My Dad lives in Delaware so I visit there fairly regularly. I’m not sure what objections the folks you were talking to had, but the only thing I would find annoying is that there are some smaller towns in the southern park of the state that get absolutely mobbed by beach traffic every weekend during the summer. There’s nothing more annoying than just heading out for groceries on a Saturday morning in August and getting stuck in standstill traffic for an hour because every resident of DC and Baltimore is using the two lane road in front of your house as a “shortcut” to get to Rehoboth.
I actually think the area around Newark is nice if you like college town vibes and Wilmington has some decent cultural stuff (thanks mostly to the Dupont family and some of the banks that decided to throw some money into the Waterfront area). Anecdotally, I’ve heard that the pandemic seemed to hit downtown Wilmington pretty hard in terms of restaurant and store closings, but I haven’t been back to personally verify.
VT was lovely the few times I’ve been but one of the of the most expensive trips I ever took was a 3-day ski holiday in Stowe. And I didn’t actually ski. Cost more $ than a 5-day vacation to Cartagena earlier that year with the same people.
Is taking a train from London to Paris going to be fun a experience for a 12 year old? My city doesn’t fly direct to CDG and generally fucking loathe having to take multiple fights.
Keep in mind that you have to factor in the train from Heathrow to St. Pancras International along with the train from there to Paris. Talking 3-4 hours combined on two trains to avoid a 90 minute flight.
I guess do you prefer spending more than double the time and transferring trains over an extra flight. Or your kid I suppose.
NH is fine to live in for the most part. Ok to visit as well but if you are a skier, hiker, or rock climber and travelling a good distance then there are much better options elsewhere. If you’re coming for the NE coast, go to MA or ME. For quaint farm country shit, VT. For brewpubs, anywhere but NH (with a couple of exceptions.)
That’s why I said “traveling a good distance”. If you are on the east coast, sure. But if you are flying you’re nuts not to go out west IMO as it absolutely crushes NH. I guess it’s all subjective to some extent, but I have extensive experience hiking and rock/ice climbing in NH and I’ll take CA, CO, WY, UT etc. any day. (I also prefer ME to NH for hiking now, but that’s mostly because NH hiking trails are too crowded.)
Oh well in that case for hiking NH has the best in New England. ME is good too but logistically more challenging for people on vacation because you typically need car spots or drop offs since there are not as many loop hikes. And upstate NY is under-rated.
In total, the Chunnel tunnel is 31.3 miles in length, and it takes a Eurostar train approximately 35 minutes to travel its full length. In total, the fastest journey time from London St. Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord is 2 hours and 16 minutes.
Taking the Eurostar would probably see you arrive in Paris before you’d finished checking in for a flight from Heathrow. Another 20 mins cab from Charles De Gaulle to central paris. Looking at clouds can get pretty boring IME. Rail travel kinder on the environment too.
