I like my road trips to anywhere. Many memories of family road trips in the pre electronic device days...play I spy or read...only 2 choices I had.
Cars are better now but traffic and Police are worse. Planes are cheaper now but the security and BS is worse.
If the destination is in a major city with no reason for a car, then fly and use public transport.
Overseas I drive to the airport of the next big city place after seeing the countryside and dump the rental car. Cars are a pain in the CBD of anywhere.
You cant say you have "seen" a country without driving across most of it! I guess train/coach tours are allowed...but I notice most people just sleep on them!
I laugh at people saying I've seen the USA, I went to Disneyland AND New York!
And the big one if the car stops you can get out and walk!!
I'm driving up to the Gold coast tomorrow (from Canberra) It's getting to be freeway most of the way now. We'll have three drivers and a bunch of audio books. And do the same in reverse a week later.
The driving part is boring, apart from a few interesting bits going through Sydney and on the north coast. We'll stop for petrol and fast food.
Freeways and motorways are pretty similar across the world. Travellers are divorced from the land. Not like the long family trips of my youth, where we played games – I spy was a favourite – or I'd make a nest in the back of the station wagon, curl up and read books. Dad would occasionally raid some friendly newsagent and we'd get a box of comics and magazines with their front covers ripped off. I'd just devour those, bookworm that I was. Or look at the houses and shops and other cars in the line of traffic between the rare overtaking effort as Dad would coax the overload HQ Belmont into roaring glory.
One reason I love Route 66 so much. It's the old highway, sidetracked and abandoned while the traffic takes the Interstate. Not a lot of cars, the old gas stations and diners and motels still around, though a few more succumb every year. It's the way family roadtrips kind of used to be. I even have to unfold maps to navigate along the old bits - geez, who uses maps any more?
Some of the narrow old road must have been hell in a line of traffic interspersed with semi-trailers. The two-lane bridge that took the road across the Mississippi had a bend in the middle, and not a gradual curve, neither. Skinny roads, farms, billboards, through the middle of every small town and large city, it retains a lot of the flavour of the old days. My brother and I will be cruising along the whole length in a Mustang next year.
A lot to be said for driving. Some places, like Scotland and New Zealand, the driving is a sparkling joy. Other places - northern Texas and the middle of New South Wales - not so much. Last year's trip to Marstrand and back, we did a lot of autobahns, but we also got into the towns and puzzled over menus in truck stops. Something hot, fragrant and utterly unpronounceable; point and shoot and hope, offer a handful of strange currency to the grinning waitress.
Air travel is pretty bland in comparison. All the airports look the same, and I'll confidently head off to an autoteller to get some local notes, only to realise that the one I'm thinking of is beside the Starbucks in some other terminal on the far side of the globe. Ataturk, Auckland, Kansai - they all blend together after a while.
No, give me a roadtrip with good company and a box of music any day.
