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My wife and I were lamenting the fact that we never travel anymore. It seems like every time we log onto social media, all of our friends are travelling all over the place. Then I looked at my instagram and realized that our three year old daughter has been to LA, Miami, DC, Chicago, Toronto and San Juan, all since she could walk.

This isn't a stunt post. With the exception of Toronto (which was a 5 hour road trip) and Puerto Rico, all of these were conferences or family visits. They weren't vacations, so it didn't FEEL like travelling.

It's incredibly easy to discount your own good fortune you while watching the highlight reels of other people's lives. This is why no one in America thinks they're rich. They spend all of their time noticing how much richer other people are.

but i'm also single with no kids, so it's not that hard.

fortunately we got a lot done before having our first.

I watch folks doing it big living fabolous life and I have to remind myself "Yo that dude lives in his mom basement". "That chick can't keep a dude for nothing and is constantly my girl crying".

I've kind of made a point of stopping sharing vacation picks because I don't want to participate in that BS.


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we have averaged 3-4 intl vacations per yr for the last 8 yrs or so
and we travel within the US often
this is one thing im scared of with twins
we plan/hope to do a lot of traveling before they are two since the price for us to fly will double so quickly
i wld rather spend money on traveling than a big house, a nicer car, jewelry, etc
like i cant think of one thing other than maybe good meals & drinks we spend $ on

Yes, they fly free, but nap-time, 7-9pm bedtimes and the inability to understand time-zones will fuck a vacation AWL the fuck up.

i'm refusing to listen to anything anyone has to say unless its positive to be real with you
and i am fully prepared to have reality smack me in the face, however ...
we need to see that for ourselves
a lot of our friends have travelled pretty extensively with kids under two and havent had issues
and i realize it will be a very different experience with kids than without
and we're gonna try it with two so obviously that is different but i'm just gonna see what we can handle
my mother in law flew back and forth between nigeria and the US with two kids under 5 alone for years, pretty frequently
shes the role model here

Here's my experience:

We went hardcore on the sleep-training and it took. My daughter went to bed every night at 8pm. She woke up on her own at 7 am and napped for 1-1.5 hours starting anytime from noon to 1:30. That makes travelling difficult because we had to allot 2 hours in the middle of the day for nap and had to be back in the hotel by 8pm. When we went to LA, she didn't adjust to the time zones, so she would fall asleep at 5:30 pm and wake up at 4am. That trip made us cancel our trip to Korea. We weren't about to have her on a completely reversed am/pm shcedule, and on the off chance we could get her to adjust, we didn't want to spend that much money, travel that far to lose 2 hours every day to nap and be in our hotel by 8pm every night.

>we have averaged 3-4 intl vacations per yr for the last 8 yrs
>or so

our condo was well below market value when we bought it as a foreclosure
some friends made fun of it bc it was small but guess who sipped the equivalent of their mortgage on beaches in costa rica that year?
no tv, no cable, no fancy clothes, one car and a CTA pass, etc
all of that adds up to some nice trips
and airbnb makes it really affordable

I've never had money to travel AND free time, post-college.

3-4 international vacations a year just seems hard to do based on the time alone. you're U.S. based, right? not like you live in France and you're talking about popping over to Germany?

Where were your last several international vacations if you don't mind me asking?

I need to stop spending money on nonsense and live more like you. I'm for real jealous.

.

to quote now-domesticated OKP deeborjam, "shit is like a chiclet, chew it up til it don't have any flavor, spit it out and pop in another piece"

that's how i feel about cities, scenes, etc. at one point i had my life split between four different places and right now i'd say it's more like two with several sort of secondary pied a terre type shits.

sometimes it gets awkward splitting time but not really. i kind of go hard with relationships (friendship, romance, family, etc) when i can and do a good job staying in contact from afar. my work is cool, shit half the people there are living out of a suitcase anyway (traveling and roving reporters). for me i do limited work travel and a lot for leisure, but the understanding is there about things like LDRs and weird schedules.

i think that is probably my biggest fear about marriage, kids, a contract job, etc. just having to be in the same place at the same time every day, each day passing quicker than the last. i see some of my married friends happy but only in a relative way.

Maybe once this bitch Sallie Mae gets her claws out of me...

You going to Pamplona this year?

My wife is on board, but she also wants to go. I've got one friend 100% committed, and another about 60% on board. Both are single. I don;t want to take her, but it's hard to say "this is the big thing I want to do for my 40th and you're excluded".

I'll decide for certain by the end of Jan. If I don't do Pamplona, we'll go to Italy.

got some flight alerts set up.

it's definitely no better than 50/50 right now, but i'm hoping for it.

are there specific reasons you don't want your wife to come? it's not a hedonism type party or anything, there's plenty of families there. i don't know anything about you and your wife's travel habits though, though.

but no one wants to be the ONE guy who brings his wife.

i can see that.

go with her to italy then send her to san sebastian while you're in pamplona, haha.

not nearly enough and this needs to change in 2015.

Aruba?
Turks & Caicos?
Bahamas?
Jamaica?

...or a Caribbean cruise?
Alaskan cruise?

so, yeah.

ya'll go on annual trips together as a group?

that's cool. especially with those sorts of destinations.

atlantic city, berlin, san fran, prague, munich, vegas, grand canyon,
death valley. going to amsterdam in a couple of weeks. hope to
continue this trend next year.


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Just came back from a month in AU/NZ. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm not a huge fan of driving trips and don't like taking the kids on vacation........cuz that aint vacation lol.

my kids have seen different parts of the county. some with me and some with grandmas. they've been to LA, Detroit, DC, and somewhere in TN, and few spots in FL.

we def travel a lot

This year I've taken 3 trips within the states, a 4th one coming up this weekend. One international trip.
More than some folks less than some others.

the one semi-guaranteed trip is the one to FL to see my dad and co
last year I went to Colorado (new for me)
year before did Europe
I'm not counting Colombia due to the obvious plus I'm hoping to be back next year.

2015 is

- Virgin Islands
- Dominica
- Hong Kong
- London
- Australia (maybe)
- New Orleans

I used to have to travel quite a bit for one of my former jobs (bank auditor) and I got burned out because it wasnt for pleasure.

Then we both started working in non profit and you know how that pay is.

We are finally getting stabilized $$ so we are trying to step the game up.

We just got back from Nassau. We will probably will hit Sedona and Toronto in 2015.

And I am going to NY/NJ in 2015 probably by my damn self because people keep flaking on me.
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my grandpa used to fly planes for air india so we got tickets pretty cheap.

next year i got south america on the docket.

this past year i scratched cambodia/malaysia off the list.

ive been to 33 countries IIRC

The USA, Canada, Mexico, Bahamas, Paris and London all by the time I was 15. I've always been so proud of her for that. She was middle class my whole life but instead of spending money on 1000 dollar bags or Mercedes Benz or beamers she made sure her son saw as much of the world as possible. She loved travel and I likewise love it too.

I go on at least 3 major trips a year, not mention visiting friends and fam in dc/Bmore, NYC, Philly , STL, Chicago and Miami is a getaway to me, hit that up at least once a year

but i'm focusing on other stuff right now. i still go abroad at least once a year though.

A decent amount for work - this year I went to Montreal, Portland, New York (twice), Seattle, and Temecula.

For fun - went to Vegas (3 times), Portland, and Hawaii.

So yeah, I guess I travel a lot.

Or when I do travel for personal reasons, it's to Memphis or DC (places I've been millions of times) to see family.

There's this app called BEEN where you select all the places you've been. I've only been to 2% of the world, but 56% of the US. I'm trying to increase that to 5% of the world and 60% of the US by the end of 2015.

I work in international education so we do our trainings basically 5 weeks in late august/september.

went to Guyana right after my bday in August, then Boston, Kosovo, & Turkey. stayed in each place about a 8 days. swing by Berlin for 5 days, then Budapest for 5. went to Mardi Gras for the first time this year. Went to NY for Governor's Ball. And then I usually do 2.5 weeks in CA around xmas.

luckily working in ed, the end of the year is really slow so we get very lenient "work from home" rules.

I try to do two new countries a year; this year it was Germany & Hungary.


2015's shaping up well. Gonna be in The Town the first week of the year. I'm doing Iceland in May for a friend's music festival, may try to hit one more spot in the area. Really hoping to make Cuba pop off early in the year. Mardi Gras pt.2 is def an option.