By Brian Johnston
Experience grand landscapes and centuries of history.Credit: Getty.
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Want to get the most out of your next holiday? An epic journey by car, train or cruise ship provides an immersive experience that keeps you moving through grand landscapes and centuries of history.
Hit the highway
The decommissioned Route 66 in the USA once ran from Santa Monica near Los Angeles to Chicago in a nearly 4,000-kilometre diagonal slash across the American heartland. It was immortalised as a symbol of freedom in novels, songs and movies such as Easy Rider and Thelma & Louise.
Today, historic Route 66 stays close to the original, and still offers a huge dollop of adventurous escapism. You'll find yourself surrounded by 1950s Americana, from gas stations to milk bars and motels. Kona coffee jugs warm on the counters of old-fashioned diners as if you've strayed into a Lee Child novel.
For splendid landscapes, concentrate on the California and Arizona section, which takes in the surprisingly beautiful Mojave Desert and Meteor Crater, deep enough to hide a 60-storey apartment block. In the Painted Desert, weird and wonderful mesas and buttes are a startling red and purple at sunset.
Hide the rails
Credit: Getty.
The sense of movement and discovery you experience on a train journey is unbeatable, and the most epic of all is the Trans-Siberian ride for 10,555 kilometres across Russia – from Moscow to Vladivostok on the North Pacific coast.
For days, your train crosses the wide-open Siberian steppes, in summer grazed by horses, carpeted in wildflowers and shimmering with seemingly endless silvery birch forests. Winter is another experience entirely, through landscapes encrusted with snow and ice.
The Trans-Siberian used to be an endurance test on rocking, rumbling trains on which you were served cabbage soup for a week. However, upgrades of the railway tracks and the introduction of private trains now provides luxury and fine dining as you cross the tundra, mesmerised by Russia's vast dimensions. Stop off along the way in the cities of Kazan and Yekaterinburg, and to explore the shores of gloriously scenic Lake Baikal, encased in mountains.
Sail the seas
Credit: Getty.
At night, you're transported as you sleep, and in the morning awake to another port, or even another country. Journeys by cruise ship offer cultural immersion coupled with almost embarrassing ease of travel, nowhere more so than in the Mediterranean, which is an astonishing compendium of civilisations, languages, architecture and cuisines.
You'll sail through time as well as place, following in the wake of ancient Greek heroes and Phoenicians traders, conquering fleets and Victorian-age adventurers. This sea is dense in great empires, pocket-sized principalities, history, culture and sunshine. Athens, Istanbul and Rome have influenced the world. Port such as Valletta in Malta and Kotor in Montenegro provide some of cruising's most dramatic approaches.
The Greek islands, Croatian coast and French Riviera offer hip, hedonistic holiday towns where fishermen and fashionistas mingle, while islands such as Santorini, Corfu and Majorca prove that the Mediterranean has sumptuous scenery to match its impressive cultural credentials. Just set sail, and watch it all appear.
Planning a trip of a lifetime? Looking to pack more into your next holiday or just need some inspiration? Flight Centre's Round the World experts have all the industry know-how when it comes to crafting the ideal itinerary that will tick off your travel wish list, saving you time and money. Get in touch with one of Flight Centre's Round the World experts today.
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