How do Americans do holidays?

[Champagneforeveryone]

We've just flown to Venice for a few days, and I was reading the guide book which says that flights arrived only from a couple of US states.

Which got me thinking how very little I know about this and it seems I have a huge amount of preconceptions 🙄

I imagined that you could fly from every state to anywhere in the world - obviously not! So I'm guessing there's a large number of internal flights? Are they expensive? Are they as time consuming as taking a flight abroad, or are they similar to taking a bus.

Also, does this limit how you holiday? I had always imagined that the US was similar to us and people holidayed abroad frequently (ours would be mostly Europe with the occasional long haul "big" holiday) Do you fly to different states or do you leave the US?

TIA for filling the gaps in my knowledge while DH showers 😉

seriously. All 50 states have the same culture. That's actually funny - and terribly ignorant.

@Pallisers My mother's people are Cajun and based primarily in the New Orleans area. Laissez les bons temps rouler and all that😀A very different culture indeed, but American nonetheless!

My brother lives in the US. He and my SIL tend to go on cruises around the Caribbean or Mexico. Sometimes they might go to Florida or somewhere like Las Vegas

@GulfCoastBeachGirl, my daughter and I are heading to NOLA tomorrow for a few days. The idea that that culture/food/geography/language there is the same as the New England culture (where we live) is just so funny.

The passport comparison is pretty meaningless. How many UK people with passports are travelling for cultural experiences? A large number are just going to a different country for the better weather. Americans don't need to leave the country to do that.

I think a lot of them go on holiday somewhere in the states or close to it. Remember it’s a massive country with different climates. Someone living in a colder state for example could go to Florida or California and have a sunny beach holiday without leaving the country. I’ve been to the Caribbean and it’s had a lot of east coast Americans, it’s a short hall flight for a lot of them, like if we were going to go to Greece. When I went to Mexico it was full of west coasters. I think it’s more normal to take a lot of flights than it is in the uk. Going to Venice is short haul for us but a long trip for someone from the US

I have a lot of family in the US. They often get little to no annual leave. Travel can be very expensive and the majority of Americans don’t own a passport. America itself is also very vast. It took me 7hrs to fly from Glasgow to New York but I also spent 6 hours going from New York to LA.

I lived in South Florida for many years, you can fly to a lot of other countries from Miami but mostly I'd fly to Atlanta and then internationally. Domestic flights are much better in the US, so it's no big deal to get a connection.

Love New Orleans. Wonderful history and very diverse culture. Someone who doesn’t know would mistake the people from there as all being of the same culture. But Cajun, creole, bayou, coast and beyond - not the same at all.

Because these are different countries, with completely different cultures, languages etc?

There is a stark class divide in the US and leave allotment is one obvious marker. Lots of people have plenty of vacation time, plus other types of personal leave. It just isn’t universally available.

to travel just within the country takes time. A flight to visit my father is 5 hours. That is a huge improvement over where he used to live which was a 4 hour flight and then a 5 hour drive.

most overseas flights go out of a few hub cities. You have to get a connecting flight. So I might take a 5 hour flight, then get a second plane to a European destination.

there is little incentive to waste time on a plane when there are so many accessible travel options.

@GulfCoastBeachGirl dont tell them about the real florida
i live on the treasure coast have been here about 39 years
before 15 on east coast that was ruined
ya know what i mean

Well, this thread has been interesting and it inspired me to watch National Lampoon's Vacation, last night! I haven't seen it since the late 80s.

There are regions of the US that are so starkly different from each other that they might as well be different countries.

What explains the cluelessness of so many British about the US then, I wonder?

Jaysus, chip on yer shoulder much?

Are you seriously suggesting you've met Americans who have been mistaken about square mileage of different countries? Or is this a conversation you've been having in your own head with imaginary rude US citizens?

Thanks to the massive military industrial complex and huge economy, the rest of the world pretty much does revolve around the US. Apparently this reality presents problems for some. It's not that hard to understand - in the political, economic, and military senses, the US is a global centre of gravity. It has surpassed others with claims to that status since WW2.

FYI, the federal holidays involve closing of banks. Is that a bank holiday? Or do you prefer to split hairs for no apparent reason? There are also state and even county or city holidays.

There are eleven federal holidays this year. That's essentially eleven long weekends, with the exception of Thanksgiving, though many businesses give employees the day after Thanksgiving off, making it an even longer weekend. My local city observes all of the federal holidays and adds two more.

I'm baffled about the relationship between the alleged rudeness of 'some' Americans and the lack of passports, expired passports, etc. Surely keeping all of these people confined in the US is a Good Thing, if they're so insufferable?

Visuals can help. The first picture is a screenshot I made from thetruesize.com, which sounds a lot saucier than it is.

You can travel the equivalent of the west coast of Ireland to the western part of Kazakhstan and still be in the continental US.

The second is from mylifeelsewhere. The UK is tiny compared to the US. England is tinier.

So, in sum: in most places in the States, people drive to their closest airport, which tends to be a smaller one. They board a short flight, then change at a hub for an international flight. Big hubs include Atlanta, New York, Chicago, LAX, Dallas, etc. If you don't like it, blame Ronald Reagan, who deregulated the airlines.

But it's a big and spread-out country, and often people end up driving from one place to another. I have a co-worker who routinely drives 10 hours each way to see her mother, at least once a month if not more. I have a friend who drives from coast to coast every summer, stopping along the way. It took me a while to get used to, but now I don't blink an eye at it.

I work for the Tube in London and quite often chat with Americans. They see our country as very small so think that doing England in 3 days is doable. I do tell them our infrastructure is not efficient nor good value but they won't hear it. I say I've lived in the UK all my life and have not seen most of it. They want to see Stonehenge, Oxford, Cambridge, maybe Lands End and Edinburgh (not in England) and then move onto Europe.

I once had an American lady ask how to get to Dublin the following day for a day trip. I didn't understand...why didn't she book it in advance and why only a day??? I spent a weekend in Dublin once and didn't see everything. Ok, I found a nice pub, but still...

Americans like to tour, a fair bit. They don't stay in one place. They think they have to see a lot. I was once in Venice and overheard an American man soothing his young son who was having a tired tantrum that the schedule meant they had to be in Naples the next day. Venice to Naples? That's a bloody long way!

Going back to my chatty Americans in London they ask where I'm going for vacation and I might say, Crete or Majorca and they ask, "Is that it?" and yes, that's it. Americans travel differently. Many of them have ties to someone in Europe (a child at Uni is common) so they want to come over, see them and then use the opportunity to see the sights. Us Brits do tour, but slower. We spend longer in one place. Or we find a base, then do day trips.

I love Americans but their culture is very different. I haven't been to the USA yet. I'd live to go, but it would take several trips just to scratch the surface. It's vast.

This ^

A holiday in the States is a significant undertaking for most Brits, why wouldn’t a trip to Europe by an American not be considered the same?

Brits can more easily travel to and through Europe, proximity makes a big difference - it just so happens that means travelling across several international borders rather than crossing State lines. It doesn’t make us superior, it’s wholly a function of geography.

For us going to the Caribbean or Bahamas is a big deal, to them that’s probably like us going to the Canaries or Balearics.

The majority of Americans don’t even own a passport. The Americans we meet here or in Europe are wealthy. I used to attend an annual Education Conference in Florida and the teachers and lecturers I got to know only left their own State to attend the conference.

The majority of Americans don’t need a passport, in terms of holidays they can travel across 50 States with hugely differing landscape, weather and culture without leaving the country.

Perhaps they like where they live more than you like where you live😉