Chundles said:
The sheer size of your 48 contiguous states is the same size as my country so you're not excused there. [EDIT] No offense to you meant there, just pointing out that we both have huge and diverse countries [EDIT]
I would actually excuse many Americans from not having passports based on their size and diversity. I loved your size comparison pics but I do think that the US is far more diverse than most other single countries. I've visited 27 of the US states and although they share a common language (for the most part although the dialects and accents do vary massively) and currency, the culture, beliefs and cuisine can vary tremendously.
If you only have a week's holiday, it's far cheaper and easier to hop on a flight of less than 5 hours and end up anywhere from the beaches of Hawaii, the theatres of Broadway, hiking in one of the national parks, driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, sunning in Florida, exploring the wildernesses of the big sky country. When you have so much to do nearer home, there's an automatic disadvantage to going somewhere that you don't understand the language, the hassle of switching currencies and understanding the local ways.
Obviously, I don't agree with that philosophy - I'll fly over the Atlantic for a weekend trip
😉 or over to Europe for a city break at the drop of a hat. But there are times I wonder whether I should be smelling the roses in my home country a little more often.
Wandering around London and listening in at tourist haunts, the Aussie/Kiwi tourists always seem much younger than those from the US (who often have children in tow or are retired). I do wonder whether one reason the Aussies/Kiwis are so much more likely to take gap years and travel so extensively when they're younger is that as they get older and have more commitments to jobs/families, their relative isolation from the rest of the world means travelling long-haul is more complex? Flights in double-digit hours for many locations might make it more off-putting?
