Travel recommendations

[TrampolineFrSpace]

My wife and I love to travel.  We've taken planes, trains, automobiles, and cruise ships.  Probably won't take another cruise anytime soon, as I got "mal de debarque", which is an ailment about feeling a sense of motion AFTER you disembark off of the boat.  I had it off and on for about 6 months, which is the high end for people that come down with.

Anyways, I'll be talking about some of the places that we've gone and I'd love to hear from fellow travellers.  What places do you like to visit?  Where have you been?  Where would you like to go?

For instance, these are the states that I haven't yet been in:  Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, Alaska, Hawaii, Michigan,  and all states east of New York except for Massachusetts (went to Boston in late 1999).   I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to say that I've been to all 50 states.  I've also not been in Chicago proper (travelled around it and have changed planes at O'Hare) nor in NYC.

We might also talk about places that you'll never go back to.

[cherryqueen]

If you want to go out of the country...Ireland is nice. I traveled there last October and enjoyed it very much; there's a lot to see/do...The only down side was that it rained a lot, just misty most of the time I was there. But that might have just been the time of the year..
Overall though it was quite a great trip.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

I believe that Harkrider also said that he'd like to go to Ireland in one of the posts on the Liz Phair forum.

I've been to Europe once, in the spring of 1986.  It was a See and Ski trip to Innsbruck, Austria.  It lasted one week.  We left the US on Saturday and arrived in Innsbruck on Sunday.  We were so worn out that we didn't take any side trips on our first day in Innsbruck, which was a Monday.  We wandered around town.  Did a little shopping.  Drank the gluehwein in the evening.  The remaining days of our trip, we went on sightseeing trips.  One was to Zurich.  One was to Venice.  One was to Salzburg, one of the homes of Mozart and the location of the home where the Sound of Music was filmed.  On Friday, we took in a tour of the castles of Germany and visited Newschwanstein, which was the model for the castle that shows up in the various Disney theme parks.  It was quite a magical time, but my wife and I were snipping at each other by the end of the week.  This was the first time that we had tried a trip of this sort and we were quite exhausted and screwed up by the huge time change and getting up really early in the mornings to get on these buses to make these side trips.

We do want to go back.  I would like to go to England, or Ireland, or maybe Scotland.  There's a fair amount of my ancestry that comes from Scotland, so I would probably have a preference to go there, but I've heard great things about Ireland.

My alumni office sends out these fabulous trips that the former students can go on.  My European trip described above was one of these alumni office specials.

We were looking at going to the Lake country in Italy.  That was their special for this summer.  The pictures were fantastic.

That was before the realities of paying for my daughter's wedding in October and the other financial things that have come up over the year including the year that my wife had spent unemployed because she had grown tired of her work and she wanted to try to start up her own business.  It didn't quite work out the way that she wanted to--she really wasn't making any money with it and she realized that if we wanted our son to go to college, or get a car when he finally got his license to drive, or anything else, that she would need to reenter the normal 9-5 work day life.

Of course, the news that we wouldn't have bonuses this year didn't help the matter much.  The extra cash that won't be.

I think that we have a fabulous vacation just waiting for us, but probably not this year.

I can see that we will need to go back to California to visit our niece out there.  She's having a bit of a rough time and somehow, I think that we're needed out there.  We've already been talking about trying to get them talked in to moving away from southern California.  They need to get away from just existing and they need to get to the kind of life where they can do interesting things.  I don't see how the common people just survive out in southern California.  It's a wonderful place to visit, but I just can't see living out there.

We had talked about flying up to Toronto or Montreal around Christmas time, but we had family that we needed to see and the timing just never did work out.  I'm thinking that Toronto or Montreal would be so much nicer in the summertime.

For the past several years, we have had this Caribbean thing going on.  We went to Playa del Carmen (it's just south of Cancun on the Mayan Riviera, the mainland port that is across a small body of water from Cozymel).  That was 3 or 4 years ago.  We followed it up with a trip to Puerto Aventuras to celebrate the college graduation of her younger sister the following year.  Last year we went to Aruba with the same sister.  I love my sister-in-law, but I don't think that we'll be taking vacations with her for a couple of years.  She's a bit of a control freak and it made for a less than perfect spring break vacation.

For spring break 2001, we took a road trip to the Grand Canyon.  I'll need to post the digital camera pictures that I took on that trip.

Anyways, we'll consider your recommendations.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

My wife is investigating taking the train across Canada.  We'd fly up to Vancouver and go East on the train.

Anyone take this journey?  Thoughts?

thanks in advance...

[LightYears]

Spain! Especially Barcelona. There's so much culture (Not to mention thieves in the town centres, so watch out there.), history and art. Barcelona is very beautiful, the way white trees grow on the street corners near the La Sagrada Familia (Which is, hands down, the most amazing place I have ever seen in my life. It's almost like it's been plucked from fantasy. It's huge and there architecture is so intricate and breath-taking. When it's finished, it will be the most amazing thing ever.)



The Dali Museum too is a really amazing place.  It's almost like the Mad Hatter's house, it oozes so much artistry and originality (and madness, and beauty, and so much more) and it really is a true monument to Dali, who is one of my favourite artists and a constant source of inspiration.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

Yeah, I've good things about Spain.  2 companies ago, my company provided EMS and SCADA systems to electric utility companies around the world and we had sold systems in Spain.  One of the guys spent some time over there.  I was so jealous.

[LightYears]

France is very pretty too; though I've never met anyone who was French and not grumpy.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

My wife checked in to the railroad trips across Canada.  Vancouver to Halifax was 2400 CAD/person.  Vancouver to Toronto was 2030 CAD/person.  That was a bit steeper that we'd hoped and my wife wants to go on to Montreal.

She's still checking in to it and I'll report back if we find any good deals.

[LightYears]

I'd love to go to Canada, most of America and Alaska. Especially to see the Northen Lights. I know you can see them in the Shetland Islands (which would be so much cheaper.) but it just isn't the same. Northen Lights, the cold, the beautiful ice... a dream.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

We lived for a year up in Minnesota, but I didn't get to see them the year that we were up there.  This has been a big goal for me--to actually see them.  Winter is the best time to view the northern lights.

A big requirement is to be away from the city.

We live in Texas so it is generally too far south to see them.

Yep,  I really got to catch the northern lights at some point.  Hope you do too, Rob.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

We're flying over to Florence, Italy on May 12th.  We fly out of Houston, change planes over in Chatwick airport and then pick up our connection over to Florence.  It's an 8 day vacation.  I believe that we're supposed to see the leaning tower of Pisa.

I'll probably wear my LP 40th birthday t-shirt that day and get a picture of me and it on the trip.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

We've been trying to get everything organized for this trip.  Figuring out what electronic stuff to take with us.  Getting voltage and plug converters.  I guess that I need to look at the flash memory cards that I have for the two cameras.

My canon powershot takes a CF card.  I probably ought to get a 1GB or maybe 2GB card before we go on the trip.  My Nikon coolpix P2 takes a SD card.  I'm not sure if we have 2GB in it or not.  We should probably fork up the bucks and get a 4GB flash for it.  It has the higher resolution and a bigger display on the back.

Any recommendations from anyone on things to remember for trips over there would be appreciated.

[LightYears]

I know you've been back awhile now, but I was wondering if you could post one or two more photos of Italy?

I know they're in a myspace blog, but I don't have a myspace. If you don't want to share too much, maybe you could just put in some shots of landmarks soley rather than photos with yourself or your wife in?

[TrampolineFrSpace]

I'm posted a very small number on LPF.

I also created an account on one of those photo sharing sites.  I PM'ed Rob the link.  If anyone else is interested I can send it to them.

I may post a few more, but the bulk of them will be visible by special invite only.

[DownDownDown]

France is very pretty too; though I've never met anyone who was French and not grumpy.

We wandered over into France from Basel when we went to Switzerland.  If you take the tram to St. Louis Greyere (not sure if I have the name exactly correct), it takes you about 2 blocks from the broder into France.

I posted pictures of it on the myspace page, mark 2, which is pointed to from my last.fm page.

If anyone's interested, I can post some of the Swiss photos here.