Wine tours are maybe a couple hundred dollars. We do 'em pretty often. Great deal and you often get a tour of the countryside as well. If you’re ever in the Kelowna, BC area, check it out.
You’re going to spend 1 to 1.8k or such on the flights alone when coming from the US. Plus of course, as a yank, being able to afford to have a free day at all.
I get it most yanks are broke but a couple hundred are not much in terms of holiday money. Cheap hotels are going to cost you 25 to 50 Euros per night alone. Mallorca 4-star all-inclusive incl. plane tickets about 1k per person, seven nights. That’s groceries for a year if you know what you’re doing, or a bit more than two months of German welfare (the raw disposable payout, rent, heating, and health insurance is separate). Monthly net income on minimum wage ~1.6k, you’ll probably spend most of your holidays in Balconia but if you want, yep, the Baleares are affordable. Trekking from hostel to hostel? Even more so, that’s student-level holidays. Drinking wine while doing it? Depending on country, cheaper than beer. So, no, it’s not out of touch. It’s just not ameripoor.
Couple of days in Venice? There’s camping grounds all around, bring a camper (I know, investment, but you can also rent them) or a tent. Commute into the city, if you buy anything… well ideally just don’t it’s all a tourist trap.
Oh I meant, that specifically wine touring alone feels weird for that type of cash, imo. A decently-thought out trip to the Balkans for a week costs a couple hundred as well (given that was with friends to split costs etc, and flying in from Germany), so maybe I’m underestimating how my much you get for such a tour, but to me it feels really odd.
Not that I hate wine btw, like it better than beer.
I’ve never been on an organised wine tour but my family made a habit of swinging by a vinyard on the way back up north. The wine tasting comes with the beds (also, Zwiebelkuchen) and you get excellent prices on boxes because you’re cutting out the middle man. Kids get to taste different grape juices.
I suppose those kinds of offerings exist in all wine regions, an organised trip would then be visiting multiple of those places.
As someone from a region where we produce a little wine but don’t have it as a main industry, yes, they’re all over and admission price generally scales with the fame of the label.
Ones that don’t try to concentrate on international marketing can be quite reasonable.
The average American has less than $300 in their bank account. There is no county in the US where somebody making the median salary can afford the average cost of a house for that county.
Vacationing in Europe and going on wine tours would sound like a once-in-a-lifetime trip for the majority of Americans.
Pretty tragic. Though I imagine the USA has some wonderful places to visit, as well. I remember cheap flights to Vegas were a thing, they do that as a loss leader. Is that still a thing, or has the collapse progressed that far?
If you have a car (and being an American, you almost certainly would be car-poor), then that presumably opens up a lot of low-cost vacation options.
I can’t say anything for sure since I haven’t had a real vacation in 15 years (that wasn’t just staying at the nearest major city for a 3-day holiday weekend), but the cost of flying is a very sore point even in the continental US.
There are tons of beautiful and fun places to visit in the US, but especially if you’re driving, time becomes a limiting factor. I know people who drive from Massachusetts to Florida pretty much every year to go to Disney, and it takes 2 or 3 days of travel to get down there. The stats say that we have less vacation time than similar countries (Europe, Canada, etc.), and the average American will never leave their home state and will die within 25 miles of where they were born.
Wine tours are maybe a couple hundred dollars. We do 'em pretty often. Great deal and you often get a tour of the countryside as well. If you’re ever in the Kelowna, BC area, check it out.
A couple hundred feels like out-of-touch money to me.
You’re going to spend 1 to 1.8k or such on the flights alone when coming from the US. Plus of course, as a yank, being able to afford to have a free day at all.
I get it most yanks are broke but a couple hundred are not much in terms of holiday money. Cheap hotels are going to cost you 25 to 50 Euros per night alone. Mallorca 4-star all-inclusive incl. plane tickets about 1k per person, seven nights. That’s groceries for a year if you know what you’re doing, or a bit more than two months of German welfare (the raw disposable payout, rent, heating, and health insurance is separate). Monthly net income on minimum wage ~1.6k, you’ll probably spend most of your holidays in Balconia but if you want, yep, the Baleares are affordable. Trekking from hostel to hostel? Even more so, that’s student-level holidays. Drinking wine while doing it? Depending on country, cheaper than beer. So, no, it’s not out of touch. It’s just not ameripoor.
Couple of days in Venice? There’s camping grounds all around, bring a camper (I know, investment, but you can also rent them) or a tent. Commute into the city, if you buy anything… well ideally just don’t it’s all a tourist trap.
Oh I meant, that specifically wine touring alone feels weird for that type of cash, imo. A decently-thought out trip to the Balkans for a week costs a couple hundred as well (given that was with friends to split costs etc, and flying in from Germany), so maybe I’m underestimating how my much you get for such a tour, but to me it feels really odd.
Not that I hate wine btw, like it better than beer.
I’ve never been on an organised wine tour but my family made a habit of swinging by a vinyard on the way back up north. The wine tasting comes with the beds (also, Zwiebelkuchen) and you get excellent prices on boxes because you’re cutting out the middle man. Kids get to taste different grape juices.
I suppose those kinds of offerings exist in all wine regions, an organised trip would then be visiting multiple of those places.
As someone from a region where we produce a little wine but don’t have it as a main industry, yes, they’re all over and admission price generally scales with the fame of the label.
Ones that don’t try to concentrate on international marketing can be quite reasonable.
The average American has less than $300 in their bank account. There is no county in the US where somebody making the median salary can afford the average cost of a house for that county.
Vacationing in Europe and going on wine tours would sound like a once-in-a-lifetime trip for the majority of Americans.
Pretty tragic. Though I imagine the USA has some wonderful places to visit, as well. I remember cheap flights to Vegas were a thing, they do that as a loss leader. Is that still a thing, or has the collapse progressed that far?
If you have a car (and being an American, you almost certainly would be car-poor), then that presumably opens up a lot of low-cost vacation options.
I can’t say anything for sure since I haven’t had a real vacation in 15 years (that wasn’t just staying at the nearest major city for a 3-day holiday weekend), but the cost of flying is a very sore point even in the continental US.
There are tons of beautiful and fun places to visit in the US, but especially if you’re driving, time becomes a limiting factor. I know people who drive from Massachusetts to Florida pretty much every year to go to Disney, and it takes 2 or 3 days of travel to get down there. The stats say that we have less vacation time than similar countries (Europe, Canada, etc.), and the average American will never leave their home state and will die within 25 miles of where they were born.
Not exactly millionaire money, though. It’s a fun vacation option and fairly reasonable as those go.