FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Is the plunging u.s. dollars becoming a problem for your travelling experiences?
Old Aug 1, 2011, 8:32 am
  #71  
TMOliver
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Central Texas
Programs: Many, slipping beneath the horizon
Posts: 9,859
We started traveling to Europe every year back in 2004 (after sporadic trips, interrupted by children and work, in the 80s/90s). In the time frame, the dollar has ranged (compared to the Euro) from about .80 down to .70, at the low end now, but apparently going up a bit in value. Obviously, many prices in Europe have risen, but that's been true in the US when it comes to travel, vacations, resorts and luxuries. Lately, at least based on vacations in Spain, 2010, and Ireland, 2011, prices, other than perhaps for food (and we're not luxury diners) have been flat.

Onb the other hand, air fares are and have been quirky. I recently purchased 2 Y's, CO: AUS/LHR for October travel, $615 each, "all in". I looked back to 1983, when we took our daughters on a 30 day jaunt to Northern Europe, IAH/AMS, $630 for the adult "Ys". I suspect there are not as many "good deals" around these days, but it seems almost weekly i receive offers for short weeks, hotel + air (from BOS, NYC, ORD), in Ireland for less than $800.

Of course, much has to do with personal perspective, likes and dislikes. We once lived in Florida (and now live in a land of brief and fleeting Winter), so tropical paradises are never quite up to their billing, while Hawaii, for all its beauty, was over-populated by both locals and tourists with whom we really didn't want to spend our vacations. Other than gambling (of which my favorite sort is college football, with plenty of opportunities close to home), my question about Las Vegas is "Why?" Even a rainy day in Paris outscores a week in Vegas, and lately the place looks as if the International Conclave of Freaks, the Freakish and the Glaringly Inconsiderate had been transported en masse to wander its streets.

It looks as if the US's and EU's fiscal states are in a joint decline, a sort of parallel slide down what we hope is not a slippery slope.
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