oldpenny16

I've been thinking about this question for a few days.

With our $ and our airline miles worth less and my husband's worries about our economy in general, in retirement the concept of 'vacation' will vanish.

We will travel when we have a meeting to attend or to visit family, but he is too nervous to splash out for a vacation just to entertain ourselves.

Husband keeps saying 'we don't need to pay a lot of money to be entertained.'

Rudi

with surprise I notice, that for 2009 so far I haven't booked nor planned yet any flights ... (and I still have over 3 million miles&more miles in my account) - this is a first in early january for many many years.

this january 2009, for the first time in over 20 years, I am not 'going' to Australia (Australian tennis Open) but did gift my tennis tickets to my brother.

after my live Beijing Olympics experience (the most extraordinary sports and culture event of a life time for me) in August 2008, it looks like I am a bit less curious for other spectator sports travel events and more into doing extensive skiing at home this winter.

Gisela is happy with this and notices with a smile: ''looks like you finally get a little bit wiser with age, Rudi'' ...

gungadin

I am retiring soon--my last day is FRIDAY!!! --and am looking forward to travel in a new way. I suspect that like many here, I will be spending longer in any place and the flexibility of being able to travel anytime I like will make it easier to search for bargins and last minute deals. I won't have unlimited miles but will use some and am now interested in milage run possiblitites. However, my home airport is CVG which will be in flux becasue of the delta/northwest merger , so we will see.

Hunki

So, does this mean that you have time to come visit us when we fly to Frankfurt this month, arriving on the 23rd of Jan for the weekend? That way, you can miss the crowded ski slopes on the weekend and join us instead.
We need to keep Gisela on her toes.

Rudi

I have to beat my last years skiing record:

Winter 2008/09 (so far, compared with total of Winter 2007/08)
Sport-days 17 -69%
Elevation gain (meter) 64'026 -64%

tom911

If you get diverted to Dublin I know 3 FTers that will be arriving there on the same day.

Hunki

It won't take me too much to beat mine from last year, if I could just stay home too.

Hunki

When was the last time that you can recall a SFO-FRT flight being diverted to Dublin?
If we don't make it, have a Guiness for me too.

Rudi

My LH SFO-MUC flight on dec-16/17 2008 made an emergency landing at Moskau (sick passenger) and did arrive at MUC 110 minutes late.

At Moskau I did ask the crew (I was in 1st) if they didn't become illegal, but got a smile and the answer: we all want to get home as fast as possible before XMAS.

Karen2

As a result of retiring and having much more time, we travel to places in the US that we would not have bothered with during our working years. We squeezed every moment into meaningful vacations back then. Actually, partly because we knew people who died shortly after retirement having been to none of the places they professed to want to see. If you still want to hit the road but need to cut costs, look at vacation weeks on www.skyauction.com. We have stayed at timeshare condos for as little as $100 for the WEEK! We now have an idea of what it would be like to live in a lot of places in the US that we knew little about. So, we do a couple of international trips a year and the rest somewhere in the US. Thanks to Skyauction, our weeks only run about $1000 incl air and rental car. We wait until the cross country fares are about $200 each RT. Most of the time, we are poking around small towns and villages. It has been great fun.