Hey, fellow IF gamers,
What is your favorite travel country?
(Alternatively tell us about lovely holiday memories, for example from your childhood, or your dream destination you have not visited but dream of.)
I went to Italy several times, and (like for many Germans) it’s my favorite destination.
But England a few years ago was sweet, too. Yorkshire. And there’s a Italian restaurant or cafe owner in York, so Italy is everywhere. 
France and UK here. But also Spain.
But I’ve been fine in every place I went to, with very few exceptions that I won’t mention to hurt nobody’s feelings 
I went to Iceland for our honeymoon, but never been to Europe otherwise…
I am currently in Athens for Xmas. There’s a real community vibe here.
For me it’s the UK. I have visited several times so far and my travel goals are to visit parts of the UK I still haven’t visited.
I like visting Canada. Specifically, I like Montreal and parts of Toronto.
I haven’t been out of the country much - as a 3 year old we visited the Bahamas flown there by my uncle who is a pilot (there are family photos of my cousin and I as wee-naked children on a white sand beach.) I’ve been to Canada for like 30 minutes during a trip to Michigan where we zipped to Windsor for a bit. I probably have visited almost every contiguous US state on summer road trips and touring with a theater production. (Favorite states that surprised me and I’d consider relocating to: New Mexico, Arizona, Washington) I did move to Florida (Miami) for a couple years and enjoyed it before it got really weird politically.
My most extensive and memorable jaunt was to the UK for a week with a college choir group. We were all put up by individual families, and it was probably the perfect trip - no language barrier, but just foreign enough to be interesting. (The loo is always in a separate room!) We had unlimited Tube tickets for the week so we went all over. I spent a day visiting places I had heard of; I went to Piccadilly Circus specifically because I remembered it from American Werewolf in London.
While not travel, I was taken to an extensive international grocery store for several hours and relished how alien everything felt since it was full of products you can’t get here and there were signs hanging up directing you to “Frozen Beef Blood” in multiple languages. Especially in the produce section where nothing was recognizable and I started feeling like I’d been transported to another planet like it was Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where everything was familiar but just enough different to feel uncanny in an enjoyable fashion.
Canada is in the uncanny valley for an American. It not only shares a common language, but with such close historical and trade ties, many chains, general aesthetics remain similar. Many places in Canada could easily be anywhere USA until you spot a Speed Limit sign or open a fridge and spot a bag of milk in a pitcher. It’s so close, that the occasional reminder that it definitely isn’t the US can be all the more disorienting.
When I visited England I noticed some similarities. England’s every day culture is close to the German one, much more than the Italian and Germany culture resemble each other. This is a thing both sides don’t like because
a) they were enemies in two world wars
and b) there ARE differences.
Some common things:
Some thing where the English (not British) culture is different:
My favorite country to travel in is my own-- the US. I love love love to drive on long road trips, seeing a state or several. I’ve been to several European countries and spent a lot of time in Mexico and Canada and had a great time in all those places, but nothing beats driving around the hugeness of the US. The only area I haven’t really explored is the midwest. Sadly, I haven’t had the time in recent years to just take off for weeks at a time.
Two things that limit my willingness to travel overseas:
1.) I hate flying. Like, hate it.
2.) I have never felt perfectly comfortable being anywhere where I don’t speak the language.
Wait, do you guys not have speed limit signs south of the border???
The bagged milk thing is totally legit, but apparently it’s a regional thing. I find them a lot easier to use than the heavier cartons, and like, ew, milk soggy paper. Soy milk comes in plastic gallon bottles that I think normal milk comes in, but those are horrendous to try to pick up.
You can’t beat Australia. I have lived here for over 70 years and I still haven’t seen it all. But I have seen most of it now. Unfortunately if I can’t drive there, I will have to leave it. COVID killed off a lot of travel here as each of the states controlled their borders. Since then I have lost the desire to travel far anyway. There’s still plenty to do and see within a couple of hours drive from where I live.
I did go overseas in my younger days, but other than to say that I had been there, I could have seen similar things right here and saved my money.
Haven’t really left Canada, or the province, except for when I was a very little baby. I was offered a trip to go to California when I graduated highschool, but turned it down since I didn’t want to travel (bit of a homebody, to put it lightly) and preferred the alternative of getting the money that would’ve gone towards hotel fees and food on the trip for school stuff.
I really like it when we travel further up North, though. Not anywhere near the towns. But in the middle of the woods, where you’re totally going to fuck up your car on the drive in, there’s not help for awhiles out, and it’s just you and the conifers and the lake and if you drowned no one would come and find you. Fantastic isolation.
Love how cold it is. Dad first taught me how to fish, (though he’s still too anxious to let me bait the hooks myself, so he does that bit for me) and how to prep/cook one on a campfire on a trip up North. The water was so clear, you could see straight through to the bottom of the lake, but it was incredibly deep. He spent most of the trip anxious I might hurt myself or fall overboard, and to this day he’s adamant I always wear a life jacket if I’m near a body of water, but we had a great time. Nothing but us and our chatter and the crackle of the fire when I tossed in silly little pinecones just to hear them pop and explode, and the wind whipping up the waves like a sea. When I got bored, he put up a tent so I could read my books, and half dozing off in there was so comfortable. I’m not very good at steering the boat, turns out.
The silence, and the absolute dark, are what really stick out in my memory- how peaceful and how completely and utterly alone you were. Compared to the jellied translucent grey of the city’s night time, and the constant hum of traffic or drunk voices at night, or even the swish of car tires over the asphalt in the suburbs, it was so alien and so lovely to soak in. Plus it was nice to just get away from people. I liked sitting on the wooden dock and staring at the glassy surface of the lake early in the mornings, and observing black widows nestling in tree branch corners, and hearing the little birds cheep in the boughs.
I remember dad brought out his sunglasses and put them on me since he was concerned I’d hurt my vision staring at the reflected light, and brought a blanket out because of the wind- one of the rougher knit couch decoration-y ones, and we just sat together for awhile there. There were a lot of dragonflies alighting down in the shallows, and dad flicked one off of my head that I didn’t notice. That was probably one of my best summer trips anywhere ever.
What’s the average speed limit over there?
In a school zone it’s usually between thirty to forty kilometres per hour, and a little higher than that in the city in general (usually not more than fifty though.) You can drive a bit faster in the middle of nowhere, (like, sixty to eighty on the scary windy country roads) but usually hundred or hundred and ten is on the highway only.
That’s why the speed limit signs are jarring. Your brain reads the numbers before registering the units. A speed limit of 110 miles per hour is virtually unheard of in the US and for good reason. That’d be the equivalent of roughly 180 kilometers per hour to put it into perspective, so such a limit tends to make one double take.
Me too. I would never plan to fly if I could help it. That limits our world travel to Canada and Mexico. The only two places I would like to visit are UK (which I did in college) and Australia (I won’t because flying and everything trying to kill you.
I was sent on a business trip once. I had to fly from St. Louis to Chattanooga. I have driven to Chattanooga and it’s an enjoyable road trip, but they wanted me to fly to save time. We have an enormous airport with boarding ramps that are enclosed so it’s like you walk through hallways to the plane and you’re never outside. The several times I’ve flown it was to big cities so this is what I was used to.
There’s no direct flight to Chattanooga which only has a small airport and the big planes I was also used to can’t land there. I transferred in Cincinnati and the airport waiting just had like 7 gate doors together. When It was time to board, I went through the door and emerged in a hallway - all the doors just went through the wall? - and then OUTSIDE where three planes were parked. Nobody directed me I just had to ask a bunch of people and then realized in horror I was boarding a tiny jet with 13 rows of seats. It felt like being on a shuttle bus. The stewardess gave the safety spiel, closed the cockpit door and her seat folded down from the back of the door so all during takeoff she faced us with her knees between the people’s seated in the first row. I asked several people multiple times if “the plane is supposed to do that” because smaller planes toss around a lot more. I remember hanging on with my legs under the seat as we descended, surely to our doom, watching people casually read newspapers as we approached shaking all over the place.
When I reached Chattanooga, I was tempted to kiss the ground, and immediately began considering taking up residence so I wouldn’t have to fly back. A week went by and it was time to return…again two flight legs. I got to the Chattanooga airport 2 hours early as I was used to and there was NOBODY THERE. Finally a guy came down to check my luggage and manually wiped my suitcase handles with “bomb detecting makeup pads.” We finished, and he asked if I wanted a snack to call him and he’d go man the concession stand. No restaurant. They sold popcorn, hotdogs and nachos.
In the “terminal lounge” there’s a window with five doors. That’s the entirety of the airport. I sat for two hours and watched as what was obviously someone’s personal turbo prop plane pull up to the window. When it was time to leave I’m like “where’s my plane” and they pointed at the fucking propellor prop plane. Like I’m going to water land in fucking Fantasy Island. I stared at the spinning propellers all through the flight. It was noisy loud and bumpy because fucking propellors - this is a prank, right? These planes only exist in movies like Indiana Jones… The cargo cache door above my seat rattled and popped open three times during the entire 45 minute flight.
I made it to Atlanta, which was another blessedly huge airport where I had to take an inside monorail to my next terminal. Yay, hallway directly onto the plane like I’m used to. The leg from ATL to STL was on a plane so big that I couldn’t see the front of it down the aisle past the curvature of the earth. It was mostly empty except for a couple commuting flight crews where were all joking comfortably and I felt secure. Plus the leader put me in mind of Samuel Jackson so I knew nothing would happen to this mother-loving plane if he had any say.
Last flight home was mostly smooth and non-terrifying except as we approached, the pilot said something like “we’ll be on the ground in 20 minutes” and the plane banked and dove toward Lambert Airport. I’m like PLEASE TAKE ALL THE TIME YOU NEED!
My ears are just really sensitive to pressure, so flying can be very painful for me. And, of course, everything else is about flying is degrading and uncomfortable and generally horrible. But mostly it’s my ears. Nothing really works to help them, despite decades of everybody’s advice. I will fly a nonstop flight, but layovers are problematic for me because I will not want to put my poor ears back on another plane after getting off the first one. So I need a damned good reason for long flights with layovers.
I hate the prices and the rigamarole to get on the plane, and I hate the idea of the enormous carbon output for a few hour flight.
With all that said, I love flying. I am a child filled with wonder, sitting in a (small) chair in the sky.
I especially love flying in cloudy or bad weather. Why? Breaking the cloudline. Snotting, spitting, nasty grey weather all that day, trudging through it to get to the airport, watching the elements bead down the terminal windows. As you rise, it gets darker and darker and nastier and you can see gallons of water spilling off the wings, and then… it gets quiet seconds before bursting free into dazzling sunlight above the clouds, the rain still trickling over your window the only reminder of the tempest you had been in mere seconds before. And clouds below, white cottony mounds lit up by the sun.
Every once in a while, you get a treat and it’s after dark, and the moon and stars suddenly appear like someone cast a magic spell.
It’s honestly marvelous.
