Travel Advice - Want to travel but think it’s too expensive?

Often, people consider travel a luxury item that they cannot afford. Yes, you must pay for transportation to a destination, a fee for lodging, and even more to purchase food, recreation, shopping, and other amenities. Is the cost of travel so prohibitive that it should classed as an expensive luxury?

At ThereArePlaces, we consider travel to be an example of a “cheap luxury”. We use the oxymoron “cheap luxury” (i.e. words that contradict each other like “giant shrimp”) as it reflects the enormous return travel provides for a modest cost.

When you ask people to recount their most enjoyable experiences, they often focus on travel and the places and experiences that they encountered while traveling.

• Most people return from travel energized, enriched, and fully satisfied with the return on their “travel investment”.
• The benefits of travel, however, expand beyond personal satisfaction.

The concept of cheap luxuries is a core reason for travel. Travel is the one investment that allows you to experience, at low cost, the very best the world has to offer.

• The world’s most popular travel destinations display the treasures of humanity including, art, architecture, legend, milieu, and environment.
• Each location you visit allows you to experience a sense of place that is unique in the world.
• In addition, the traveler can visit and experience these priceless and irreplaceable objects for a tiny fee (our time and the cost of our vacation).

Items found in the world’s leading museums are the artifacts that belonged to kings, queens, the rich, and the famous throughout history.

• How many of us could afford a painting by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, or Monet? A sculpture by Rodin? Or to build the Great Wall of China or Versailles?
•  Yet today, travelers can visit the countries that make these priceless treasures available for all to see and experience.
• Can you think of a bigger bargain than to see humankind’s treasures for next to nothing?

Just think, you can travel to Paris, visit the Louvre, and see DaVinci’s painting The Mona Lisa. Stop in Milan to see his painting of The Last Supper. Or stop  at the Close du Luc in Ambois, France and spend time in the home where DaVinci spent his last years enriching our lives. And what is the value of these incomparable experiences compared to the cost of the opportunity? It is a bargain - imagine a luxury for a bargain price!

The countries of the world provide a canvas of living history that allows us to see and experience our roots and the roots of history, society, and civilization. All of this for the price of a vacation! We are privileged to be able to visit places that are so unique that no one person can own them. The world’s treasures are waiting for us to see them.

And see them you should. The price is right. Travel is a “cheap luxury”.

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