blueferrari

do the Atlanta-way more often I think.
have friends, familiy members, or significant ones too for travel mate, I think it's really important.

think less about the ff status. in the end it's just one of trivial things in life. if you still enjoy flying, maybe you could seek the same-day turnaround for mileage run to longer destination. just for fun.

happiness matters!

jashsu

So go home?

Giggleswick

I may get flamed for this, but....
If you are really that bored and jaded by travel, maybe you should stop traveling and give that money to charity instead. Millions of people have far more difficult problems to deal with than travel malaise and are desperately in need of help, so it would be a win-win situation.

Annalisa12

I feel the same way. I think many times I love the anticipation more than the holiday itself. Plenty of times I am so ready to go home despite being somewhere fabulous. I too find I am unsatisfied with things that I would of thought were utterly glamorous 10 years ago but are now so run of the mill for me.

My life is work, work, work. I think I go away too because the further I am away from work the less I can worry about it (different time zones stop the calls, texts etc).

darthbimmer

When I feel burned out from travel I find that reconnecting at home feels great. I suggest you try these:

-- Hang out with friends you haven't seen that much while you've been so busy gallivanting about the globe. Just reconnecting on a human level is rewarding, your friends will be glad to see you (seriously, they'll treat you better than if they see you every week), plus maybe they've done something recently you'll find it enjoyable to talk about.

-- Re-familiarize yourself with the restaurant/club scene in your town or neighborhood. A lot may have changed while you were away. One of the entertainment districts near me has high turnover, so when I go back there for the first time in a year after being busy traveling the world, it's like exploring a whole new city... 5 minutes from home.

-- Make a point of finding a park, museum, etc. near home that aligns with your interests that you haven't been to before. You might find that pursuing adventures thousands of miles away for weeks to months at a time has meant you've missed something totally worth spending half a day at 30 minutes away.

weero

While I still enjoy leisure travel at times, I like to do it much less often. Once or twice a year is plenty enough sightseeing for my needs.

I don't need to go places on the weekend.

trooper

I travel for my Sport..... latest trip was to the World Championships in France (as part of the Australian Team which certainly added to the experience) ...I have visited the US..to compete... nearly 50 times... Europe only twice... New Zealand many times.... and I "tourist" only where and when the opportunity arises while attending these matches. (Mind you I have seen a great deal of the USA....in fact I am starting to revisit favourites
places)

Having a specific focus as I do FOR travelling may be the key for me.... my only fatigue is with the actual getting there/home.... I used to delight in complex itineraries trying out new J cabins.. (SQ's much missed MNL-YVR fare provided wonderful opportunities in that respect) Now? I'm starting to look at direct flights... lol... Kick me off Flyertalk and wash my mouth out with soap.....

Only 2 trips for 2018.... USA in April...and South Africa in July.... and no "Magical Mystery Tours" there or back.....

frobozzelectric

at least were not rotting under the office fluorescents.

catbox9

While this is clearly the best option, I can't figure out why it's so difficult for me to do. I keep saying I just need to get million miler status and then I can stop because gold status will be good enough. The problem with that is I'm still 550,000 miles away.

Airline status is far less meaningful/useful than hotel status as a credit card gives me essentially the same perks as the airline status and the hotel status is so much easier to earn.

I've never done a mileage run but used to consider it until the airlines switched to revenue-based earning which made mileage running a pretty useless endeavor. I used to enjoy making same day flight changes to rack up the miles (I once flew SBP-LAX-ORD-CLE-LGA just because) but that is no longer as fun as it used to be either.

I think I get far more joy planning a trip than taking it.

I'm in a fortunate position that my job never comes home with me. My coworkers think I'm crazy because I'll occasionally check my work email from home - something that is completely pointless because it's impossible for me to work from home but I like to stay informed of what's going on.

I started out this travel obsession with that specific purpose - it was my quest to see all 30 MLB stadiums (which I have since completed) and then I added baseball around the world. Unfortunately, baseball is not particularly popular in most of the world so outside of Asia and North America, there aren't really a lot of baseball destinations to visit. I still travel for baseball games, but I have cut back on that as I realized that flying all over the place to see two teams I don't care about isn't that interesting.

RustyC

So very true about the FF programs...the free trips were a major force multiplier for me in my 30s and 40s back in the glory years...these days the math has changed and sometimes that tips the decisions. The OP also sounds much better-funded and perhaps jet-lag resistant than I turned out to be. I do get the introverted part and the couchsurfing not being for everyone (turns out you get to be much less popular at hostels for snoring as well )

I think it really helps to enjoy the research part. Though some of my best trips happened when Internet resources were scarce or non-existent, and I rode the crest of the Lonely Planet wave. Today you can get a real information overload, which can be head-spinning in itself.

FIRST trips to places are usually best...in hindsight. At the time they can seem more stressful and consume a lot of adaptive energy or test resourcefulness. At times like those I can mentally appreciate a trip to Ft. Lauderdale (my own pick for low adaptive demands, low-hanging fruit, predictable cheap thrills, etc.).

Am in a bit of a rut with ULCC domestic trips as bread and butter...Frontier can be addictive because their elite status actually gives perks to make the flying experience more bearable (full carry-on, stretch seats) and they sometimes come up with stuff like ATL-PHX-ATL as low as $40 RT. But it's not multi-tier so it's 20K base to qualify and nothing beyond that but the RDMs (at the same earning rate, no perk there).

Excluding that, I went from 1992-2016 at midtier or higher somewhere (CO, DL, NW, UA or AA), so I know well the "tyranny of requalifying" and being bound to the airline's network.

Would concur with others about trying to mix it all up a bit as far as interests go. Existing hobbies are a great basis sometimes. Am a record collector and found my $100 Beatle "butcher cover" in Sacramento (bad peel job) and also had unusual luck there in Tampa with a "storage wars"-type guy who always seems to have the darndest stuff. Thanks to an art appreciation class in college I can hit museums in cities that have good ones and find interesting things. Atlanta has the Fox and I'm a fan of old restored theaters like that in other cities, especially for seeing movies even if the movie itself wasn't my top choice. Will also sometimes show up at the stadium for the cheapest general-admission baseball ticket to soak that up if in the mood.

Sometimes the stars align for road concerts, and I'm in the habit of always checking Pollstar. Paul McCartney in Antwerp was unique, as was Dylan in Amsterdam, and sometimes as with Red Rocks it's almost worth it for the venue alone. Was lucky to see U2 in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago when that tour bypassed ATL. There's also more classical stuff like a guitar festival that was a great excuse to see the old theater in San Jose or a play in Santiago or Quito.

It's bad for my long-term health but it's possible to be a foodie even at budget levels if there's something unique there about the destination. Lima is one that's helped greatly there.

Nature-oriented trips can also be great if u can swing it. Being able to acquire a taste for soccer helps in some places (South Korea vs. Iraq in Kuala Lumpur was memorable) and you've still got a few events like Yap Day and Naadam (Mongolia) that aren't as well-known as, say, NYE in Times Square or Oktoberfest in Munich.

If done right the research part is good for seeding future trips. Sometimes I've run across something unexpected and amazing, but for other things there's a lag between becoming conscious of it and being able to go see it.

The downside is that you can get bored with your hometown because no place can be world-class on everything. It's also easy to lose touch with some friends, though if you're in your 30s you've probably seen quite a few get married and start families, which changes a lot of things. You become the "what if" if they hadn't done that, which can be an uncomfortable place to be. (Just tell 'em about the train wrecks and how miserable your trip turned out to be and how they were lucky for not going. )

:D!

Maybe you need a bit of focus rather than just going to random places to see what's there.

Most of the things that people say are MUST SEEs, there are so many photos online and most countries have Google Street View etc. so if you just want to look at tourist attractions actually you can do quite a lot of it at home.

So I'm not that interested in those, but I'm interested in public transport and infrastructure and numismatics.

When I go somewhere I usually have some sort of goals like to take certain train routes or look at a renovated station or a new tram line, or when a country releases new banknotes or coins then I might go to get some or observe them in circulation.


Some people have posted that they like planning trips more than taking them. I hate planning but I enjoy seeing my plans work - so sometimes at the end of a day, I might not be bothered to do the last thing I planned, but it's enough to be able to confirm that it would have been possible had I wanted to do it.

catbox9

This is probably the best point of all. I've had people invite me to do something that would've only lasted a few hours and felt horrible that I couldn't do it because of a trip which they find silly because surely a trip to Europe is more fun than having dinner with a couple friends at a lousy restaurant.

This is another very good point. Most of my friends rarely go anywhere save a few times I've managed to get them away from their families to go somewhere with me. They tend to have a very hard time understanding how constant world traveling is a lot more mundane than it appears.

mhnadel

Latin America. I had a blast going to a baseball game in the Dominican Republic. (I've also been to games at every MLB stadium and in Japan.)

Personally, I like going to games where I don't care about either team because then I can focus on the quality of the play without my emotional attachment to my teams getting in the way.

Maybe consider traveling for other sports? I really enjoyed going to a curling match in Canada, for example.

pinniped

Rugby is great...the crowd energy rivals that of college football. Match days in Cardiff or Dublin are a sight to behold.

I'd love to go to some of the great cricket venues, although I'm not sure I'd commit to an entire match (longer than T20 anyway...).

El Clasico is on my bucket list.

I'm not a tennis guy but I feel like I need to spend a day at Wimbledon sometime in my life.

Went to a bullfight once 20 years ago...I *don't* recommend it and felt guilty afterwards that I contributed revenue to it, but I know it's a thing that appears on many people's to-do lists.

If you're a golfer, there are obviously tons of famous courses to play, including several U.S. and British Open courses.

Skatering

I feel you.

I did extensive leisure travel in 2016, and planned to do significantly more, but stopped when I realised I was so exposed to things that I wasn't appreciating it as much as I would like.

I figured I'd slow down a bit and wait for the magic to come back.