The New Travel Thread: Now with write ups in the OP

Discussion in 'The Mainboard' started by Jax Teller, Apr 8, 2015.

  1. Where Eagles Dare

    Where Eagles Dare The Specialist Show On Earth
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    Be careful bud, this is how I got my wife pregnant in Ubud
     
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  2. Lyrtch

    Lyrtch My second favorite meat is hamburger
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    i thought if you put it in the ubud you couldn't get pregnant
     
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  3. Where Eagles Dare

    Where Eagles Dare The Specialist Show On Earth
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    Seems awful
     
  4. Where Eagles Dare

    Where Eagles Dare The Specialist Show On Earth
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    Things are backwards over there
     
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  5. Lyrtch

    Lyrtch My second favorite meat is hamburger
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    thats an insane itinerary
     
  6. DuffandMuff

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    As a guy who recently did:

    1 night Athens
    3 nights Cairo
    1 night santorini
    2 nights Naxos
    1 night Mykonos
    1 night munich

    it doesn’t seem all that crazy. Just leave out the whole cruise part.
     
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  7. Tiger Tiger Woods Y'all

    Tiger Tiger Woods Y'all Putting big balls in little holes, circa 1995
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    yeah def some overreactions itt. The cruise will break it up nicely and hit a ton of spots she wants to go. Also a brand new ship in a suite so that will be fun.
     
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  8. rezy

    rezy Member
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    Doing Europe for the month of June, first 2 weeks solo and have no plan. Then meeting up with 4 friends and doing Munich, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Dublin in 19 days. They haven’t been to Europe before and refused to listen to me when I said that was too much travel in that amount of time
     
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  9. DuffandMuff

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    Should be a great time.
     
  10. DuffandMuff

    DuffandMuff Well-Known Member
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    The quick and easy train trips between Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam should help things a bit. Eliminating would be ideal imo.
     
  11. rezy

    rezy Member
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    Well that’s one of the issues I have with them. We are going Munich-Paris-Rome-Amsterdam-Brussels-Dublin
     
  12. Jimmy the Saint

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    Why Dublin? It's a fine city, been multiple times, but I wouldn't go out of my way to go there in that itinerary.
     
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  13. rezy

    rezy Member
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    Going to euro 2020 games in Amsterdam and Dublin
     
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  14. ohhaithur

    ohhaithur e-Batman
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    How would you do 48 hours in Dublin?
     
  15. rezy

    rezy Member
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    And yeah I am taking any advice for these cities I can get even though I’ve been to all of them except Brussels/Dublin before
     
  16. Lyrtch

    Lyrtch My second favorite meat is hamburger
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    heading to brussels in two months, i'll try to remember to post some recs

    I have endless paris recs but i'm not sure they're suited for a 5 guy trip. What you all wanting to do?
     
  17. Weedlord420

    Weedlord420 Well-Known Member
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    land, take a cab to a bar, drink the night away, spend the full next day in a dimly lit hotel room, probably
     
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  18. 941Gator

    941Gator TMB's resident beach bum
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    Would love a Paris write up
     
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  19. rezy

    rezy Member
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    It’s actually me, 2 guys and their wives. Was supposed to be 2 more but it looks like Zap Branigan is bailing on the trip
     
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  20. ohhaithur

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    Not going to fly with the missus I don't think
     
  21. Lyrtch

    Lyrtch My second favorite meat is hamburger
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    leaving for portland in a few hours but will do a paris write up when i get back
     
  22. Jimmy the Saint

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    Guinness, Jameson, Dublin Castle, I've heard Trinity College is nice.

    The two times I was there was when when I was 20 and studying abroad and then for the PSU-UCF game. Both times involved copious amounts of drinking which seems like a perfectly acceptable way to spend time in Dublin. Temple Bar is overrated and touristy. Go see it if you feel like it but wouldn't spend a lot of time there.

    It's hard to suggest since you only have two days but Cliffs of Moher (~3 hours from Dublin) is way better than anything you'll see in Dublin.

    L'Ecrivain is nice if you wanna drop some money on dinner.
     
  23. ohhaithur

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    This is our big debate. Just enough time to be possible but not enough to do it comfortably
     
  24. Keef

    Keef Liked by Pierre Gasly
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    Doing an 8-9 day road trip around Ireland at the end of May. Any and all recommendations appreciated
     
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  25. bwi2

    bwi2 Not affiliated with BWI
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    Antartica write-up:

    I'll mostly let the photos do the talking, but have some notes on tour choice below.

    IMG_3293.JPG P1010311.JPG P2020250.JPG P2040142.JPG P2040676.JPG P2050889.JPG

    Itinerary:
    Day 1-2: Drake Passage
    Day 3: Antarctic Circle crossing, Detaille Island, Haneusse Bay
    Day 4: Fish Islands, Prospect Point (only place we got to set foot on the actual continent, instead of an island)
    Day 5: Vernadsky Research Base - really cool meeting those dudes (and the first overwintering women at that station), Yalour Islands
    Day 6: Peterman Island, Pleneau Island, Lemaire Channel
    Day 7: Danco Island, Dallman Bay
    Day 8: Drake Passage
    Day 9: Cape Horn, Beagle Channel

    Those places aren't particularly significant, but hopefully give an idea of the pace - we basically had two excursions per day, usually one landing and one Zodiac cruise. The specific sites you visit are highly dependent upon the weather - both immediate and seasonal. We were lucky to have great weather on almost all of the days, which kept our options fairly broad, and going late in the season let us cross the Antarctic Circle, which is typically ice-choked earlier in the season. But I think even in less optimal conditions, there are still a ton of sites to visit/things to see - the cruise before us found an Emperor Penguin, which we didn't come across, and we didn't make the customary stop at Port Lockroy, having spent an extra half day traveling south. I think you can generally expect to have a string of incredible, unique experiences that knock you down every time you start to think that you've seen what the continent has to offer.

    I think it's really hard to go there and not have a tour that will blow your senses away, but I think there are better and worse options. For me, the NG Orion via Lindblad - easily the smallest boat in port in Ushuaia - made the most sense for a couple of main reasons. First, Antarctic tour operators are governed by rules that limit site usage - often 50 max at a time, no more than 200 per day. At 100 passengers, the Orion was perfect - everyone got a couple of hours every place we went; with some of the larger ships (I think the "bigger" ones cruising through were around 500), there will be sites where you might not get an opportunity to get off the boat; I have no idea how they manage that, but I'd be pretty salty about going all that way and not getting an opportunity to do whatever the ship was doing that morning or day. Second, I enjoyed the National Geographic tie-in; not knowing how other ships do it, our tour was managed by a team of 8 who were all legit scientists (plus one NG photographer). Each of them had a relevant specialization, and they were all excited to share their passion/field with us. It was definitely a luxury cruise (good food, great service, open bar), but relatively heavy on the learning and fairly sparse on typical cruise ship entertainment. The clientele did tend to be older though - probably 75% of the passengers were 50-70, a few older, and maybe 20% in the 30-40 age range. The majority of those under 40 were in one of the two large groups (my group of 9, which had 5 under 50, and another group of 10, which had 6).
     
  26. bwi2

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    Still sorting through a shitload of photos, I definitely wish I had come to the trip with a better ability to handle a camera

    IMG_3678 copy.JPG P2040290 copy 2.JPG P1010280 copy.JPG P2061444 copy.JPG
     
  27. ohhaithur

    ohhaithur e-Batman
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    One of my fave posts in the thread's history
     
  28. Lyrtch

    Lyrtch My second favorite meat is hamburger
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    how much $$$ we talkin

    cause i'm in
     
  29. bwi2

    bwi2 Not affiliated with BWI
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    $15000/person, double occupancy + travel to Chile (everything was included for the tour's day there, but we added a couple of days as insurance against flight fuckups) + $1500/person for travel insurance. Probably going up a little bit because they're about to launch a couple of brand new boats with better icebreaking capability.
     
    #20529 bwi2, Feb 10, 2020
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2020
  30. Lyrtch

    Lyrtch My second favorite meat is hamburger
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    this is in that safari tier of $$$

    still ready to go
     
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  31. bwi2

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    I think that's a fair comparison, just on a boat instead of in a jeep (he said, having not been on a safari)
     
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  32. Fancy

    Fancy thanks, i hate it
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    Uh that is insane bwi2
     
  33. DuffandMuff

    DuffandMuff Well-Known Member
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    $15,000 per person?
     
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  34. GoodForAnother

    GoodForAnother I’d rather be down the allotment
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    No 15 dollars
     
  35. DuffandMuff

    DuffandMuff Well-Known Member
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    I talked to a couple people in Ushuaia who said that it was possible to snag a last minute cruise for $4-$5K, so I was hoping he found the deal of the century and was able to do it for $1500.
     
    #20535 DuffandMuff, Feb 11, 2020
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2020
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  36. ohhaithur

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    Paying 20% of your original fees for insurance seems like a terrible value now that I think about it. That bothers me more than the price
     
  37. bwi2

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    I definitely saw an ad in Ushuaia for a cruise with Quark departing February 29 for $4500. I think you have to be there and it will for the most part be last minute, but it’s definitely possible to book in advance for less than we did.

    I was off, it was $1500 each/$3k total. Still a lot, but it included broad cancellation protection and medical evacuations.
     
  38. ohhaithur

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    Way more reasonable
     
  39. PJP3

    PJP3 Well-Known Member
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    Antarctica is top of my bucket list and we're trying to swing it in the next couple years. $1500/person is crazy low. Cheapest I've seen is about $7500/person for double occupancy, shit room with no window.
     
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  40. Jimmy the Saint

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    That was just the insurance.
     
  41. ohhaithur

    ohhaithur e-Batman
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    :roll:
     
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  42. PJP3

    PJP3 Well-Known Member
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    That makes more sense. I mean, I don't think thats unreasonable. If anything goes down, its going to be a big effort to get you out of there.
     
  43. Where Eagles Dare

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    Yes, let's include the zeros or dollar abbreviations next time.

    15 is very vague

    $1,500 a person is pretty awesome and doable
     
  44. DuffandMuff

    DuffandMuff Well-Known Member
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    Except it was $15,000 a person.
     
  45. Where Eagles Dare

    Where Eagles Dare The Specialist Show On Earth
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    That's not very doable
     
  46. GoodForAnother

    GoodForAnother I’d rather be down the allotment
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    the cost/benefit just isn’t there for me. when I’m older and have more cash on hand it will be. rn I can visit many other places much cheaper
     
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  47. Nug

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    Shit, you can do very legit 2-3 day safaris for less than $1,000.

    Antarctica is also so high on my list. Will probably just rent a boat and do it myself at those prices, though
    not serious
     
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  48. BayouMafia

    BayouMafia Thought Leader in Posting
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    it worked out really well for Shackleton. What could go wrong?
     
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  49. Oranjello

    Oranjello Well-Known Member
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    At 9:00 AM this morning, while on my honeymoon I found out my dad unexpectedly passed away and then I had to spend 5 hours without cell service rafting out of the jungle. It’s taken me ~23% of my trip’s cost to get to San Jose, a hotel for the night, and get a flight back to the states last minute. And that’s not including the thousands of dollars I’ll likely lose in forfeited hotels and activities (depending on Citi Aadvantage travel reimbursement).

    For expensive trips, I will forever reconsider declining travel insurance.

    Oh and for the record for the rest of the thread - my travel agent did all of it, including having a car pick us up from the river and drive us to San Jose (rather than our next destination). My email to her was simply “I’ve had an emergency my dad died. I am getting on the raft and will call in a few hours.”
     
  50. ohhaithur

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    Wow, I'm really sorry to hear that dude. I hope you take solace in that he was able to see you at your wedding
     
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