Best Holiday Abroad: Choose Your Perfect Trip

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wolram
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What was your best holiday, was it a package holiday or did you just book a hotel, stay with relatives.
 
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I always find that spontaneous holidays are the best, when you just get up and go. Instant excitement, no time for it to properly sink in and get used to the idea.

I do prefer staying in hotels though.
 
I think my last real holiday was to Las Vegas. It was near Christmas and I decided I needed a break, so I booked a few days at the Luxor (Pyramid and Sphinx) hotel, and took both my girls, I thought they'd get a kick out of staying in a pyramid. We got upgraded to a luxury suite for free and they had the time of their lives with all of the site seeing along the hotel strip.
 
Aruba. Every year I get an all-expenses paid vacation to Aruba with the tax-payer picking up the bill.
 
Jimmy Snyder said:
Aruba. Every year I get an all-expenses paid vacation to Aruba with the tax-payer picking up the bill.

I hate you, lucky b*****d!

How'd you swing that one?
 
jarednjames said:
How'd you swing that one?
By paying taxes and picking up the bill for all expenses.
 
Jimmy Snyder said:
Aruba. Every year I get an all-expenses paid vacation to Aruba with the tax-payer picking up the bill.

I just looked Aruba up, it looks very nice.
 
Jimmy Snyder said:
By paying taxes and picking up the bill for all expenses.

I didn't know you could 'claim back' your taxes for a holiday. No wonder we're in such a state financially! :eek:

I assume it's because you over pay and get a refund?
 
jarednjames said:
I didn't know you could 'claim back' your taxes for a holiday. No wonder we're in such a state financially! :eek:

I assume it's because you over pay and get a refund?

(I think Jimmy was making a funny...)
 
wolram said:
I just looked Aruba up, it looks very nice.
It's a very tiny island. There used to be a natural bridge, but it caved in. They used to have a water park, but it went bankrupt. There's really nothing to do but get up at noon, sit in a beach chair and watch the sun set all day long. If you like para-sailing, scuba-diving, or wind-surfing, you could do that. But I just sit, read, and unwind. Look for me there in March next year.
 
Aruba was a favorite of our salesmen, back when I worked in the real world.

Any of several trips to Hawaii would be on the top of my list. On one trip we rented a house on the beach near North Shore [big waves!]. It came with all the comforts of home and a well-stocked library. It was also about fifteen steps from our back door to snorkeling in an underwater marine park.

We got a kick out of the family next door. Every day when dad got home from work, or in the late afternoon, the entire family would grab spears and snorkels and head into the water. Eventually they emerged from the water with a wide variety of fish, which were then BBQd. This was the routine every day we were there.
 
They were spearfishing in an underwater marine park? That's generally a no-no...
 
berkeman said:
They were spearfishing in an underwater marine park? That's generally a no-no...

They would swim out beyond the reef that bordered the park. It was only about a hundred yards to the blue water.
 
My wife and I used to 4-wheel drive to the end of a very nasty mud-hole of a road (loaded with rocks designed to take out your truck's oil-pan), and set up camp on the shore of a remote trout pond. Tent, portable camp-kitchen, propane lanterns, books, canoe, fly-rods, and some baked beans, potatoes, onions, bacon and biscuits. We'd stay for as long as we could, and try to get up there a couple of times every season. We always had the place to ourselves, except in the evenings when locals would drive in and launch their canoes from the other shore to do a bit of fishing when the mayfly hatches came on. There's nothing like catching a 15-16" wild brookie on a light fly rod!
 
Ivan Seeking said:
Aruba was a favorite of our salesmen, back when I worked in the real world.

Any of several trips to Hawaii would be on the top of my list. On one trip we rented a house on the beach near North Shore [big waves!]. It came with all the comforts of home and a well-stocked library. It was also about fifteen steps from our back door to snorkeling in an underwater marine park.

We got a kick out of the family next door. Every day when dad got home from work, or in the late afternoon, the entire family would grab spears and snorkels and head into the water. Eventually they emerged from the water with a wide variety of fish, which were then BBQd. This was the routine every day we were there.

Sounds like heaven, i love fresh bbqd fish.
 
wolram said:
Sounds like heaven, i love fresh bbqd fish.

This is the best part: The house cost us about 1/3 the price of a nice hotel! I don't know if these folks just underestimated the market, or if they just didn't care, but it should have cost much much more than it did. We found it on the internet and jumped when we saw it.

From what I've been told [Tsu has a cousin over there], that house is now worth millions of dollars.
 
There was particularly interesting aspect of that trip. We became friends with a very old Japanese man who lived across the street. He lived in Hawaii and had a bird's-eye view when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Being that he was Japanese, he was immediately directed to a prison camp where he was held until the end of the war. After he was finally released, he remained in Hawaii. He loved talking about his life I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about his experiences. It was a chance to experience a big piece of history through the eyes of a kindly old man who had lived it. What a treat!

I remember asking him if he ever thought of leaving Hawaii. He dismissed the question as silly. "Why on Earth would anyone want to live anywhere else?", he asked.

Something else that came to mind was an innocent question posed to a local commercial fisherman. I asked if they ever dive off the boat and go for a swim while they're out fishing. His eyes got big as he laughed at me while saying something like "Man are you crazy?? You don't swim in the blue water [deep water]. You're just fish food out there!"

Hmmmm, dumb haole am I. Apparently any child knows that you can fish the outside of the reef, but you don't venture out beyond that into the blue water. And even there you always watch for sharks.
 
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Soooo woolie, are you planning a trip abroad...maybe with a broad :biggrin:?
 
I enjoyed Nova Scotia.

My favorite trip (not vacation, but a technical conference) was to Pamporovo in the Rhodopian Mountains in Bulgaria near the Greek border. I was such as relaxing environment, and I met some really great people. At the end of the trip, I spent a wonderful Sunday in Sofiya before running off on a business trip to Graz, Austria, which turned out to be a lot of fun. Prior to arriving in Pamporovo, I spend two days in Bucureşti, Romania with a friend. I stayed in the apartment that he shared with his parents. They were so wonderful, and they gave me a bottle of homemade Ţuică. I would love to return to Bucureşti and София, and spend more time in România and България, and also visit Türkiye and Македонија.
 
I've never really gone on holiday, unless you count the beach town 140 miles from my house in the American equivalent of the Great British seaside holiday.
 
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lisab said:
Soooo woolie, are you planning a trip abroad...maybe with a broad :biggrin:?
I was waiting for someone to say "A few days on a trout pond? That's not abroad." just so I could spring that one. :biggrin: My wife and I never got the urge to blow money on foreign travel. There's a lot of great relaxing places right here.
 
turbo-1 said:
I was waiting for someone to say "A few days on a trout pond? That's not abroad." just so I could spring that one. :biggrin: My wife and I never got the urge to blow money on foreign travel. There's a lot of great relaxing places right here.
The company where I used to work had a program which required staff to travel abroad - usually twice to Europe and once to Japan each year at a minimum. Three managers with whom I worked took advantage of that to take their wifes on vacations in Europe or Japan. Usuaully they accumulated enough frequent flyer miles that the wives' travel was free. The company paid for their airfare and hotel. Nice deal it was.

I always enjoyed my trips to Europe and Japan, even if I had back-to-back trips to Europe then Japan.
 
lisab said:
Soooo woolie, are you planning a trip abroad...maybe with a broad :biggrin:?

I was thinking about it, though i couldn't afford any where exotic.

As for the broads, i was thinking of picking up 4 or 5 there.
 
I could arrange maybe another attempt to a PF group holiday in South France?