I guess recreational travelling is usually done by plane or car, but those are of course not the only modes of travelling. Personally I will highly recommend a biking holiday, at least in Europe, (somebody has to fill us in with information about biking on other continents). Some years ago I went on two biking holidays with my family in Germany and Switzerland, and what a pleasant experience that was! By biking 50 - 100 kms each day you really move forward, crossing national and regional borders, but at the same time so slowly that you really can sample the changes in the (elsewhere discussed) cultural continuum of Europe.
And it gives a wonderful sense of original, primeval travelling, á la the Canterbury Tales and Huckleberry Finn. Its mildy exhausting and your speed is something between that of a wanderer and a horseman.
You get a lovely sense of landscape and understand why medieval people hated mountains and loved fertile river valleys.
To find your way you look for the towers of the village churches, and when you get into the village you appreciate the old fountain where you can wash and drink, perhaps before you have a look inside the village church or pop into the village baker for some provisions. Once outside the village, you might be tempted to treat yourself to some of the delicious cherries on some farmer's tree. You are a vagabond, after all!
Per pedes is of course also an excellent and original way of travelling. Although I have made multi-day hikes in the Norwegian mountains, I have never tried it in that park-like landscape that is called Continental Europe, but it seems tempting to me. Perhaps in the form of a pilgrimage?
And then you can travel in your mind, with a good travel book in your favourite armchair. I love this form of travelling too, because it gives me the opportunity to embarras polluting, superfiscial globetrotters with some in-depth questions about their destination.
And I have to read a travel book before I go anywhere, as the whole joy of travelling for me is to experience the places you only have imagined in your mind. And sometimes you know the place so well after reading the book that you don't really want to go there, because you fear your image of it might be destroyed.
And then there is of course train travel. One of my best travelling experiences is travelling with a friend, for the first time on our own, by train (Interrail) from Norway to Rome. Oh, when you stand there in a bustling Swiss art nouveau railway station and hear and read those magic names: Interlaken, Chur, Bern, Geneve, Paris, Bruxelles, Milano, Roma, Wien, Prag, Ljubljana, Zagreb....that is travelling!
So how do you like to travel?
fab
I actually like make short week ends at one corner of Europe... and the week end after to the other corner. Thanks to the low-cost air companies such as Ryanair or Easyjet.
Loic
I take the ferry if I am going to the Indonesian islands; car if I am travelling north to Malaysia; the aeroplane for the rest.
I suppose you can only bike when the weather is cool, isn't it? I can't see myself biking over long stretches of distances a day and not knowing whether there are showers at the end of each stop.
Deborah
I like travelling by any means (except maybe overnight trips on Greyhound ). Ever since I saw North By Northwest when I was about 9, I've wanted to take a trip on a train like the one that Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint rode on. I finally did take a scenic trip with my own private sleeping compartment, but it was on Amtrak and was a lot more crowded than the one in the movie. (And I was alone.) Still, it was nice to wake up just after dawn and see Mt. Shasta looming up outside my window.
(This is a sunset, but you get the idea.)
I also travelled by train from Zurich to the Engadin, which was a great trip. How nice to have windows that open! You can't open the windows on Amtrak trains.
My fantasy is to travel by houseboat along the Intracostal Waterway on the east coast of the US, starting in Florida around the end of February and making my way north, timing it so that it's tree-blossoming time the entire way.
Porthos
Well, when I'm with my friends, we travel by car and go on weekend car trips quite frequently. We go offroading, we go to a beach that's expected to have great surf for the day, we drive to Mexico, we drive to San Francisco, to Six Flags Magic Mountain, etc. If I'm travelling a great distance, I will take a plane.
fab
How much time does it takes to go to San Francisco by car from L.A ?
Where do you go in Mexico by car from LA ? I don't think Tijuana must be really interesting, isn't it ?
Elaine
fab wrote:
How much time does it takes to go to San Francisco by car from L.A ?
It takes a good 6 hours to drive from LA to SF, unless of course, you gun it all the way through.
Quote:
Where do you go in Mexico by car from LA ? I don't think Tijuana must be really interesting, isn't it ?
Tijuana, no, unless you have a desperate need to get rowdy drunk with the locals. But my friends and I have driven to Rosarito and other beach communities in Baja.
Elaine
So, modes of travel...
Well, most of my travels have been by car, which is a bitch since I hate driving long distances. I'd rather take an airplane but what with airport security these days, it seems like such a hassle. I've never tried bicycling as means of travel, but it seems like a non-option here since the traffic out of LA is a nightmare and the distances between one region to the next is too great. I do enjoy taking the ferry to Catalina or the Channel Islands (the California ones) now and again-- being out in the sea has such a calming effect on me. One of these days I'm going to take a cruise to Alaska and witness the Northern Lights for myself. Other than that, I usually just take my broom.
Loic
Quote:
Other than that, I usually just take my broom.
I suppose it is a Firebolt. Or at least a Nimbus Two Thousand.
Deborah: I enjoy the romantic appeal of taking trains. I once took a train to Kuala Lumpur and I spent a good part of the journey gazing dreamily at the plantations, villages, streams and mountains outside. Is there a buffet car and was the food any good?
greg in noord-frankrijk
Re: Modes of travelling
Fredrik wrote:
Its mildy exhausting and your speed is something between that of a wanderer and a horseman. (...) To find your way you look for the towers of the village churches, and when you get into the village you appreciate the old fountain where you can wash and drink, perhaps before you have a look inside the village church or pop into the village baker for some provisions.
So true. I love bicycling too. You've got that "speed" sensation and yet become a part of the environment.
The next best thing to a bicycle is a train : you don't need to be on your guard as when you're driving — you just focus on people, landscape or... your book. I like all sorts of trains : high-speed rockets and quaint tortillards. Swiss trains are full of charm. Indonesian trains were a soul-stirring experience : I travelled in Java between Bogor (near Djakarta) & Djogdjakarta (Yogyakarta) only to spend hours sitting on the doorstep and watching the hallucinating scenery.
Deborah
loic wrote:
Deborah: I enjoy the romantic appeal of taking trains. I once took a train to Kuala Lumpur and I spent a good part of the journey gazing dreamily at the plantations, villages, streams and mountains outside. Is there a buffet car and was the food any good?
There was a dining car with tables, as in a restaurant. I don't know how the carnivores' food was, but the vegetarian food left something to be desired. However, they served good wine, so I just concentrated on that and the company and the scenery.
I agree with greg about the Swiss trains. And the scenery! My friends and I were hanging out the windows, gasping at every view.
Fredrik
loic wrote:
I suppose you can only bike when the weather is cool, isn't it? I can't see myself biking over long stretches of distances a day and not knowing whether there are showers at the end of each stop.
We biked in ca. 20 degrees Celsius. And we always had a shower at the end of the day, in the youth hostels and inns where we stayed. But of course some tempting bathing possibilites turned up along the route too, like the Lake of Constance and the Rhine...
Good to see that some of you are train enthusiasts. Lovely pictures, greg and Deborah. I know that feeling of waking up to an awesome sight from the train window. I remember boarding the Split train in Zagreb and waking up in the morning (on a king-size velvet bed with some Swedish girls...nothing happened ) and looking out into the amazing maquis landscape of Dalmatia, with a lonely sheperd tending his flock and the blue Adriatic in the horizon....
Generally I don't like having to go by car or plane. (Although i can't always resist it, I'm going to Muscow in two weeks...). If it was left to me, I'd tax polluting air and car travel astronomically, as I would love to annoy those Norwegians who only bathe in Thailand. Honestly, I tend to support those freaks who argue 100 % bike and train transport. At least in Europe, it's a real possibility.
And that's one thing many Europeans think is negative about the US: The reported lack of pedestrian and biking facilities. We regularly get horror stories from the US about suburban sprawls where walking and biking is impossible and you have to drive everywhere. And those of us who have been on biking holidays know how annoying car-based suburbia can be, with endless sprawls of malls and giant parking lots. Compared to compact towns designed or adjusted for "green traffic" these suburban complexes are extremely ugly, inhumane and are seen as bad, bad Americanisation over here...
Deborah
Fredrik wrote:
And that's one thing many Europeans think is negative about the US: The reported lack of pedestrian and biking facilities. We regularly get horror stories from the US about suburban sprawls where walking and biking is impossible and you have to drive everywhere. And those of us who have been on biking holidays know how annoying car-based suburbia can be, with endless sprawls of malls and giant parking lots. Compared to compact towns designed or adjusted for "green traffic" these suburban complexes are extremely ugly, inhumane and are seen as bad, bad Americanisation over here...
I agree. When I was in North Carolina recently, I wanted to walk to a convenience store that was about a 3-minute walk from the hotel. I had to cross two major thoroughfares to reach it, and there were no pedestrian crossings. I know they didn't expect people to be walking around there because there were only the traffic lights and not the lights they used for pedestrians.
Fredrik
Another American horror pedestrian story!
Uriel
I travel by car or plane. I've never been on a train, except for BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and in Japan. Neither thrilled me, and the US doesn't have much of a passenger train system. I'm certainly not getting my fat ass on a bike. I haven't ridden one since I was about 8, and don't see the appeal. Out here, distances are so vast that there's really no getting anywhere that way anyway. Plus you'll probably die of heat exhaustion. We've had tourists get lost in White Sands and in the Gila. We find their bodies eventually. One woman managed to die in only 12 hours. The Japanese tourist who wandered away into the dunes was found dead in two days. I wouldn't mess around in the desert. I even take water with me whan I drive -- just in case.
Fredrik
Gosh, with those surroundings you are excused from biking, Uriel!
Uriel
You see 'em out there, though, believe it or not! poor, skinny souls sweating up hills in spandex...
I had a roommate who did the Ride Across America bike-a-thon that's sponsored by the American Lung Association (smoking bud all along the way, I'm sure, knowing him!) That's about 3,000 miles (5,000 km). They did it in stages every day, of course, and I think it took a couple weeks. But he used to train for it by riding to Alamogordo and back -- a good two hours' drive!
One assumes he took a Camelbak water pack along.
Palomino
Uriel
I was reading in New Mexico magazine that there are lots of outfits (especially up north) that will take you on all-day horse rides or even overnight trips in the more remote corners of the state. You have to be a good horseman and they encourage having a very strong, athletic horse, as its in mountainous terrain and even in summer you may have to ride through snowdrifts. Most rides take you where there are some creeks or springs along the way. I've been on hour-long horse rides, and as I am not an equestrian, that's about all my butt can take. But the scenery (outside Ruidoso) was gorgeous, the guide was entertaining -- we passed by the site of an old plane crash that was never removed because the terrain was just too hazardous -- only the bodies were retrieved.
These are off some mule enthusiasts' site, but they're in Ruidoso, so it gives you some idea of what the scenery looks like:
Now, granted, I have to drive there -- it's two hours away -- but it's so nice to go up to the mountains inthe summer and lose 20 degrees Fahrenheit!
One of my coworkers has booked a trip from Albuquerque to Chicago by train, which she is very excited about. It will take about 2 days.
). Ever since I saw 
) and looking out into the amazing maquis landscape of Dalmatia, with a lonely sheperd tending his flock and the blue Adriatic in the horizon....
