When returning from holiday, one starts to think of holidays

[fivemack]

By 'south of the Rio Grande', I mean 'into Mexico' rather than 'anywhere south of 31N' - I thought this was standard usage, but various of my friends in Cambridge interpreted it the other way.

[Poll #1545665]

Comments

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Does transiently crossing either circle in an aircraft count?

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

No; cross them with the deliberate intent of being on the other side.

Are there any routes that transiently cross the Antarctic circle? JNB to SCL still seems to be across the southern Atlantic.

[simont]

"I wish I were worse-travelled": only in a technicalities-count sort of sense. One instance of international travel in my past was at work's behest and didn't turn out to be particularly useful or productive, so if I'd been able to avoid going on it then my life would have been improved to the tune of lacking a week's worth of travel-related inconveniences (jet lag, airport stress, being stuck in a small and bookshopless town with nothing to do out of hours).

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I've hopped side to side on the Equator (on land luckily) and actually crossed the Andes by bus.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

What, all of them?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Assuming Australia is a continent this week (or is at least part of one that I haven't otherwise been on).

I'm pretty well-traveled for an American, anyway. Haven't been to South America or the Far East, or Antarctica.

Keeping track of the exact European countries I've visited is even harder than keeping track of the states, since it's all long ago (1967 and earlier, except for England).

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I usually figure there's an Australasian continent composed of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and various islands.

(PNG but not Indonesia because there's a massive sea trench between them, whereas the Torres Strait is so shallow that there used to be an Oz-PNG land bridge.)

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I got stamps from six in my last passport, but only have stamps from two in my current passport, though I have already got *thinks* three US stamps, one Canada and two NZ ones, though NZ is a borderline case because other schools of thought break up the continents differently. Must get round to getting a Europe one in it next time I go someplace in Europe - that was the last one for me to get last time :-).

I would very much like to go to Hawaii, Easter Island and the Galapagos, but I'm not quite sure which I'd count them as :-).

I answered yes to well-travelled, even though what I think is truer is "I spend a lot of time and money on nice holidays abroad and, indeed, am famed amongst some of my friends for this habit :-)". I don't go as often as you do, and I'm fairly conservative in where I do go.

[emperor]

Can I cite the Inca trail as a counter-example of being conservative in where you go? :)

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I don't think I go as far as you do - I don't often do two long-hauls in a year (err, um, actually I've got three planned this year, but Chicago is for work), whilst New Zealand is actually quite distant - and the Inca Trail is rather more strenuous than anything I've done.

Aren't nice holidays abroad pretty much what time and money are for ?

[naath.livejournal.com]

I feel either very ill travelled or very environmentalisty.

I have been "only" to France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Egypt (which brief transits through Belgium). Three of those only with my parents rather than once of an age to be picking my own holidays.

Even as much as 50 years ago I would probably have counted as reasonably well travelled, but these days it's much less than the norm (for Brits, anyway).

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I feel either very ill travelled or very environmentalisty.

I have reservations about the use of "well-travelled" as an exact synonym for "widely-travelled". (Noting that I claim to be neither.) I don't have neat definitions for how I perceive the two, and I do tend to believe there's a positive correlation between the two, but width for width's sake is not necessarily something I would care to associate with any form of the word "good".

...he wrote, jealously.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, actualy, I'm not sure whether the LHR-SFO great circle crosses the arctic circle or not. I fed it to a great circle plotter and it looked close - however the map didn't have the arctic circle marked on it.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Not sure either, I flew LHR-LAX out and SFO-LHR back and I'm not sure we went *that* far north ... but I'm sure my SAS flight to Japan that went north of Russia must have crossed!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_circle

[ckd]

I've done a fair amount of US/Canada travel, popped into Mexico (walked across the border near San Diego, then walked back, just to have done it...disappointingly, did not get a passport stamp), made a number of trips to Europe, and spent a long weekend in Tokyo. (Mileage run; cheap BOS-NRT fare + double miles bonus == buckets of FF miles.)

I can't count passport stamps, though; I haven't had my passport stamped on EU entry in over a decade (since I picked up Irish citizenship) and my US passport is only sometimes stamped when I re-enter the US.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to be greener atm. I'd like to cross the Atlantic by boat or Russia by train sometime.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

I have never left the country except for work purposes; that hasn't stopped me from padding out work trips to see the sights and enjoy the culture, though.

[carbonel]

I don't really have sufficient data to judge fivemack's level of travelledness.

[ellarien]

I arrived east of Suez (Beijing) by going west over the IDL; does that count?

Never been to Antarctica, but I have shared an office with someone who went on to overwinter there more than once, and know/work with a few people who've been to the South Pole to do solar observations.

Edit: and Romania wasn't quite in the EU when I went there in 2006, so I didn't count it.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

why is the antarctic only imporant if you've visited at least four other continents? What's wrong with Three+Antarctic? (not that I have, but just the questions seemed unbalanced!)

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

The Antarctic's generally not the first place anyone goes, and unless you live in South America (and I don't think I have any South American-resident readers, though I know khalinche goes there a lot) you're going there via South America. So I'd be really very surprised if anyone filled in 2+Antarctic or 3+Antarctic, and I thought the distinction between 'all six non-antarctic' and 'six including Antarctica' was worth making.

[gnimmel.livejournal.com]

My interactions with Antactica were limited to a summer working at the British Antarctic Survey. Although the job was at a desk in Cambridge, the introductory safety talk didn't distinguish between people going South and people whose most dangerous task was to hold a pencil. So I learnt a lot about elephant seals.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I thought it was the leopard seal that you had to be particularly wary of (http://www.rosssea.info/, last paragraph), though maybe they're the ones that will sometimes decide that a diver in the water looks crunchy, whilst an elephant seal might roll four tons over onto someone who prods it with a stick [1]

[1] where they found a stick in Antarctica is a more interesting question

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Definitively visited: Ireland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg, Greece. Stopped long enough in Austria for a photograph. Waited around in a train station in Belgium, but calling that a "visit" is a bit dubious. I didn't count Wales and Scotland, they are countries and certainly in the EU but I guessed that you meant "member states". I didn't count the UK.

The only non-EU country I've visited is Switzerland.

[lnr]

I counted the UK, and assumed the 0 option was for non-EU citizens, rather than EU citizens who have not visited any member state other than their own. My only non-EU country is in another continent - Morocco.

Those who've been to Aus or NZ tend to have stopped in interesting places on the way, even if they haven't visited them otherwise, which I think is terribly unfair :)

[cjwatson]

I have all six non-Antarctic continents, but only by virtue of having stopped off in Colombo airport on the way to Sydney and Hong Kong airport on the way back. I didn't go through immigration in either case.

[redbird]

I may have technically crossed the Arctic Circle on a Seattle-Hong Kong flight, but that was a non-stop. I did enjoy the views of Siberia and the Sea of Okhotsk, if that counts.

And I'm not sure how many EU countries I can count—two for real, and two where I never left the airport—but your poll is so constructed that both numbers lead to the same answer.

[ice-hesitant.livejournal.com]

Oops, I think I overstated the number of EU countries I've visited, as I spent my time in Lithuania desperately trying to sleep on the bus from Warsaw to Riga and therefore it should not count.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I think of myself as well-travelled because I travel a lot, even though I tend to revisit the same countries.