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 😉

What causes this phenomena where someone asks about the US, then posters who obviously know little to nothing about the US start answering and using terms like “the vast majority”?

I am also beyond baffled by someone who knows or meets a few Americans, talks to them a few minutes and then believes they are representative of all Americans.

and this. A bunch of teachers you hung out with told you they never left their own state before except to attend a conference? People traveling tell you all about their wealth? I submit this is your own confirmation bias or else you are attracting specific types of people.

I can't comment much on US citizens vacations, but my cousin who lives in Canada told me it's cheaper for us to fly to Vegas than it is for her, which astounded me. Its a 4 hour flight for her and about 11 for us.

What is your source for that statistic? In the US, it's stratified by how long you've been working and the position level.

What is the average vacation time?

According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the average vacation time is 10-14 days per year after one year of service. Once an employee has accumulated 10 years of service, the average increases to about 15-19 days per year. Employees can use these days to request time off work outside of the regular weekend. Paid vacation time, in particular, means you can expect regular wages during your leave.

It's also negotiable, which gives employees and employers flexibility. And there is a Federal minimum wage. 99% of workers make more than it, as state minimum wages are higher.

Nearly 99% of US hourly workers earn more than the federal minimum wage

Perhaps you should do a bit more research before posting assertions without specific factual sources.

Well in my native Scandinavian country, you know one of those “happiest nations”, you have to build up your holiday allowance as well. No-one there is crying it’s a disgrace…

I have a small business with many of my customers being in the US. They have all been fab, generous and friendly. We’ve also been to US many times, met Americans in the UK and on our other travels and they’ve all tend to be friendly and often quite disarming even. Maybe we’ve just been lucky! I never understand the “all the americans are ignorant” posts 🤷‍♀️

I really want to visit Michigan too!! Especially so because it has the largest number of people of Scandinavian heritage. I find the immigration history fascinating and would love to visit the places named after my home country.

You have to build up your holiday allowance in France too, but at least you get a lot more of it once you have.

10-14 days after a year is fuck all.

As the old saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Due to lower productivity, median income and per capita GDP are much lower in the UK than in the US. The median income is $25,332 in the US vs $18,133 in the UK. Per capital GDP in the US is $65,297 vs $49,931 in the UK. So you get more time off on average, but we have a substantially higher standard of living.

Median Income by Country 2023

You also have higher structural unemployment due to the higher costs and lower productivity per employee.

As the old saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

No such thing as free healthcare either, if you live in the US.

I’m not convinced that an American without a passport, who has travelled extensively around their country, and into those that don’t require Americans to have a passport, is inherently going to be less cultured than a Brit who has a passport and uses it to go all inclusive to Benidorn or Lanzarote once a year.

I prioritise the rights of everyone to access free universal health care and to have a minimum of 4 weeks vacation leave, as well as the right to go about in society without the threat of being gunned down or risking my children's lives by sending them to school;

Surely that’s more an accident of birth though, had you been born elsewhere your values would likely broadly reflect the society you grew up in. So if you’d been born in the States you might have a more individualistic, capitalist value base.

Its funny how Brits go on about travel and the need to experience different cultures, while being pretty intolerant and mocking of US culture.

Of course you do. And look at the standard of that health care. Wonderful, isn't it?

Actually....

I do have free healthcare. My husband's former (he is retired) employer pays the cost of our health insurance. We do pay a $15.00 copay for some services, but the majority cost us nothing. And here's the good part: If I need to see a doctor, even a specialist, I call the office and make an appointment. That's it.

Is my situation unusual? No. Does every American have this? No.

America will never move towards a universal healthcare system because the majority don't want it. And that's just the way it is.

And what any of this has to do with vacations, I haven't a clue. But it always devolves into this because there seems to be a strong need for some people to convince themselves that Americans have it so, so bad. I wonder why that is?

Back to the vacations.

Been planning a US road trip - but we would just focus on 1 area.
It's obvious how varied and big the US is, with so many opportunities for sight seeing, relaxing etc.

I love going to Europe as we get the chance to see totally different cultures, different languages everything. It just feels really different.

If I lived in the US though - there is so much opportunity to see and do stuff.

"I'm alright Jack."

@petermaddog Your secret is safe with me! I wouldn't dream of telling anyone that the Treasure Coast is beautiful and not overwhelmed with tourists😀BTW, my mother grew up in Stuart and that's where she married my father. There was a naval base there during WWII, which is how they came to meet. I still have family in Jupiter, etc.

But it would be the same in the U.K. if we didn't neeed a passport to leave Europe.

I have welfare moms in family, pretty sure they & their kids got completely free medical, but not dental treatment. My dad is not paying much, now he's on Medicare.

Problem with calculating how much paid vacation time people got... I admit I'm out of touch. It was a big deal in ~1990 when my employer brought in medical insurance as part of our employment (business employed about 50 people). We certainly never had any paid time off, it's not a right to have that even now in California. If 30% of Americans are self-employed plus 15% of all hours worked are on casual contracts (no benefits): well, we all know how bad self-employed people are at taking time off. Public sector jobs are better for benefits like how many vacation days you get. But most Americans I find staying in UK, it's for things like so much vacation time & "free" medical.

I don't understand how they would manage to go abroad with such little annual leave. Dh was offered a job in usa but declined it because of the low annual leave.

In response to the title question, “How do Americans do holidays?”, I’ve just remembered that a favourite Michiganer summer weekend trip is a raft-off: you get together with all your friends, tie a load of plastic kayaks and inflatable dinghies together into a raft, fill up your coolers with beer, and just float off down a river or lake together like that for hours becoming steadily more inebriated until you find somewhere on the shore you like the look of to camp out. When DH first told me about it I was utterly baffled, but it’s great fun!

On the contrary, the standard of living in the US - low minimum wage, shootings, low healthcare, indicates a seriously low standard of living.

Well average wages are lower in the UK than the US overall, with lots of people stuck on zero-hour contracts.

It's true there is less gun crime in the UK but there is still plenty of violent crime, gangs, county lines, etc -- it's so MN middle class bubble to think there aren't lots of parents in the UK worried about their children's safety.

And it boggles the mind that anyone in the UK could still be bragging about the NHS, with the state it's in. Free healthcare doesn't mean anything if you can't actually get any healthcare!

There's plenty of suffering on both sides of the Atlantic, I don't know why some people here are so determined to bang on about US problems on threads about travel or food or TV. It's like if I were haunting the UK Travel board and constantly posting about how shit the Tories are.

I don't know why some people here are so determined to bang on about US problems on threads about travel or food or TV. It's like if I were haunting the UK Travel board and constantly posting about how shit the Tories are.

They do it to big themselves up. It's a symptom of lost empire syndrome.

Ha! I saw that over the 4th of July weekend. We sailed out on Lake Michigan and watched the fireworks. It’s such a beautiful state.

some photos from Mackinac Island, Petsokey/Harbor Springs, and our nightly visitor to the front yard. It’s one of my favorite places in the world.

@whumpthereitis What's the best time to visit Mackinac Island? Is it like Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket where high season is just too crowded?