I don’t mean time off work, but the actual getting on a train/plane/boat to go to a different part of the world?

I’m 45 now & can count the foreign holidays i’ve had on the fingers (and one thumb) of two hands.
Granted I usually enjoy myself while I’m there, but it’s a PITA getting there and organising it

Am I alone in this?

Perversely & conversely, I tend to enjoy the planning & travel more than I do the holiday itself
Unless it’s a touring holiday, then I enjoy it all – but my wife doesn’t 🙂

I am with you 100%. If I am not going for at least a month then it is simply not worth the stress and hassle of international travel.

2 days before getting on a plane I start to fret, not because I am scared of flying but because I simply do not like it, queuing, waiting, squeezing myself onto an ergonomically compromised seat and being fed cardboard, only to arrive at my destination and take 2 days to recover from the travel and the inevitable ensuing argument with the other half. Same thing on the way home. Give me a cottage in Devon any day of the week.

I love the travelling – when we went to New Zealand via Singapore and Australia I was looking forward to the flights almost as much as the holiday.

When we went to Kenya I was REALLY excited about the internal flights in little 6-seater prop planes landing in the middle of the Masai Mara.

Lovely debate here;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vrxk3

earlier this week about the attraction of travelling vs the pleasure of staying at home.

fact I didn’t know – the Rolling Stones have a crew who travel ahead of them that make their hotel rooms look the same every night (pictures, linen, tv’s the lot) so that they always feel at home.

I travel almost non-stop for work. I HATE airports and hotels with a passion.

I actually like taking a week off and just monging around at home – gardening, riding, decorating.

It works better for me than sitting on yet another plane with flatulent chavs singing “ere we go”…..

I tend to enjoy the planning & travel more than I do the holiday itself

“The reasoning powers of man are obscured by an inability to distinguish between what he enjoys doing, and what he enjoys having done”

I know all about that, spend most of my time idly planning trips up north, only about 1 in 5 make it to reality.

Wouldn’t go abroad unless I had a lot of time to spend getting to know the place, hoping to go to Norway next year but want to spend at least 10-14 days touring through. Can’t get enthused about weekend city breaks in Europe, much to the annoyance of my (now ex) girlfriend…

No, you’re not alone. Lots of faff and expense for no discernible benefit. The travelling is even more unpleasant than it used to be since airports and airlines downgraded their customer service from ‘surly’ to ‘aggressively unpleasant’ because of something some nutters did in America nearly a decade ago.

Overseas holidays are even less appealing to me now we have a sprog. We’re taking him out to France over the new year with the rest of the family, and frankly I’m rather dreading it.

I don’t like flying (It scares me silly sometimes and I don’t mind admitting it) and I’ve been to a couple of places I’m in no rush to get back to. Ever. But I love planning, packing, going away, making it up as I go along, getting lost, not knowing much of the lingo and genrally having the freedom of not really knowing what’s coming next.

Holiday heaven = Hire car and a map

Holiday hell = Cruise liner

🙂

If going on holiday is the only way to get the annual fix of snowboarding in, then I’ll go on holiday! Gatwick airport always takes most of the joy off what has been experienced though.

I’ve never been on the classic aeroplane & hotel type holiday.
If I won one in a raffle I’d try and swap or sell it.

I havent flown for years. All that invasion of personal space and being crammed in with the great unwashed fred’s of the world. No thanks.

Much rather pack the campervan and bimble across the channel to the continent and then meander around for a few weeks/months. Touring is much more fun IMO.

agreed

I hate the planning (not so much the high level, ooh “I want to go to there” kinds of stuff, more the detailed booking of flights/ hotels/ planning routes etc). I organised a “holiday of a lifetime” type trip to the states with the now ex and the kids – really didn’t enjoy it. Many evenings with a furrowed brow

Usually on the holiday itself I find myself wishing I could just go home, well before the holiday is over.

The older I get, the more I realise what a homebody I am

Having said that, I have enjoyed holidays where I am only responsible for myself – so trips away with friends when I was younger, MTB trips away with friends, a long weekend in NYC with some friends a few years ago. So I think a lot of my dislike comes from travelling with the family, and feeling like I was solely responsible for all the planning and “what are we going to do today” type stuff (the ex seemed to expect me to be a walking guidebook with endless new idea for things to do. She would never find, plan or suggest anything to do herself). Now I’m no longer married this is not such an issue – had a week with the kids in Wales last year, and felt much lower pressure (although I was looking forward to home a bit by the end, but the weather was pretty poor so no surprise I was getting a bit bored with it)

Tis funny that I have never had any fear of flying whatsoever given my little story…

My mum and dad booked our first ever holiday abroad to Corfu back in ’83 (I think) but we had to cancel because my mum couldn’t get the time off work. We booked for the following week on the identical corresponding flight to the same destination.

As we were taking off I could see it, over by a hangar in the distance, the plane that had been all over the news all week – the one that blew up on take-off at Manchester Airport killing god-knows how many people.

And if my mum had been allowed the holidays she first asked for, we would have been on that plane. 😯

I was too busy wetting myself with excitement about being on a plane to care. My mum was white for the whole flight.

I’m also not a huge fan of travelling by plane – I think lots of delays and lost luggage in recent years have made it worse. For a long time I had a rule of number of hours travelling > number of days at place which worked quite nicely, but recently has unfortunately became impractical.

I much prefer travelling by boat or train – I can just settle down and enjoy some peace and quiet and enjoy the views. I recently got tickets to Berlin on a direct train (8hours) for €60 return and I am quite happy doing that for a weekend because I don’t have to change and can just relax on the journey.

I find holidays way more stress than they’re worth too. I much prefer ‘staycations’, but the GF apparently ‘has’ to get away, which means we often end up paying a lot of money to be bored somewhere else, that we don’t know and havn’t had time to plan anything.

If I was at home, I do all the stuff I never have tiome to do while working, some DIY, get out on the bike, do a bit of touring maybe. Some walks.

But then unless it involves riding a bike, I’m rarely interested.

Do any couples regularly holiday apart?

I’ve travelled a lot for work so I find airports & airplanes dull and tedious.

We’ve had some very good holidays in the past, road trips across the USA, 4 month cycle tours of NZ etc etc.

The missus wanted to go abroad this year for our annual 2 week holiday – by the time we’d priced everything up and factored in the hassle of travelling with 2 small kids……. We booked a cottage in Wales (close to Brechfa wooooohoooooo)

Torminalis – Member
I am with you 100%. If I am not going for at least a month then it is simply not worth the stress and hassle of international travel.

2 days before getting on a plane I start to fret, not because I am scared of flying but because I simply do not like it, queuing, waiting, squeezing myself onto an ergonomically compromised seat and being fed cardboard, only to arrive at my destination and take 2 days to recover from the travel and the inevitable ensuing argument with the other half. Same thing on the way home. Give me a cottage in Devon any day of the week.

ZOMG! i’m like, totally the same! BROMANCE INITIATED! roflecopters!

If going on holiday is the only way to get the annual fix of snowboarding in, then I’ll go on holiday! Gatwick airport always takes most of the joy off what has been experienced though.

+1

I find holidays way more stress than they’re worth too. I much prefer ‘staycations’, but the GF apparently ‘has’ to get away, which means we often end up paying a lot of money to be bored somewhere else, that we don’t know and havn’t had time to plan anything.

….

Do any couples regularly holiday apart?

+1 a couple of holidays to “hot” destinations into the relationship and we’ve established that of my 4 weeks annual leave we use 1 for snowboarding together, then the other 3 weeks i use as i see fit to do as little as possible. she gets 4 weeks left to use up and gos on holiday with friends/her mum now she’s a bit more mature.

its great knowing she’s tanning herself somewhere and i dont have to be there!

I used to enjoy the travelling part of the holiday before I was a parent.

With young children in tow it is much harder work.

However, give them their due they aren’t too bad in comparison to other young children that I see.

I am very much looking forward to our family holiday to South Africa in four weeks time – the fifth time in 8 years. The whole getting there process is stressful and annoying but two weeks of great weather and the great outdoors more than makes up for it.

Think of air travel these days as buses that fly, and solely as a means of getting you to nice places you couldn’t otherwise get to.

I can see I’m in the minority here but I quite like Gatwick Airport. Getting there at 4:30am to check in for one of the first flights to Geneva for a snowboarding holiday is great. Cooked brekkie in Spoons with 15 mates, anticipating the snowboarding to come, quality.

Gatwick is my favourite airport, excellent facilities.

I love (nearly) all aspects of travel – leaving home to go somewhere new I’m like a calf looking at a new gate

have some methods to reduce the hassle of airports etc

never feel homesick, fascinated by new people, food and places

would hate to fester in one place

Having said what I did at the top, I did enjoy my last holiiday, esp the road trip through the Rocky Mountains from Calgary to Vancouver via Kamloops

Hate Manchester Airport and 9 hours each way with no elbow room though

Travelling can be an absolute PITA, especially if you have bored kids and a long way to go.

Personally, I quite like flying if I’m not in a rush. Get to the airport early, have a relaxed coffee (something I never have time for during the week), buy a couple of books, laugh at the stupidly pricey clothes shops, and anticipate the skiing/biking/whatever to come.

At the other end, a hire car always fills me with glee. I realise that I’m the sort of nightmare customer the hire companies hate, but there’s a perverse glee in taking a Berlingo off-road, or handbrake turning it on snow.

Driving is great, at least as soon as I’m on the Eurotunnel. Easy driving after that, and cruising through the night with a decent talking book has much to recommend it.

Packing remains my absolute bete noir; I guarantee that no matter what I get in the car, my wife will find another zillion things to wedge in. Given that it’s a matter of pride – I’d rather die than admit that I couldn’t somehow crowbar things into the Volvo – there’s usually a lot of packing and repacking.

I agree with iDave, I really enjoy the whole affair. Planning it, booking stuff, the actual travelling and just being in wherever I’ve been lucky enough to turn up.
The only thing I detest though is Easy Jet/Ryanair and Charter airlines, quite how they manage to make the whole experience such a miserable hassle is beyond me! Air France/Lufthansa whoever don’t give me any more leg room, don’t check in less people per plane yet it always seems so much more relaxed.
I’ve had some amazing times and seen some amazing things that simply wouldn’t happen without the travel. Yes, it is nice sometimes to stop at home for a few days, but there’s always stuff to be done and never feels like a holiday to me.

While no fan of airports themselves, I enjoy early morning taxis sleepily speeding down motorways while it’s still dark. I guess it reminds me of acid house/rave days! Much to the chagrin of my SO, we only go biking and boarding 😕

I hate flying, ignoring the obvious risks of the plane falling out of the sky (if we’d been meant to fly, god would have given us etc……) I just don’t find the whole air travel process in the least enjoyable – exception being the time blagged a free upgrade to premium economy on a Virgin trip to Florida, very nice 😆

Oddly though I’ll be prepared to drive for three days to get to the south of France, when easyjet could get me there in a couple of hours.

Gatwick is my favourite airport, excellent facilities.

+1, Gatwick’s great. A lot better than Madrid airport, loads more shops.

I like holidays, don’t mind the flying, except the EasyJet / Ryanair crap where you have the stress of getting seats together. Flying alone I couldn’t care less.