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Post by whollygoats on Apr 13, 2016 21:44:49 GMT
My experience is that there are variant 'travel' sytles. I suspect that it is probably a spectrum that runs from 'hanging around the hotel pool' to 'hiking miles into the jungle and tenting overnight'.
Me? I'm a 'rentlentless forced march' vacationer. I tend to want to cover as much ground as possible. I am not interested in the least in laying in the sun, or lollygagging around the hotel fitness room. I can layabout at home....Indeed, I do much of the time.
My wife had poolside tendencies...but she knew the forced march well. Indeed, in Israel, she was the pacesetter on the forced march.
I tried the poolside scene once, in Las Vegas. It doesn't suit me. And believe me, I don't think many fancy hotels want me hanging around their fancy pool.
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Post by Kye on Apr 14, 2016 2:22:42 GMT
I tend to have 2 styles. In a couple of weeks I'll be going to a resort in Mexico which will be strictly R&R. I will eat like a pig, drink like a fish, and lay around reading and snoozing. I love the fact that no one will be asking me to do anything.
My other travel style is to go on a trip to very different places and see a lot of different things. I went to Turkey, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Colombia, and next is India. When I do those trips I'm very active!
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Post by Mari on Apr 14, 2016 7:02:21 GMT
I prefer a mix of visiting friends and seeing local nature and (natural) history museums. I love leari new things and meeting new people and let things come as they may. I do like walking around a lot with a day off in between. No forced march for me. Just doing nothing isn't my thing either though.
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Post by juju on Apr 14, 2016 7:54:29 GMT
I have never, in my whole life, been on a relaxing 'poolside' style holiday. Or even a package deal. I'd actually really like to, for once! Before I had kids my holidays were backpacking, after kids mostly camping and then staying in basic gites. My kids aren't interested in beaches (we live near the sea anyway), they'd much rather explore a new city. No relaxation for me...!
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Post by whollygoats on Apr 14, 2016 18:46:45 GMT
I did the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.....meh.
Better was Maui. It was more 'hit the free beaches' rather than 'poolside'. Still, I learned to snorkel and swam with the sea turtles.
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Post by tangent on Apr 14, 2016 20:10:40 GMT
In my early 20s, my ideal holiday would have been trekking across the Canadian outback but now I have set my sights on a couple of revolutions around the earth in low earth orbit. Failing that, I don't mind lounging in the sun but I prefer to be a little active.
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Post by whollygoats on Apr 14, 2016 20:42:18 GMT
One big attraction to the poolside venues is that one need not pack, unpack, drag everything from one place to the next, and always worry about whether your bags are secured.
This was one of the attractions to the barging approach. In most cases, once on the vessel, you are stowed for the majority of the trip....you may have side jaunt options...you don't have to repack everything every day, but you are still moving from one destination to the next. A barge (or, I presume, a cruise ship) is like a floating mobile hotel room.
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Post by tangent on Apr 14, 2016 22:13:59 GMT
This is a barge.
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Post by Moose on Apr 14, 2016 22:18:48 GMT
That's surely a container ship.
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Post by whollygoats on Apr 15, 2016 1:56:52 GMT
This is a barge. Yes...So is this:
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Post by JoeP on Apr 15, 2016 17:29:55 GMT
THIS is a container ship Actually, so is this
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Post by whollygoats on Apr 15, 2016 18:04:49 GMT
:screwup:
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Post by whollygoats on Apr 15, 2016 18:05:25 GMT
This is a cruise liner, not a barge.
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Post by whollygoats on Apr 15, 2016 18:14:13 GMT
This is the ship we took from Amsterdam to Vienna, via the Rhine, Main, and Danube Rivers, and the canal which connects them. Not really a barge.
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Post by raspberrybullets on Apr 18, 2016 11:45:56 GMT
I quite like to settle in one place or a few places, but only so that I can explore them properly. I don't like to move from one place to the next frequently as I feel I spend more time travelling than seeing. Tour groups are exactly what I hate in a vacation as you never get a chance to be in depth in a place, they always move on too quickly. I never understand people who say things like "oh one day in Venice is enough" - I was in Venice for 4 days, didn't even leave for Burano or Murano which I wanted to see because I knew there wasn't enough time to see Venice itself! I'd rather miss seeing some things to see a few things properly. In our recent trip up the east coast of Oz there was too much time driving and not enough time exploring. When we did our holiday in the south of France we spent two and a half weeks just exploring not even a half of Provence, there was so much to see! I love to go walking and hiking in the countryside as well as seeing the towns. I love finding and eating the good food and wandering around absorbing it all. Then I feel like I can say I've been to a place. I've spent a few days just relaxing by a pool and beach in Thailand, and that was pretty nice. I kinda want to do that again - but even on those holidays we still go exploring.
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Post by whollygoats on Apr 18, 2016 20:26:18 GMT
I quite like to settle in one place or a few places, but only so that I can explore them properly. I don't like to move from one place to the next frequently as I feel I spend more time travelling than seeing. Tour groups are exactly what I hate in a vacation as you never get a chance to be in depth in a place, they always move on too quickly. I never understand people who say things like "oh one day in Venice is enough" - I was in Venice for 4 days, didn't even leave for Burano or Murano which I wanted to see because I knew there wasn't enough time to see Venice itself! I'd rather miss seeing some things to see a few things properly. In our recent trip up the east coast of Oz there was too much time driving and not enough time exploring. When we did our holiday in the south of France we spent two and a half weeks just exploring not even a half of Provence, there was so much to see! I love to go walking and hiking in the countryside as well as seeing the towns. I love finding and eating the good food and wandering around absorbing it all. Then I feel like I can say I've been to a place. I've spent a few days just relaxing by a pool and beach in Thailand, and that was pretty nice. I kinda want to do that again - but even on those holidays we still go exploring. Yeah...That's pretty much how I like to travel....Find a place which can serve as a sanctuary from which to explore the area around it for several days. Then, moving on to another sanctury for more explorations. One decision I made was mixed...to set us in Oxford, to explore the country around and access London by train. Oxford itself was a nice sanctuary and got us to Avebury and the Cotswolds, but it was a bad location to attempt to 'commute' to London. Cambridge is much better.
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Post by raspberrybullets on Apr 30, 2016 23:29:10 GMT
The good thing these days is you can find out so much before you go. I love to use the forums on tripadvisor for a wealth of info. Especially if you travel Europe - because the Americans want to know everything so anything you can think of that you might want to know, you'll find the answer on the tripavisor forums. Great to find out things like if a location will be of a useful distance to one place or another.
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