Luxury, as we understand it, is all around us, and we can certainly afford our share of travel, but the writing appears to be on the wall that all is not well in America.

We have scheduled a trip north into Utah for the end of May, but I was considering changing that so we could hit New York City once this year and finally find our way into the Metropolitan Museum of Art; we’ve never been. A roundtrip flight non-stop flight from Phoenix to Newark, New Jersey, is coming in at $1000 for the two of us. Hotel rates are cheaper than we’ve seen before but in Manhattan, that is still $1000 for three nights. Add $100 for two days of museum admissions, $500 for restaurants, the cost of Uber to and from airports, and some incidental costs, and we’ll be at $3,000 for three days in NYC.

So I priced out driving to New York, which would require three days there and three days back. The cost of the rental car would be about $550 and gas $800 plus the extra six nights of motels/hotels along the way, adding no less than another $500, not including meals. It adds up to be more expensive than flying.

What if we spread the costs out over a longer time frame, say we make a month of it and see America by car with NYC being a small part of a greater whole? I’ll spare you the details, but that would cost a minimum of $7,000, upwards of $10,000 if I’m realistic.

Running into these brick walls, I opt to look at a return to the Monterey, California, area for a visit back at an old favorite, the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Prices for lodging were good last year; oh, those were pandemic prices, which are now no less than doubled and, in some instances, tripled.

Phoenix, Arizona, to Frankfurt, Germany, and back would cost $796 each, with a train ticket to Paris, France, costing $51 or $102 roundtrip. I found a great rental apartment on Champs-Élysées for five days costing $650. So, ten days between Frankfurt visiting family and Paris goofing off would end up costing maybe a couple of hundred dollars more than three days in New York City. Something is broken.