To not want to go to USA?

Also true.

Taormina is stunningly beautiful but swamped with tourists in the summer.

Ah, we went in October. Summer would have been far too hot for me!

We were annual US travellers too to different places just like yourself but there's no way we're going anywhere near America until the madman is long gone and things have settled down considerably.

On the plus side there are many places much more wonderful to explore.

And have a penis

or Greenland!

We cancelled plans to go at the end of last year, for me it's about personal ethics

I can’t remember the journalist’s name, but there was also an undercover police officer involved in the exposè.

I’ll go through my history and try to find it - pretty sure it was MIL who sent me the link!

Wait out…….

@WhatIsTheCharge you don’t have a link to the article do you? Or the name so I can google?

This is the kind of story I would think came from someplace like Nicaragua, not the US.

Disclaimer - I know nothing about Nicaragua, it’s just that if you had said ‘when I lived in Nicaragua…..’ then I would have thought ‘oh that’s awful’ but I wouldn’t have been surprised I don’t think.

Nope - all on my Hs no go list . Although we have been to Morocco (2008) and Egypt (2010) and UAE (2011 ) Istanbul (2013) not in a rush to go back to any although in all fairness I did enjoy Marrakech and Istanbul ( really liked that) - I know others don’t .

So we lived in an odd area, in that prostitution is legal in the state itself, but illegal within the city limits of my city…..but the city is where the tourists and the money is.
The pimps know that tourists (particularly drunk tourists) aren’t going to want to pay for an Uber 40 minutes out to the legal brothels etc so they bring the sex trade to them. What the illegality within the city limits, the only prostitutes you see on the streets are in the “rough” area of the city, away from the high-end hustle and bustle. The rest work for pimps who do all their trade underground and a huge proportion of those women are trafficked, either from neighbouring states or from the local area.
An investigative journalist did a piece a while ago about the illegal sex trade in my city, and was astounded to find how many local police officers were actually involved in it. It’s easy to see how it’s carried on for so long unchecked 😔

100% agree. Everyone needs to cut off any source of income to the US they can be that large or small amounts.

Why not go to the west coast of Canada instead? It's absolutely stunning and I definitely preferred it to anywhere I've been in the states.

Taormina is stunningly beautiful but swamped with tourists in the summer. I also hate how Italians insist on littering their beaches with ugly blue, metal loungers so there's not an inch between them and the only space where you don't have to pay is tiny. Other med countries are the same in some spots but Italians are the worst IMO. Cefalu probably has the same issues although it looks beautiful in the pictures - we didn't go though.

Agrigento is amazing if you like historic sites and the town is not too crazy as people go straight to the ruins on day tours a lot. We also liked Palermo although some people find it too rough around the edges for their taste.

I think the awful news today shows even being white with an american accent doesn’t mean you are safe.
It beggars belief that anybody still considers America as a nice holiday destination.

I am an old. I cant go along to marches and protest like I did in my 20s. I am appalled by the USA so the only thing I feel I can do to show my complete disgust with their war mongering behaviour is to refuse to visit there and give them my money. If everyone did this as well as selling any USA bonds or stocks and shares that they have then this would really hit them where it hurts and where most people in power care about - in the pocket.

I am encouraging all my family and friends to do the same. a kind of peaceful protest and just something I think we could all do.

I am also writing to my MP to ask why the stance against what he is doing isnt more robust.

and I know there will be some on here who will say "wow I bet donald is really upset mummymeister isnt visiting!" but small actions by a lot of people can make a big difference. In all honesty, my greatest fear is war and that if someone looks like a tyrant and behaves like a tyrant then what else are they.

@WhatIsTheCharge

Where I lived is also a hot-bed for human trafficking (mostly for sex trade), and supermarket/store parking lots are a very popular hunting ground for traffickers. There’s a whole system/checklist that lone women of a certain age and mothers with children go through, particularly when returning to our cars with a shopping trolley full of stuff because that’s when traffickers are known to strike in that area

That’s horrific. Who is doing it?

it depends on which states, but many of us have family over there and a good friend from the states living here. It’s far from safe safe in certain states, and he’s totally demented.

Sorry what? I personally know of people (Canadians!) who have been denied entry to the US (no criminal record or issues), people who have been detained by customs, people who work at universities who are afraid on campus because of the protests. I have been pulled over by the police and with guns pulled (light speeding - nothing warranting this behaviour). I have driven in the US and pulled off the motorway to be then pulled over and told it's too dangerous to exit here and was escorted back to the motorway. I have been to open houses in three states (eastern seaboard, west coast and bible belt) and all have had gun safes. Nothing about this was performative and unless you live there and or know first hand experience it's naive to think these things aren't going on.

Wouldn’t travel in those countries either.

Exactly! Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, China, Hungary.

If we only visited countries that suited our moral standards, we wouldn’t go anywhere.

I have travelled extensively, across
the world but the older I get, tourism on the whole, becomes less and less
appealing.

Indeed - we keep doing the Majorca/greece /scandinavia /germany trips - I’m quite happy at that to be honest

I lived there for the past few years before returning to the U.K.
We were in a major city, and while I wouldn’t say I felt in imminent danger 24/7, there was always a sense of hyper-vigilance I don’t have in the U.K.
We lived in an “open carry” state, so it’s perfectly normal to walk around a public place and see people with guns holstered on their hips - it’s just a sense of constant awareness you have, like “If something goes tits up here, how quickly/easily can I get myself and my children out of here?”. Our city was the site of a mass shooting incident a few years ago where 60 people were killed and over 400 injured.
Cinemas were always a place I felt incredibly uneasy and always scoping out the exits, and the quickest route to the exits.
Where I lived is also a hot-bed for human trafficking (mostly for sex trade), and supermarket/store parking lots are a very popular hunting ground for traffickers. There’s a whole system/checklist that lone women of a certain age and mothers with children go through, particularly when returning to our cars with a shopping trolley full of stuff because that’s when traffickers are known to strike in that area - something I never even have to think about or be aware of in the U.K.
I also quite like that I can be at home in the U.K. of an evening, hear a pop or a bang outside and know it’s probably fireworks or if it’s early morning maybe a bird scarer. Whereas where I was living in the US, we’d hear a pop, DH and I would look at eachother and jokingly say “shots fired”…..only to go out for the school run the next morning and see crime scene tape all over the apartment building at the top of our road because it was indeed “shots fired”. During the time we lived there, there were 6 murders across 4 separate incidents within 500m of our house.

Not UR at all.

I was planning to go in 2028 (Andy Warhol's centenary year!) but there is no way in hell I'd go with an election going on.

That aside I wouldn't visit at all with the current administration or anything related to them in power. It's not performative, I just wouldn't want to support their economy and can think of plenty of other places I'd like to visit.

@DalekStarmer Sicily is absolutely beautiful, I can highly recommend Taormina.

I’m meant to be going to Coachella/ Vegas's in April, tickets, hotel and flights booked back in the summer but me and DH have decided to cancel the trip, I just don’t think it’s worth the worry leading up to the trip let alone the worry while being there xx

I won’t go - I don’t want to give them my money and I don’t want to risk being on the receiving end of harm perpetrated by a fascist, lawless regime. Those who says this is fearmongering perhaps have their heads in the sand, which is totally understandable.