Sandy,
Yeah, I knew that. I lived in the UK and Scotland and can always find an “American Tourist” friendly place there, it’s just sad that I have to look for one. I hadn’t heard that about Ireland, but I’m not surprised.
My recent April trip back to Devon and Cornwall was good, but there were some “embarrassed silence” moments.
I just like (want?) to believe that the United Kingdom’s and Ireland’s U.S. roots are so strong and pervasive that they’ll get over the current snit; I never plan to visit mainland Europe again other than for business.
Cain,
Two points.
“Travel abroad (excluding Canada and Mexico) is prohibitively expensive for many Americans.”
Did you just make that up or decided that this sounded good or do you have some reason to say that?
I can travel to London, England round trip from Dallas, TX for less than $700 while a Dallas to Newark, NJ ticket just set me back 1,015.
“In the past three years, [1999, 2000, 2001] approximately 39.9 million Americans (19.3% of U.S. adults) traveled outside the continental United States for pleasure on trips lasting five or more nights. We refer to these travelers as outbound pleasure travelers (or as outbound travelers for short). In our 1999 TravelStyles survey, the number of outbound pleasure travelers was approximately 37.4 million persons (18.5% of U.S. adults). This difference represents an increase of 6.7% in the number of outbound pleasure travelers”
“Although comparatively few Americans travel internationally for pleasure, those who do tend to travel frequently. The majority of American outbound travelers (54.0%) took two or more international pleasure trips in the past three years; 31.7% took three or more trips, and 18.0% took four or more (trips)”
http://www.etc-corporate.org/resources/uploads/MENLO_ETC%20Member%20Report.pdf
Those numbers are from November 2001 and I suspect the numbers are down some, but as the report illustrates the U.S. citizens who travel, tend to be well educated, older and, supposedly, less likely to poorly represent the U.S.
If you have any numbers that would indicate that the “prohibitively expense” is keep those citizens from travelling?
“Anyway, the point is, Euros don’t hold the monopoly on ignorance. Just as immigrants and visitors to the US have had to overcome our stereotypes, we ought to go overseas and show that Americans aren’t all arrogant, ill-informed hicks.”
1. Why is it the responsibility of the citizens of the United States (God forbid I use the inaccurate phrase “Americans”) to educate or illuminate anyone anywhere about anything?
And,
2. I doubt anything we would do would change anyone’s opinion.
I’ve spent most of my life outside the U.S. and found that no one is really very interested in the “truths” about the U.S. since it would conflict with their cherished common skewed viewpoints.
Viewpoints, I hasten to add, whose roots can be traced back to what Europeans were saying about the U.S. during our Civil War.
So the bottom line is, most Europeans don’t like the U.S., but don’t despair, this isn’t new, they haven’t liked us for over a century, we just never cared or paid attention before.
