A leisurely trip

it's actually not as bad as I thought it would be

It only assumes 120 km/h average speed for 55h

Conversely, I, as an American who had the opportunity to spend a few months in Germany, was surprised at how close all the countries were.

Great culture in all the places I went (Brussels and Prague were my two standout favorites!) Traveling was hella cheap. The food was fire everywhere I went. The architecture was INCREDIBLE. And the knowledge that you could go to the hospital for less than $100 was nuts. Don't even get me started on how legitimately cool it is to sit in a 1000 year old pub.

I didn't want to come back. I nearly cried when I got the return flight info.

It still shocks me to tell people "Yeah, I lived in Germany for a bit and some weekends we would fuck off to France."

The borders of European countries are great because there's all this security infrastructure that they've built but then they don't use any of it. There's always just a bunch of ballads and you have to drive around little security checkpoints but there's never anyone around.
My personal favourite is Geneva which is kind of just an extended bit of Switzerland because the city was already there, but really by any logical sense it should be in France. So they deal with that by basically just ignoring it, and people just pop to and fro all the time.
- There are often crossings where the infrastructure is a road-side sign. Interstate crossings at state borders are often more significant.

Their transportation:

😂😂😂 They're in for a surprise. I can drive 2 hours and still be in my state.

I can drive for two hours and still be in the same roundabout.
I had a car like that once.
I can drive 8 hours and still be in my shithole state and it's not even Texas.
Dam, if I drive an hour the right direction in in Sweden
- Same here, but that's where I started.
I can drive two hours and still be in my county! (It’s stupid).
- We have like 120 counties. Dunno why.

I sadly see this all the time unironically. Met a German family who arrived in North Carolina with plans to go to Disney Land. Not World. Land

"Isn't California just on the other side of the country?"

Yeah it is

The way I try to communicate it is to ask them to imagine someone taking a vacation to the whole EU, because America is much closer in scale to that
How do people not check driving times in this modern age?
- America is pretty unique in size. If you're used to shorter trips even overestimating wouldn't be half the drive through america. Especially Europeans as a long drive is anything over 20m when its measured in hours they're considering booking accommodations for sleep and such. The perception of time is incredibly different.

I had relatives over from wales visiting my grandmother in canberra. "Come, drive up for the day! "

Bitch i live in melbourne. The drive alone is longer than your entire "kingdom"

Ha, I had to drive 8 hours to get to the nearest airport when some one on site had a personal emergency
Wales is a principality. Victoria is about the same area as England btw.
- Nope.
  Victoria (Australia): About 228,000 km².
  United Kingdom: About 243,610 km².
  England: About 130,281 km².
  Wales is a part of the UK, the "kingdom" of which i speak. Or did you think i was talking of the lands of Llywelyn the last?
  (Btw: the uk is about 600km long. Melbs to canberra is 665km)

We had family visit from the UK many years ago. They said after they visited Niagara Falls, they wanted to "pop over" to Prince Edward Island to see Anne of Green Gables. That is an 18h drive if you don't even stop to pee. They finally realized how big Canada really is when somebody showed them a map of England superimposed on a map of Canada.

I mean, it is also about how much time you have in the vacation and how much it feels like a "once in a lifetime" thing, where you take more hardships to check all the "highlights". Like, when we spend 2 weeks in Australia we drove crazy distances, because I don't know whether I will ever be there again. Same for US tourists in Europe, even in this thread "oh, we did Lissabon, London, Paris, Prague and Zagreb". No European would ever cram that into 4 weeks. But if you have the opportunity ¯(ツ)_/¯
When backpacking in China we went from Shanghai to the border of Tibet. Crazy distances again, but we wanted to cover snow capped mountains and Shanghai, solely because of "well, while we're at it". I mean, it felt like we already travelled half-way back home, only to come back to Shanghai to take the return trip.
Anyway, TL;DR: I don't think it's underestimating the size, but a FOMO on a "once in a lifetime" vacation.

upvote for Gulf of Mexico

Ahem, it's the Gulf of America. Please get your facts right
- why is this being downvoted, have y'all never heard of sarcasm?
- Let's call it the gulf of middle earth
- Only if marlago is designated americas rectum.

Shout out the 1 hour 45 minute drive from JFK to just over the bridge into Jersey

Holy crap, just shoot me out a cannon, I'll get there sooner or die, either is preferable
Fly into Newark. Nobody in nj uses JFK or laguardia.
- In OP’s image they “land” in NYC and drive to Miami. You would drive the route I posted to leave NYC.

I mean I did think road trips were feasible before looking them up not to get dragged into the idea too early, but even then I didn't think it would be a day. In my mind it was like a week at least.

Europeans: METRIC MAKES EVERY MEASUREMENT COMPREHENDABLE

ALSO EUROPEANS:

Well it probably doeant help that nothing in the states is metric lol
Youre more likely to find a map measured in football fields or hamburgers at most places
- comparing internet comments when americans can't locate a 2000 sq mile city-state with an unpronounceable name on a map in central eastern europe versus when europeans fail to understand the scale of a damn continent on the same map is some wild contrast ngl.
  if you don't realize that a country which spans most of a major continent (which you have seen depicted next to your own continent on every world map for your entire life) is not the same size as spain or france, then the issue is much deeper than nationality.
- Maps measure in miles AND kilometers here you have no excuse
- Speaking of by large distances, how long was it after the USA walked on the moon until any country in Europe did?

Or just save being put in an ICE facility and go visit Canada and not be put in an ICE facility.

Edit typo

In America, 100 years is a long time
In Europe, 100 miles is a long distance

Tf is a mile, bruv? Don't come in 'ere with these nonsensical made up freedom units
- Miles originated in Britain, so talk to them about their made-up nonsense.
  At least they were eventually willing to give up the imperial system. I still don't understand why Americans never got on board with metric; it's so much easier.
- If I remember my conversions right then a mile is 5280 kilometers. I hope that helps explain why Europeans would fear such a distance!

My brother went to college in upstate NY in the 80’s and made friends with a girl who was born & raised in Manhattan. One weekend, in all seriousness, she suggested taking the subway to the Grand Canyon.

Had a friend from SE Asia that wanted to visit me in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She found a flight to Canada alright. To VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA. She asked if I could come pick her up if I wasn't too busy.

Lol.
Sure, I'll be there in 3 days, you'll probably want to get some food while you wait.
- 3? I had a few crewmates cross the country in about 5 and they said that was a gruelling task that they should have slowed down for.

Why not just take the High Speed Rail and get there in 45 minutes instead?

US High Speed Rail:
- Hey now, don't knock the Big Boy. He could reach 80mph, that's much faster than most of our rail in the US.
- When this baby hits 88Mph, you’re gonna see some serious shit
idk if I want to ride a train that goes at Mach 2.3 personally.
- I'll wait until it's proven, then I'll go find a g suit.
I looked at taking a train from Albuquerque to Denver for a concert, the trip takes 2-3 days and goes from Albuquerque toto Chicago to Denver and one way cost more than a round trip flight. For reference, it is a 7ish hour drive.
- Their long hauls are definitely more vacation based, where the ride is part of the journey - and if you're not into that then I get how you feel. Amtrak has been doing a great job at refocusing on corridors. The east coast obviously, then they're working hard on a few key ones like:
  Minneapolis to Chicago
  Portland-Seattle-Vancouver
  California corridor
  Eventually, here's hoping, the Frontrange: Pueblo-Colorado Springs-Denver-Fort Collins-Cheyenne.
  Those are all shorter trips that don't make much sense to fly with how short it is, and with a few daily trips makes traveling between those cities much easier. Personally those are much better usages of Amtrak's time. I've taken the Portland-Seattle-Vancouver one multiple times and it's so much nicer than driving - but it's max 4 hours.
- I live near SLC and go get to San Francisco is about 18 hours, and that's a straight shot. Coach costs about $120, each way, which is about the same price as a non-budget airline. There's only one train each day and it runs from midnight to about 6PM the next day.
  By car it's about 11 hours and about 2 hours by airplane.
  So it's:
  slower
  not cheaper, perhaps more expensive if you don't mind budget flights
  less flexible - one train/day in most cases
  There are tons of places I just can't get to, like Las Vegas.
  If I was retired or something when spending more time was totally fine, I'd consider taking the train. But as it stands, it's just not a practical option unless the train is the destination.
are you in the same school as this picard maneuver guy?

A 2 hour drive in Miami will get you to…north Miami

And 50$ in tolls lol

Ah, a meme from a simpler time. Now the first thing I think of is how long the stay in Guantanamo Bay will be.

Out of curiosity, I put the route in Google Maps to see how long each leg would take. 20 hrs., 37 hrs., 5 hrs.

You really can't experience everything if has to offer in just one day. I wish tourists could better understand.
If they make it all the way noon, I'd be surprised. Make a stop in Alligator Auschwitz.

could have this if politicians didn't fight high speed rail so much

I'm a fan of high speed rail too, but I also wonder if it's ever going to be comparable to flying for long distances like this.
Like, even traveling in a direct line on a plane (which averages 600mph, or 2-3x the average speed of high speed rail), it still takes 6 hours from NYC to LA.
- Anything under about 500 km is better by train. While the train is slower once you count getting to and from the airport and in is l and if the plane, you're still faster overall. Above that the plane will usually be faster. If you take the environmental cost into account, the train always wins.
- There's a direct train from Beijing to Kunming that's 11 hours, 1700 miles.
  NYC to LA would be ~50% more, so you could do a high-speed sleeper.
  But no, at that distance, flying is probably better.
- As soon as Elon Musk builds his Hyperloop, we'll be traveling from NYC to LA in just a few hours. /s
- Honestly, if trains were 1/3 as fast as planes, I'd take them.
  My family lives about 800 miles away (by car, less as the crow flies), which takes about 14 hours by car, 2.5 hours by plane, and 45 hours by train (36 moving time). To be fair, it covers more ground (almost 2x at ~1400 miles), but driving that same roite would only be ~22 hours. To make up for the extra distance, the train would need to go about twice the speed, so 120-150mph, to match driving, which is completely feasible. If I could do that trip via train in one day, I'd do it vs taking the plane.
  I don't think expecting trains to go 2-3x the speed of cars is unreasonable. I'd still probably take an airplane for longer trips, but anything within 1k miles or so should be reasonable to do by rail.
- There is a point where planes become the better choice and transcontinental is definitely one of them.
With the distances provided, flying would be faster than high speed rail. Even if there was a maglev train from NYC to Miami, I think the flight would still be faster unless there were major delays flying out.
If only the train autistic people had took over the country instead of the nazi ones.
You'd need a train going 1100mph (3x faster than the fastest current train) to make Miami to Las Vegas in 2 hours, but sure.
- For reference that's like 1.5 times the speed of sound at sea level.
Those trains would have to be supersonic though, to do it all in one day.

When I was in college at Eastern New Mexico, which is about 45 minutes west of Amarillo Texas, a couple friends, both from New England, had the bright idea of driving down to the gulf over a 4 day weekend.

I cautioned them against the idea, trying to explain Texas was bigger than they could imagine. Three hours into the trip we got a motel room in some hole in the wall town and went back to school the next morning.

What? It takes 24 hours to drive from the Canadian border to Mexico border. Texas is about 770 miles at its widest, that’s a breezy 10-12 hour drive doing the speed limit or just over.
- You're assuming no traffic in major cities. I've gone from close to the Louisiana border to new Mexico and it took about 16 hours.
- I went on a cross Canada car drive in the early 2000s. We left from Sudbury Ontario to make it to the west coast in BC. We took our time, sight seeing and making many stops along the way. Ten days later we made it to Vancouver.
  The best part was that on our sixth day, we ran into a friend in Medicine Hat, Alberta. He had left Kapuskasing, Ontario the day before and was expecting to make it to Vancouver in about 60 hours with non stop driving. His eyes were so blood shot and he was literally shaking from all the caffeine drinks, pills and coffee he had been taking. He had some strangers with him that he had picked up as hitch hikers and he said they were keeping him awake.
  We worried about him the whole time but he called us two days later to say he made it. We caught up with him three days later.
I live in Arkansas and went on vacation to South Padre Island a few years ago. It's a 16 hour drive one way.
- I grew up near Seattle and now live near Salt Lake City. The drive is 14 hours one way and I've done that trip at least a dozen times.

Whilst in all about road trips this fool better be driving at 1500mph to make these times

Have you heard of autobahn?
/j
Mach 2 is very reasonable. Gillette makes a Mach 3.
What, your car doesn't do mach 3?

So, back in 2009, I lived in a tour bus touring with big acts like Linkin Park, Pearl Jam and guys like that. Well, we did a little stint with Madonna and we went from LA, straight to NYC, down to Miami and straight back to LA in I think about a week. It was one of the most brutal on road experiences I've ever had to endure for 4 shows. I was on a really sweet fully decked out tour bus too, so it was the best case scenario. It gave me a new appreciation for how motherfucking vast my country is. However, I would NOT recommend the experience.

I did get to meet Spike Lee and Chris Cornell in Miami tho and even had birthday cake with Justin Timberlake while in NYC. It was his birthday and he was doing a music thing inside our bus. He sat right next to me at the front of the bus and we talked about Pink Floyd. Super nice guy. It was a pretty wild week.

You have had an interesting life.
- It's true. Im 40 now but i never had kids and chased my dreams from 14 to 35. I dont tell any stories irl very much anymore because some people think I'm showing out or making shit up. Examples:
  Had coffee with Pierce Broznan... at his house in Malibu. Wild story.
  Avengers Endgame spoiler crew sound guy. Wild story.
  I was at Derek Rose's house, doing an interview when he got traded from the Bulls the first time. Wild story. And so much other random shit like that.

Vegas sucks though.

I like everything about this except the "being in the USA" part.

Multiply those time estimates by about 20.

I would skip Florida. You won't miss much.

What are you talking about?
Mugging followed by incarceration and deportation is a great travel story!
- "How was your holiday in America?"
  "Good until the end. I didn't expect flights from Uganda to Munich to have so many layovers."
- Well, getting mugged in Florida is different than in NYC.
The only subtropical part of the US?
It's uniqueness alone makes Florida special.
- You do know Hawaii is part of the united states, correct?
- I mean, sure if you're into repressive heat and humidity 10 months out of the year, clouds of potentially deadly but always annoying mosquitoes, ticks that inflict strange lifelong disabilities, sand everywhere imaginable and dreary mold literally growing on everything - it's fucking great!
i mean they're already going to la so just skip florida and go to the far superior disneyland.
- Florida's parks are way better than California's, and it's not even close...

Europeans do be like that.

Just to compare
- Sure, "TIL Europe is only seven countries." Try the same but go Amsterdam -> Riga -> Athens -> Lisbon -> Amsterdam it's 8000 km in a straight line. Europe might be smaller than North America, but it's not that small.
Meh, same with US folks visiting Europe, which is actually a common movie trope. I'm sure there's also plenty of people on both continents wo will think something through.
- Yeah, we frequently get them in Norway. People who want a weekend trip to Oslo and drive to "the fjords" and back one day, or see stuff after 1500 in winter.

And here in the comments you will read once again the problem of USA about railways. Take some popcorn.

lol the problem with America is fascism
- Which funny enough is part of the reason they don't have trains. Some dickhead fascist billionaire charmed the simple brained with magic transportation, so they wouldn't invest in high speed rail anymore. Go figure
- Still USA citizens won't and can't do anything, because they never do.
Sensible Americans (a vanishing breed, but still) agree that high speed rail is both doable and practical across the US.

This gotta be from mapporncirclejerk, right? Right?

Oh boy, someone is about to have a lesson in scale.

A guy I work with is in Germany. He came to the US for a work meeting. He intended to stay in the US for another week and a half, with plans to rent a car and drive ... basically this route. With all sorts of sightseeing and tourist stops along the way.
Suffice it to say that he did not.

Itinerary Anarchy

WTH would you go all the way to miami? Stop in orlando, get some disney on and leave save 6 hours.

Why not pop over and see Montana while you're here?

Just take a quick drive to Alaska too
- Don't miss out on Hawaii! It's just a short ferry ride away.