Oklahoma?), all up the East Coast into the east coast of Canada, and all my bordering states...and Los Angeles, but that was in high school and definitely involved a plane. My favorite childhood urban vacation was Washington DC. We saw a lot of sites and we walked everywhere and one of the times we went I ended up dragging my parents into a record shop that had a girl (employee) with a guy on a leash and she was feeding him raw steak and the store basically turned into a headshop in the back which was not normally something I saw in record stores by me. I was 15 and scouring records stores in every state we went to for indie/punk stuff. It was kind of funny looking back...I mean, my parents were totally fine, but glances were exchanged (but not in a sushi dinner way) but I'm sure we all looked out of place. But I loved all of it, felt at home. I wanted to live in Georgetown (i.e., be rich) and be in the FBI or a journalist or something exciting and important. My favorite family/not as urban vacation were the ones where we visited my family in Maine and Canada. I never really got to see them and I had so much fun there. That side of the family is so different than my mom's side. It's ridiculously beautiful through the Acadian National Park (I saw my first moose!) and walking around Moncton and having picnics at the Bay of Fundy. I want to see The Rocks again one day. My cousin had a cottage on the water and we'd get buckets of lobster and it was just all really nice. My favorite recent vacation, though you could hardly call it that because it lasted about a day and a half was to NYC last year. I was supposed to go a few times and people would always back out on me so I put on my big girl panties and went by myself and met up with a few people. Best decision ever. The pandemic was still going on, so I guess it wasn't as crowded as usual, but I really fell in love with it, as I knew I would, and literally cried like a child when I came home because I couldn't just stay and live there. I'm so pathetic. lol I was supposed to go back in June, but my illness has grounded me for foreseeable future. Hopefully, by next fall I can go back. Sorry this is so long. I can't pick "one" favorite anything ever.
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