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?

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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).

[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.)

[tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com]

Astronomers regularly cross the antarctic circle to fly australia to chile via auckland.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I'm not sure how many EU countries I've *technically* been to because some of them weren't in the EU at the time and/or some of them were places I went through by coach.

I have accidentally found myself in a number of different countries and surprised that I had crossed the border without noticing. But those tend to be edge cases - e.g. that time I technically went to Italy *over* the very snowy Alps or that time when I thought the prices of everything were extortionate in a little village I visited on a boat trip on Lake Lémanuntil until I discovered that it was in France not Switzerland, so the prices were therefore *French* Francs not Swiss ones. Not that Switzerland is in the EU, of course.

And my African exploits so far have been limited to Egypt - I've not been Sub-Saharan Africa, which is completely different.

[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.

[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.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

What, all of them?

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

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

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

South America from Quito to Rio by land (except for a couple of flights across eastern Bolivia)

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

If you're lowering sea level, I think you get an extra continent of Zealandia before you get a dry path from Oslo to Sydney; it looks from the Google bathymetry, though I wish it had numbers on, that there's no path from Australia to New Zealand without crossing water deeper than any you'd encounter going Singapore - Borneo - bottom of Sulawesi - Maluku islands - western Irian Jaya.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, that's wide enough for the dip down to get far enough south ... I was thinking that Antarctica was so big, and the bottoms of Australia, Africa and South America so nicely laid out in thirds, that there wasn't a route that went right over the Antarctic continent.

[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.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I don't USUALLY go to NZ twice in a year ;-). I actually have a limit that I impose on myself of two trips abroad by plane per year. Last year, I actually only went on one *gasp* (because I had the second NZ trip planned for Feb of this year!).

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

I won't argue with that one :-).

This trip to NZ, I crossed the IDL in both directions and I can report that both ways are really confusing, even though it's easy enough to keep track in theory. In reality, if ONE timepiece ends up wrong and you wake up at 4am with an alarm, it is really hard to work out what went wrong where and what time it really is!

NZ is a really good way of picking up airports for a transited airports list - I think this trip was the only time I've not picked up a new airport! And the first time I've done the whole trip in only 4 flights (FTAOD, I'm defining it as a take off, followed by a flight followed by a landing, to maximise number of landings because those are the worst bit IMO). For comparison, last NZ trip had 6 flights (er, more if I count paragliding and parasailing ;-)), the first NZ trip had 11(!), Peru had 8.

[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]

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

[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!)