Advice to Americans: Save your Money; Stay Home

  A little known fact surrounding my serendipitous trip to Ireland (you know, the one that started this whole adventure) is that I was originally planning to visit England. In truth, of all the available unvisited foreign countries, England was top on my list of the ones I wanted to go to. So strong was this desire (I think it had something to do with the land of my fathers calling me home) I convinced the travel agent to book my flight to Shannon via London Heathrow. The agency, naturally, assumed me to be crazy, but a crazy man with money still means a commission so I was granted my forty-seven minute layover in England, giving me just enough time to sprint from one terminal to the next and snap a quick photo out the window of dawn breaking over the runway apron.

The reason I didn't stay? It was too expensive.

The planning phase of my great adventure saw me sidetracked to Ireland as soon as I realized how much a hotel in London cost. The exchange rate between the dollar and the pound stood at 100 pound notes for 150 US Dollars in those days, which meant a holiday expenditure of around $500 a day. This was more than enough to convince me to vacation elsewhere.

I'm sorry to say, the exchange rate has grown steadily worse since then, to the point where, as of this morning, a US dollar will only buy you 49 pence. The most shocking news of all, however, is that a US dollar will only buy you 73 Euro pennies, so diverting to practically any location in continental Europe isn't going to gain you any advantage in the monetary exchange department. (You can still get a hell of a deal in Venezuela, however, where 1 dollar will net you 2144.6 Bolivars.)

My advice, then, is to stay home. You'll find better value for your money at Disney World that Euro Disney and I hear Mount Rushmore is more impressive than Stonehenge anyway. The only problem you may encounter in vacationing domestically are all the foreigners visiting the States to take advantage of the weakened dollar.

Imagine you and your family sharing a single room at the Motel 6 while, down the road a ways, an Eastern European family has booked into the penthouse at the Hilton exclaiming, "Only 35 Euros for this!" And you'll have to put up with seeing British tourists dine on sirloin steaks while you're eating the chicken special, and then watch them pay with $100 bills, telling the waiter, "Keep the change, it's only worth twelve pounds fifty."

Economists expect the dollar to recover eventually, and I can only hope they're right. Never mind what a second-rate America will mean to the economic well-being of the world community and the far-reaching consequences this will have on the balance of power, think of how it's affecting me. My retirement income is tied up in America. If you people don't pull your socks up, get off your collective asses and do some productive work, for pity's sake, I'm going to retire on a pauper's income. On the other hand, if I liquidate all the assets I've acquired here and move back to America, I'll be a millionaire, so it may not matter either way.

On the other hand, after I can finally give up work, I'd rather spend what time I have left visiting the Louver and the Coliseum, not the New York State Museum of Cheese and the World's Largest Ball of Twine.