gwd

I've heard the channel islands are small and boring but I didn't know that
one of them is car free.

https://www.sark.info/

cbr2702

And, until recently, the last bastion of european feudalism.

Tabor

But did they have serfs? The last pieces of feudal law weren't abolished in the UK until 2000, but serfdom was long gone.

cbr2702

Sark has not had serfs in a while, if ever. Also, sark is part of the UK and retained a feudal government until April of this year.

cbr2702

I just read up on the meaning of "crown dependency" and now see that sark is not part of the UK. And neither is guernsey, which I find quite surprising.

gerv 

I think this is a great thread. We all need vacations, but the typical North American vacation these days is a nightmare of car rentals and barren, sterile hotel rooms.

This is unfortunately because -- when you stop to think about it -- many, if not most, vacation destinations offer car-free alternatives. For example, I was in Mexico earlier this year and traveled around on local buses. In fact, while many North Americans rent cars (and struggle with road maps and traffic and parking), Mexico has one of the best bus systems in the hemisphere.

But Mexico isn't the only place on earth with good carfree infrastructure. Think about vacationing in Europe. You can travel by train or bus. Or you can simply fly to Amsterdam, rent a bicycle and make your way through Northern Europe. It's very do-able.

The real down-side to vacationing these days is not the automobile -- which is easy to by-pass -- but rather the airplane. This mode of travel is certainly the least "green", far worse than car travel, and also exposes the vacationer to horrific airports at both ends of the vacation.

I'm hoping someday to be able to travel to Europe by freighter. A long time ago, I used to work at sea, and I highly recommend an adventure that begins and ends on the water.

Roody

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Mackinaw Island in Michigan. Totally carfee with world famous Grand Hotel. You take a ferry to get there then rent a bike to get around.

ausfix

Lamma Island, near Hong Kong is car-free. They have little motorized carts to haul stuff around but you have to walk if you want to check the place out. When I was there, Prince Charles was visiting the island, touting the natural beauty of the place. Certainly a refreshing retreat from the hectic activity on Hong Kong.

Enthusiast

New Orleans is a good american city to visit as a car-free tourist. Whenever people visit me here I tell them that I have a bike ready for them and to not bother with a rental car. None of them have been even car-lite, but everyone has thanked me for making them use a bike.

Getting here car-free is tough. We get cycle tourists and hitchhikers through fairly often, but most come by plane or Amtrak. I'm biking 12miles to the airport tomorrow for my flight out for the holidays . Luckily you can ride the levee for 9 of those miles, but I don't have a rack on my bike so it'll be annoying hauling the luggage.

gerv, when I set off to tour the world I'm thinking about crewing on a yacht or some other vessel to travel from continent to continent. Do you have any advice?

gerv 

I don't know much about crewing a yacht, although it sounds like fun. I worked as a fisheries observer for a number of years, mostly aboard Russian, East German and Portuguese trawlers. I think a lot of cargo vessels are now crewed by people from places like the Philipines... and they often stay out at sea for a long time.

There are some classes of tramp "steamers" or freighter cruises that you might be able to take advantage of to ,say, travel to Europe. https://www.freightercruises.com/
It seems like cabins are about 100 euros a day...

I have never traveled this way, but I crossed the Atlantic on a 120 foot long liner in December 1984. It took 7 days to cross from Labrador to Portugal.

I think you would find a trans-Atlantic trip pretty different. A great experience.

Roody

I know that most yachts have bicycles that they use in port. But the biggest yacht I ever saw had 6 matching purple motor scooters--painted the same shade of purple as the trim paint on the yacht. I saw another yacht that had 4 kids who were professional-quality technical bicycle riders. They entertained the crowds with their amazing stunts on the breakwater rocks. Later I saw the same kids riding on commuter bikes riding through the city.

zephyr

True, I was in Nayarit, Jalisco and Colima states in the central Pacific coast of Mexico in November. Great bus system, I used first class buses that put our domestic Greyhounds to shame. It's liberating to get on and get off the bus without hassles of where the car is parked, will it get ripped off. The good thing is in Mexico, as long as you avoid the peak holiday travel season, if you miss one bus you can always get a seat on the next one that will probably be coming along pretty quick.

gerv 

Yeah, it's remarkable how easy it is to get around on bus. Strange though that so many tourists rent cars... which must be a real hassle. I think the advertisers/promoters are mostly responsible for this.

Roody

I think it's more that the last thing the average tourist wants is to be rubbing shoulders with the native people of the country they're visiting. In fact, they don't want to get on the bus and rub shoulders with the native people of their own home town!

gwd

Last time I went to Mexico I went with a car free girl and her car dependent sister, we used buses between towns and rented old style VW Beetles to go to remote places. The time before that I only used buses. I don't know the classes of bus, the ones with assigned seats were nice but the ones where they just stuff people on are more fun- especially after someone starts passing a bottle of rum or tequila around.