nanirolls

My dad's biggest joke is that he's only ever been to Hoboken, though he did go to the DR for 24 hours to get a Haitian Divorce. LOL.
My mother didn't leave the country until her partner took her to Paris for her 50th birthday. Since then, she's been to London and I'm sure they are planning other trips, most likley to Italy.

I was also the first of my sisters to travel internationally, going to Israel when I was 15. My sister left for a year in Amsterdam shortly after that.

suze

I come from a family of 'gypsies' on both sides. Travel and relocation is what is/was expected, not unusual for any of us. Everyone travels frequently and has lived in 3-6 different states.

dwzemens

My youngest son was fortunate enough to play college football. In his sophmore year (2002), the college sent the football team on a trip to Spain to play two football games there. Since my wife and I had *never* missed a game during his eight years of playing football, we decided we were not going to miss the games in Spain, either.

So, off we went to the post office for our passports. In that year, 2002, we traveled to Paris, Barcelona (the games were played there) and onto Switzerland. It was a great trip.

We caught the "European" travel bug that year. In 2003 we went to Ireland, 2004 took us to Italy, and last year we went on a riverboat trip on the Rhine River at Christmas time!

This year takes us back again, at least that is the plan, but the location is still being decided!

nytraveler

Well - it all depends.

My parents have been to Canada and Mexico - and my father saw some of euope and North Africa (but in WWII). We always did local beach cottage vacations when I was a child - primarily due to their raising a family on minimal income. (Since their retirement they have traveled extensively in the US - FL every winter to see relatives - and summer trips to everywhere you can think of - I have souvenirs from at least 15 different presidential libraries.)

However my sibling and all my cousins are travelers and some of my parent's sibings who did well financially have traveled very extensively.

So - I think it was primarily a financial issue rather than lack of interest.

tuscanlifeedit

Both of my parents were very poor as children, and both were the children of very recent immigrants to the US. They married right before my father left for the North African and Italian campaigns in WWII. When he got back, they were still poor, but both wanted to travel. Slowly, year by year, their travels expanded. They began with trips to the Jersey shore, then New York, then Florida, Cuba, Puerto Rico. They traveled to Las Vegas and California, and in 1970 or so, my mother went to Europe with some friends.

After that, they returned to Italy several times, and my father, and this still amazes me, went to China alone.

No matter how little money my parents had, travel was a top priority for them. This was very unusual in their families but the bug spread from them to many of their relatives. My brother and I grew up traveling with our parents and both have done a lot of traveling since.

My brother has toured SE Asia and South America, as well as Latin America, Europe and Canada.

I've been on several trips to Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean (not to big resorts)and Canada, and also around the USA. I guess we got it from our parents.

nancicita

I'm glad to see this posting - it's always good to travel and see "what's out there." It really opens your eyes to a lot of things: different cultures, languages, history, politics. It's really amazing that mankind has developed in so many different ways. For those of us who are so lucky to travel and see these things (especially old relics from the past), we can only be grateful.

Yes, international travel is a big deal (I'm also the "travel-ODC" type...always planning and worrying too much)!

Bon voyage!

panecott

My parents loved to travel, but only did so domestically. We took car trips every summer and by the time I was 10 I'd been to most states and Canada.

My parents always talked about going to Europe when my father retired. Unfortunately, he died before he was old enough to retire and never had the chance. My mother did later travel to Europe a few times with her sisters. She always dreamed of going to the Holy Land, but that dream was never fulfilled.

christycruz

I'm the youngest--by far--of four children. The only overseas trip by another family member was my sister's trip to Hong Kong for a conference. Then not another overseas trip for 20 years--until she met me and my husband & child in Paris.

I think she has the travel bug, and if she had a special someone to share it with she'd go on a trip every year.

The rest of my family thought it was crazy that she went to Paris by herself, essentially. They don't understand the desire to travel.

In college I decided to go to Great Britain almost on a lark. The first Iraq war was on, and flights had never been so cheap.

However, my mother-in-law owned several travel agencies, and is much more traveled than either me or my husband. I think she's in Morocco right now.

Maudie

My parents are both in their mid 80's and have no desire at all to travel, I am sure they feel we are "wasting our money" or we get "why would you want to go there?"
They both travelled separately from Western Australia to Sydney during WW11 and have done spent there time travelling around our state in a caravan.

DH and I have been able to take our 2 kids to Asia twice and we have had 2 other wonderful trips (childless - YES!!) and our now planning 7 weeks in Europe next year. Our daughter was lucky enough to spend 1 month on Reunion Island in 2005 on french exchange, she spent this past Christmas in Vancouver and is now studying to become a Travel Agent. Enough said! Our son spent 3 months at Lake Tahoe working at a ski resort and is planning to buy a round the world ticket with his mates for later this year.

We have been saving for 2 years to go to Europe, it can't come soon enough.

Maudie

Oops forgot to edit! Have spent their time !!!! Sorry.

jamaltay

I am the youngest of four children and the first to travel abroad. My parents were afraid of air travel. They did go from phoenix to Denver once. That ended it. They both refused to ever board an airplane again. My siblings fly but are not adventurous people. None of them has ever left the United States. I am also the first (and only) in my family to scuba dive, sky dive, hang glide, surf (very badly), bull ride (terrible, ouch), ski, and fly ultralights. Oh yeah, my grandkids think that I am a sissy because I haven't been to Africa8-)

icithecat

I was hauled out of Kitimat British Columbia at the age of 9. Many years later I met a young woman who dreamed of visiting the England of the queens and of the Brontes.
Mayhem and travel have ensued hence.

We have as yet to pare ourselves down to the one cat to visit the queen.

enzian

Birthdaygirl,

Let me warn you that after this trip you will be addicted and will just keep on traveling. I was the first in my family to travel abroad. I had the opportunity in college to live in Germany for six months---that was in 1966 and no one in my family had been to Europe. It seemed so far away then---I phoned my parents ONCE the whole time (sent postcards twice a week). Since then my sons have both done the same college program and we e-mailed every day and talked by phone once a week. . . But I digress. After college I was here with children, family, etc. and for financial reasons I did not travel for many years. In 1999, all grown up with kids out of the house, I longed to go hut-to-hut hiking in Austria, signed up for a guided tour, and whenm that fell through I just planned a similar trip myself and went and had a wonderful time. Since then I've been back every year. Coincidentally, my younger sister went to Europe on her own; my sons (now in college) went to study abroad; and now we all go together whenever we can.

You don't have to be rich to do it; just determined and able to be flexible when you get there. In 1966, "the book" was "Europe on $2 a Day". And we did that. Now it's "Europe on $50 a Day". But it's still well worth it. Thanks for the question.

annabelle2

I'm getting ready to fly tomorrow morning to see my parents for a few days. They instilled the love of travel in my siblings and me; my dad worked most of his life for an airline and we started traveling (standby, of course!) as little kids. If that doesn't train you to be an adaptable traveler, I don't know what does!

We also lived overseas (Japan, Taiwan) and around the US. One brother lives in Hong Kong now and travels in Asia often and Europe/S.America sometimes, for research/conferences; other brother travels extensively but mostly for work (and visits to his in-laws in Taiwan), usually to Asia as well but sometimes Europe and Cuba; I travel as much as I can squeeze in and afford, which is never enough.

My Mom's family didn't travel internationally, but I think it ran in my dad's genes. His grandfather, the black sheep, left his family and went off w/ the Marines to the Philippines at the turn of the century. My dad's dad lived in Taiwan (under the Japanese occupation), and then w/ my grandmother, my dad and his sister (they were wee kids)in the jungles of Sumatra in the late 1920's, and then later in Trinidad.

Now my dad is limited in his mobility due to a bad stroke and he and my mom don't travel at all. My only reason to mention that is...don't wait! Life is fragile.

CotswoldScouser

I'm really puzzled by this thread.

Can so many of you really be so young your father never travelled? Mine may have had an exceptionally traveller-friendly WW2, taking in Cairo, Rome and Athens as well as a fair few places tourists don't make a run for.

But he talked a lot about the places he'd seen - as did most of my friends' dads. Not least because seeing these places was one of the reasons most of them volunteered for the army practically the day war broke out.

And there really can't be that many regulars here whose fathers didn't get some similar (though often less picturesque) tourism at more or less the same time.

Obviously, for many men, war was so horrible they just didn't want to talk about it later. But most of my father's generation were only too happy to give us all their accounts of what they got up to - not least to keep up with the stories of my mothers' generation.

Was every other poster's father really that reticent?

marigross

My grandmother (born in 1919) was well into spinsterhood when my grandfather proposed. She had a job which she kept after they where married and until retirement. She never learned how to cook (he did) or sew (the neighboor took sewing jobs)or excelled at any other domestic skill.

When my grandfather landed a job with Pan Am in the early 60's and they qualified for deeply discounted airfare, she just took off - by herself or with girlfriends on tourgroups!!! Europe and Asia several times; way to go for a Puertorican middleaged wife with two teenagers.

On the other hand, my grandfather never wanted to go anywhere, he was perfectly happy to stay at home and care for the kids. He never, ever, boarded a plane (no war adventures for him since he had had an accident in his teenage years and had a serious limp).

He was so very proud of his adventurous wife. It took me many years to realize how remarkable this was for the time and culture.

My parents did not travel much due to financial reasons and my siblings are not there yet. That makes me the one gypsie on this generation so far!

Sarvowinner

My maternal grandfather went to France from Australia for WW1 - he lost his brother there. My mother always wanted to travel and after leaving school just after WW2 at 16, saved for several years and took a trip to Europe in 1952 with two friends and hitched around for a year. They worked (volunteered) building a road for a YWCA camp in Germany, picked fruit in Scandinavia and lived on rations.
She returned and married my father who was teaching in bush schools in country NSW. His father died in 1955 and my paternal grandmother worked in a bookshop in Sydney for a year and then took my 16 yr old aunt out of school and went to England for a year working in retail and living in a bed sit with a gas ring. What my mother & grandmother did was right outside the norm in post war conservative Australia. These were not wealthy people.
Listening to these stories I used to dream of going to Hawaii when I grew up. It seemed so far away in country NSW.
Dad was always worried that he would finally take a world cruise when he retired and have a heart attack. Canada was recruiting teachers in the late '60s and Dad packed up the family - I was 13 and my brothers were 11 & 5, plus the corgi and we emigrated to Canada.
We travelled all over the states and Canada as well as Mexico. I spent my 16th birthday babysitting in Ann Arbour Michigan - worked at A&W and went Europe when I was 17. I haven't stopped travelling.
I ended up marrying an Australian and we spent a year in Europe before moving back to Australia which provided a springboard for travel both in Australia and in Asia.
Our daughter has also picked up the travel bug and my mother has never lost it. She now lives with us in Sydny 6 months a year and in Canada the remainder - when she is not travelling. Last year (75) she was travelling back to Canada via Australia when she realised she would be there for Anzac Day so she side tracked to Turkey and took an STA trip to Gallipoli for the memorial dawn service.
My 14 year daughter has just spent 4 months in Toronto and we picked her up and took her to Africa. She is a great traveller. We are off to Italy in May and renting a villa with two other families from our prenatal class. I do sometimes worry that we have given her too much and should have held off so she could sacrifice for the trip the way we did - but I love travelling so muchI get such a buzz doing it with her and DH.
I always have a trip plan on the go.
I have read somewhere that only 10% of US congressmen (women) hold a passport. I just can't comprehend how one could make decisions on global issues without having travelled and experienced different cultures, but most importantly realised your own resources when away from your comfort zones.

GreenDragon

Well, my grandfather was in WWII, so he was an international traveler He was on a PT boat in the south Pacific.

I was born in Denmark because my mom was hippie-ing around Europe at the time. She had traveled to England as an Au Pair, lived in Edinburgh for a bit with friends, then to Copenhagen where I was born.

My dad (who I only met 6 years ago) was sent all over the world on business, and had done many Star Trek cruises to places like the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, etc.

I'm just following in their footsteps

RufusTFirefly

I did give a bit of a short answer above about my parent's travel.

My father was in the Army, so besides Burma and China in WWII, and Korea in the Korean War, and Vietnam in that war, my parents and I lived outside the USA in Panama, Germany, and Korea.

While in each of those places, besides exploring them pretty thoroughly, we traveled extensively. For example: Columbia, Costa Rica, most of Western Europe (we were in Germany from 1959-62, so travel to Communist controlled countries was out of the question except when we went to Berlin by train through East Germany, and we did not get to the Iberian Peninsula), Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore. Plus, when based in one of the 10 or so States Dad was assigned to (including Alaska for 2 cold years) we also visited Puerto Rico, Canada, and Mexico.

Mom and Dad did OK in experiencing the world for a farm boy and ranch girl from small town Nebraska.

grsing

My parents were pretty much the first (outside of the military), but my mom mostly only took a whirlwind bus tour of Europe, and that was about all of her international experience (except for one spring break to London when I was a kid, and I was the one that really pushed that). My dad, on the other hand, has been pretty much everywhere oil comes out of the ground, but outside of business, hasn't really travelled much internationally. Among my extended family, a trip outside Pennsylvania is something of a rarity, and most of them don't even have passports.