To not want to spend £5000 on a holiday?

[roland83]

There's only me and my partner, we both earn 30k a year each.

When we look at holidays I hate the idea of going Turkey / Spain etc for £500-£1000, but everywhere I want to go such as Las Vegas, Canada etc are just ridiculous money! £5000 for around 10 days, not including food and drinks.

We are savings for our first house, so it's not really a big issue as the choice between house deposit and holiday is obvious.

I've been Turkey, Egypt, Spain and similar and I find it a bit crap. I don't want to sit by the pool/beach all day getting a tan, I want culture.. but all the day trips are rubbish and crowded. I want to go to Las Vegas and visit the Hoover Dam, Area 51, Grand Canyon but when you work out a realistic price it's astronomical!

So, is it me? AIBU to think all the decent holidays are overpriced and now I'm in my 30's £5k on a holiday seems crazy when I could get a lot more for my money on other things?

[DisappointedOne]

"Fly to San Francisco
Spend a few days there mooching around the city. It's amazing.
Hire a car
Drive across the Bay Bridge and head out to Yosemite
Carry on going. Drive across Death Valley
Cross the border into Nevada and drive to Vegas
Spend 4 nights there, you can easily visit the Hoover Dam etc on day trips in your rented car.
Drive out of Vegas back into CA and through the Mojave desert
Go to LA
Drive up the Pacific Highway, visiting lovely small towns on the way.
Go back to San Francisco"

Did this in reverse. Best holiday ever.

[LulaPalooza]

Fly to San Francisco
Spend a few days there mooching around the city. It's amazing.
Hire a car
Drive across the Bay Bridge and head out to Yosemite
Carry on going. Drive across Death Valley
Cross the border into Nevada and drive to Vegas
Spend 4 nights there, you can easily visit the Hoover Dam etc on day trips in your rented car.
Drive out of Vegas back into CA and through the Mojave desert
Go to LA
Drive up the Pacific Highway, visiting lovely small towns on the way.
Go back to San Francisco

I did all of the above except LA when I was slightly younger than you. We did the whole trip on a budget of £1500, including food. We stayed in decent hotels, ate well and drove a convertible! This was 10 years ago so things will be pricier now (plus we got our flight tickets on a special offer through collecting vouchers in one of the red tops) but I still reckon you could easily do that trip for £3.5k all in, including food and drinks, if you go in June or October.

[momb]

I love a prawn cocktail, beef wellington and a proper black forest gateau.

[momb]

Area 51 is a fenced area in the desert. You'll see nothing, though if you are really lucky some soldiers will come along in a jeep to tell you to move along. You could have the same experience (without sunburn) at Porton Down for £20!!!

[Nationaltrusthandbook]

er yeah whatever MoanCollins . I just like talking about travelling, not sure about being a noveau riche backpacker though !

[5Foot5]

MoanCollins - the OP is looking for holiday advice with a budget of potentially up to 5K (but preferably less) People are offerings suggestions and sharing their experiences. How is that a stealth boast?

[5Foot5]

Canadian Rockies would be fantastic..

I'd like a driving holiday, I love driving,

We would love to go to Banff,

Maybe hire an RV and tour the Rockies then!
We have done this twice. First time was just DH and I and we took 3 weeks over it. Started in Vancouver and explored that area a bit then picked up the RV, drove to Banff/Lake Louise and up the IceFields Parkway to Jasper and back a different way.

Second time we had a 9yo DD and only 2 weeks so we flew to Calgary so we could be at the Rockies in less time but still did Banff and Jasper.

Very memorable - but not cheap! However, if you can go outside of the school holidays you can probably make a saving and it will be less crowded

[MoanCollins]

This thread is such a stealth boast....in the worst, most noveau riche kind of a way. I've just cringed reading it. I just have this mental image in my head of my Grandmother wincing every other sentence. Discussing salaries and how much things cost and things the OP thinks are frightfully sophisticated but, er, aren't.

It's like somebody in the early 80s bringing out Prawn Cocktail, Beef Wellington and Black Forest Gateau on their hostess trolley and expecting everybody to tell them how frightfully smart they are.

[OnceUponATimeAgain]

India was fantastic 6 yrs ago - 2 weeks in goa - family of 4 2,200 - watch out for visas now though,
Food is dead cheap - not many places i've been that i want to go back to, but india... definately!

[Nationaltrusthandbook]

bedraggled I spend my entire life dreaming about travelling!

I have 3 children and they are over 10 but under 13 - we've done a little bit with them but not proper backpacking yet. We are going to America and doing a roadtrip in an RV this summer, no real plan just driving around a few of the national parks. We went to Asia last year Malaysia and Bali, stayed at pre- booked places though. As they get older I will get more adventurous with them.

Vietnam could be doable with children in a backpacker fashion I reckon.

[bedraggledmumoftwo]

Is it so hard to believe how cheap third world countries are? I remember loving Argentina when they had just had a market crash. We were having a splurge- £5 a night for a double room with tv and private bathroom, overnight cama(lie flat seat) buses for £5-10 and went to nice restaurants where a good steak the size of your plate was £1 and a nice bottle of malbec was £1! Then we crossed into brazil and had a heart attack at the prices, even though they were still cheap by English standards. Same when we arrived in cape town after paying peanuts all the way through Africa. Everything is relative, and if you don't want first class luxury and venture outside first world countries you can survive on very little!

Goes off dreaming about travelling... How old do you think they need to be before I can take them with? Or do I need to wait till they leave home...?

[TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams]

//www.exodus.co.uk for interesting "packages" but the USA can be done much more cheaply than £5k

[TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams]

Check out this website. We did a fly drive holiday a few years back in Andalucia using some of these locations for accommodation. Some of the buildings are stunning and in amazing locations. The Spanish government has funded the conversion of old castles and monasteries etc into small hotels. Most are quite reasonable especially away from the tourist hotspots.
www.parador.es/en

[2rebecca]

For culture go to Greece. See the acropolis and then go round the Pelopponese visiting Mycenae, Olympia etc. Climb Mount Olympus, go to beaches.
Even the orient express to Venice doesn't cost 5k for 2.

[Nationaltrusthandbook]

Asia is middling cheap, India is seriously cheap but you will spend half of it with your head down the loo. I've travelled there 5* and seriously roughing it for months, somewhere in-between budget wise would probably have been best. Got ill on both trips though it has to be said !

[sleepyhead]

I don't enjoy package holidays, and have avoided them since I used to go on last minute, picked off Teletext, boozy weeks in the sun when I was 18-25.

However, I do love the planning, dreaming, booking and experiencing a bespoke holiday. I think the planning and anticipation is at least 25% of the fun.

I did a great USA East Coast multicentre trip with a friend (Boston, New York, a mini road trip to West Virginia) pre dh. Driving in the USA is a piece of piss. Huge automatics with cruise control and petrol is v cheap.

For our honeymoon we flew to the South of France for a week, TGV to Avignon for a week & car hire so we could tour around, TGV to Paris for a few days and then home.

Holidays post-dc have mainly been in the UK, but the times we've been abroad (Barcelona, rural France) again it's all been done with budget airlines, car hire and self catering accommodation or hotels book direct. Never had a bad experience.

My holiday budget has always been very frugal and I think you get so much more for your money, tailored to your own personal preferences, if you take the effort to plan, source, and book each part yourself.

[shovetheholly]

It shouldn't cost anything like that, where on earth are you looking?!

Go to Skyscanner, search for cheap flights. You should be able to get a return to the States for £500 or less.

Go to Airbnb and find suitable accommodation, much cheaper than hotels.

You should be able to get an absolutely amazing holiday in stunning accommodation for less than £2k not including food.

[OnIlkleyMoorBahTwat]

Nothing wrong with backpacking, it's the impossibly small budgets that often seem to be quoted. I know the cost of living in Asia is very low but some costs stated seem to be impossibly small.

On Mumsnet a holiday seems to be one of:

Backpacking in Asia for a month for 1k per person (wouldn't the flight take almost all of that budget?)
Three weeks driving to the south of France all in for about 800

or

10k for a fortnight in Mallorca, in a villa near Puerto Pollensa naturally.
3k for a Monday to Friday break in a shed in the woods at Center Parcs.

No-one seems to have a normal holiday on a normal budget .

[GoodbyeToAllOfThat]

The US is great for a road trip. Our good friends bought a car on the west coast, sold it on the east coast and travelled for essentially the cost of petrol (possibly vice/versa).

I would give almost anything to have one year of pre-kid time back to do a continental trek.

[MaidOfStars]

I also take the view that if you can't have a better standard of living on holiday than you do at home then why go?

To experience how others live? To walk in their shoes?

[fullsuspension]

I know I won't be popular but I do sort of know what the OP means. It is possible to spend a huge amount of money on a very average holiday and not doing so does tend to take quite a lot of planning. Particularly if you want to see new and exciting things but also don't want to be too much out of your comfort zone. I also take the view that if you can't have a better standard of living on holiday than you do at home then why go? - I know that will be an anathema to lots of people but I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that.

The advantage the OP has is not yet being restricted to school holidays. In my pre-DS days I did a 2 week fly drive from San Antonio to LA via Vegas and SF, saw lots of amazing stuff and the total cost was about £1500pp (12 years ago). So it can be done. Others have suggested TrailFinders and I agree they are best for the sense of security you get from a package without the bad bits.

[Nationaltrusthandbook]

I agree bedraggled spent around 30K for two of us for 3 years. Sold everything to pay for it 20 years ago, don't regret a moment of it as would never be in that position again.

[bedraggledmumoftwo]

What is wrong with backpacking crowd, these are genuine experiences. My year was £10k. Just over £1k for rtw flights, so I guess average of £25 a day on the ground, lots of camping, hostels, self catering, but also a lot of amazing places and experiences, lots of alcohol, and the occasional splurge or expensive activity- mountain gorillas, elephant rides, lion walks, white water rafting, sandboarding, sky diving, a lot of scuba diving (inc padi) and skiing/snowboarding.

In fact the time in aus/ nz probably took the lions share cash wise. So maybe £35 a day there and less than £20 in poorer countries.

[Nationaltrusthandbook]

I was the 3 year backpacker and nope I can't and won't do the magic chicken now!

[Welshwabbit]

Er, that should be less than £5k obviously!