she's dreaming

[mrsbrown]

How have I spent thhe first hours of 2009? Mostly sleeping, but then I had breakfast and had a little kip. then I started investigating the rumour that I could fly to Pennsic (actually LA) for $1200.

It IS a rumour, those flights have to be taken before 16 June, which is a bit too early. I don't have that much leave, and th ehotels would eat up the savings.

Then I did a bit of work trying to work out where I could go if I had a month in the US to kill. So far the only thing on my list is Rocky Ridge Farm in the Ozarks.

After a bit more pootling around theh 'net, I went back to the flights website, reloaded and re-searched.

In the 2 hour gap it appears that new flights have ben released (or maybe I had overly restricted the airlines I was searching) and I could get to LA for $985 (or $1450 including taxes and charges) at the right time. hmmmmm....

Then I went into serious dreaming land and started asking more questions;

If I'm willing to spend that sort of money on travelling, maybe I could just go to Europe?

What is a Eurail pass, and why would you want one?

And I still don't understand. You can pay $245 to travel for 3 days in one country (Italy, for instance), but when you look up the cost of a train trip in that country, from one city (rome) to another (Bologna), it's about €23, or $50. I don't think I would want to travel further than that in one day. So without a Eurail pass, you would spend no more than $150ish. Can anyone clue me in?

Comments

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

trying to work out where I could go if I had a month in the US to kill.

You could come visit me!

[staranise.livejournal.com]

When we were in Italy we traveled around using the regular trains and it never cost us more than 30 euro for a trip and usually much less. I'm not sure what the advantages of traveling Eurail is. Could be safety - we were robbed by Gypsys getting on the train to Florence, but we were lucky and didn't lose anything of value. We did learn to check the entryway of a carriage to make sure it was clear before we got on :) Also on the regular trains a ticket didn't mean you had a seat - on one train I had to sit in the corridor with lots of other people, but that was only one out of about 10 trips I took. I hope that doesn't put you off because for the most part our train trips were great.

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Armchair travel.

Pennsic would be fun, but Europe might be funner. Hire a car/campervan?

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

Could you get a 'stopover' to somewhere in Europe en route to/from the US? Or vice versa?

[sjkasabi.livejournal.com]

Back in the mid 90s, I concluded Eurail passes were about making a profit out of Americans, and anyone else stupid enough to behave like one. They sell you the illusion you can sort it all out before you go, and you'll never have to communicate in a foreign language or anything. It was about the same then, and more flexible, to sort it out on the ground, and it sounds like it's way cheaper now.

Don't forget we're going to Turkey in a few years time either *g* But I would like to do Pennsic for the shopping one day.

[quatrefoil.livejournal.com]

Eurail can work, but it depends very much on what you plan to do, and how the exchange rate is doing at the time. It is aimed at the traveller who wants to see as much of Europe as possible in a limited amount of time. When I did my big fieldwork trip in 1998, Eurail was definitely the way to go - for 10 days of travel in 2 months, many of them of them long ones between countries. The good thing for me was that I could get to out of the way places by linking up several trips within a 24 hour period and it enabled me to meet the demands of an odd research schedule which required me to be in particular places at particular times. It also saved a lot of time and hassle in buying tickets - which sounds like laziness but actually meant that I could spend an extra hour doing something worthwhile. On other trips, though, it has indeed been better to buy tickets locally, or even better, on line from the relevant train network, who often do discounts for early bookings. A tip for travellers - if buying an international train ticket in Florence, do not under any circumstances buy it at the railway station - it will take all day. Buy it at the American express office in town.