Hey there, Travellers,

Last night, I arrived in Vancouver, and it's officially the furthest west I've ever been. After surviving the long journey (which WestJet just wanted to keep making longer), I'm now trying to absorb every word of Assistant Editor Olivia's tips on beating jetlag.

While it's the Vancouver International Travel Expo tomorrow (Saturday 10th) that brought me here, I'm also going to be spending a few days in and around the city before heading over to Vancouver Island.

Since it's my first time in the city, I'm going to shamelessly ask for any and all tips you can give me! Where (and what) should I eat? Which museums are worth visiting? Where are the best viewpoints?

Please share your recommendations in the comments or by replying to this email :-)

Oh, and if you happen to be in Vancouver this Thanksgiving weekend, you can grab a free ticket to the International Travel Expo here. Stop by and say hello to us at booth B523.

Happy travels and safe landings,

Katy - Editor of The Detour

By Olivia

A San Diego native, Olivia left home three years ago to live on the road. Since then, she's had homebases everywhere from Quebec to England to New Orleans, but she always ends up back on the West Coast. When she's not hiking through the desert or the woods, she can usually be found exploring her current city and scoping out the best bars and coffee shops.

It’s 10:30am, and I am in Midtown Manhattan, waiting for a guard to unlock a set of glass doors. I’m going over the plan in my head one last time when, finally, the line starts moving. I get through security, the museum ticket on my phone is scanned, and I immediately flee the crowd of slow-moving visitors and race up the escalators until I reach Gallery 501. 

And there it is. Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The real one, not a poster or a desktop screensaver or a mousepad. The actual masterpiece, painted by Vincent himself, is a few feet away from me. I can see the brushstrokes.

This is why I got here right when the MoMA opened, and why I looked up the painting’s location ahead of time, and why I made sure I was the first one to get to it. For a few moments, I am alone with one of the most famous images in human history. 

Other guests trickle in pretty quickly, so I cede the space to let someone else look closely. 

I spend the next four hours at MoMA, making sure I see absolutely everything. It’s quite a star-studded affair. The Persistence of Memory, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, some Mondrians, some Magrittes, some Monets. It’s like walking through an art history textbook, and that’s exactly why I came.

When I was a kid, my little hometown renovated its outdated old library and expanded into a shiny new building that was five times bigger, and I found myself with a lot more reading options. Most excitingly, I now had access to a new section labeled “ART.” 

Thus began my era of carrying home a giant stack of art history books every few weeks. I’d liked drawing and painting for as long as I could remember, but the books opened up an entirely new world to me. Suddenly, art had context. The shapes and colors and subjects and styles were all connected to a time and place.

The most famous paintings were in every single art history book, and they became familiar faces to me, almost like celebrities. Underneath every one of those images, the book would list a location: The National Gallery, London. The Louvre Museum, Paris. The Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

I grew up in a semi-rural part of California and had never been on an airplane, so those seemed like quite exotic, far-off places to me. None of my local art museums had any celebrities in them. Famous paintings were something that lived elsewhere; they were something that required a long journey to witness in person.

The first time I ever saw a recognizable painting with my own eyes was during an elementary school field trip to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. They were displaying one of Monet’s bridges at the time, and I remember staring in disbelief that it was real. The 3.5-hour bus ride had been miserable, but it brought me to the real-life version of an image I had seen a hundred times. It had proven that the paintings in my books were real and I could reach them with enough determination.

It would be a while before I got to travel far away and see more famous paintings, but the connection between art and travel was firmly planted in my mind. I took notice of all the ways in which they were linked. I collected posters from various cities and pinned them on my wall. I sorted through my grandparents’ menagerie of Mexican and indigenous art they collected during trips to the Southwest. I practiced painting by copying travel photos. And above all, I kept a loose mental list of where every famous artwork was located and wondered which ones I’d be able to see before I die. 

After graduating college, I spent a few months selling my own art to tourists at Balboa Park in San Diego, which taught me what it was like to be on the other end of that connection. I still couldn’t travel myself, but the link between the two fields stayed strong – by far, my best-selling pieces were of scenes in San Diego. Everybody wanted a piece of my city to take home with them. 

^{California Tower in San Diego – I kept making new sketches of it because they sold faster than anything else.}

Eventually, I was able to get out and start seeing more of the world. The first truly iconic painting I ever witnessed while traveling was Klimt’s The Kiss, at the Belvedere in Vienna. I even wore my matching Klimt socks for the occasion, like I was wearing a band t-shirt to a concert. I couldn’t believe how stunning it was in person, how much the gold leaf caught the light. 

And of course, there was a massive crowd around it:

The Getty had been closed for that school field trip, so this was my first experience navigating the mass of onlookers that collects in front of every famous painting. It hadn’t occurred to me that this would be part of the experience, but surprisingly, I didn’t mind it at all. 

As lovely as it is to have a private moment with a work of art, there’s also something special to me about standing at the back and watching everyone else have their own moment. The way they mime the subjects (like the couples kissing in front of The Kiss), the way they take selfies to prove they saw it with their own eyes, the way people politely take turns going up to the front and center. I love the way you can always immediately tell when you’re getting close to a museum’s most famous painting, because you can hear the crowd before you even turn the corner. There’s a general hum of excitement in the air, like the kind you feel whenever there’s a celebrity in the room with you.

After I’d seen everything else at the MoMA, I went back to Starry Night just to see what kind of crowd it had drawn. Sure enough, there it was, peeking out from behind its near-omnipresent horde of adoring fans:

While visiting an iconic artwork might have a lot in common with visiting an iconic landmark, this is where they differ for me. In the world of travel, we’re always competing to find the biggest unknowns: the least touristy cafés, the least overrun beaches, the destinations that have yet to blow up on social media. We tend to hate places that are full of gawking tourists. 

But when it comes to art, the fame of the piece is often a big part of what makes it so interesting to see in person. Every gallery is full of impressive paintings that might strike a chord with you, but the iconic ones carry a very specific weight to them. The culture around it elevates it to something more. Every Starry Night-themed coffee mug or laptop case makes it even stranger to see the original in person and realize that before it was a cultural touchstone, it was nothing but a piece of canvas, a palette of paint, and an idea in someone’s head.

So when I stand at the back of a mob that came to admire a famous painting, I don’t feel any disdain for the masses that are taking up space. They feel more like part of the art to me. It’s a shared experience I’ll never get tired of, no matter how many pieces I check off my to-do list. Decades or centuries or even millennia ago, someone made something, and now, long after they’re gone, people travel from all over the world to come see it. I love being one of those people. 

Since then, I’ve been one of those people at places like the Reina Sofía in Madrid, and the National Gallery in London – places I remember as labels under paintings in my art books. 

I’m sure one day I’ll make it to Florence and lose my cool in front of the David, or find several days to set aside in Paris so I can see every inch of the Louvre. Maybe I’ll even buy some souvenirs from the museum gift shop and I can take a little piece of it home with me. 

So the next time you’re admiring a famous artwork at a museum, try not to get too frustrated with the crowd. Take a few moments to peoplewatch, and to think about how wonderfully strange it is that so many of us love to see paintings that we’ve seen copies of ten million times. 

But if you really want it all to yourself, you can always make a mad dash the moment the doors open :-)

Where in the world has art taken you? Was it everything you'd imagined or seriously underwhelming? Let me know in the comments.

We're always on the look-out for ways to help you save some cash on travel. Whether that's finding alternative routes, flash sales or otherwise - we're on it. Because when it comes to traveling with the whole family, we know it can get particularly pricey.

Recently, we've been digging up even more details on the youth and student discount programs that airlines already offer (if you just know where to look). Most major North American carriers are leaving us pretty high and dry on that front, but luckily, our friends in Europe and the rest of the world are picking up their slack.

Some of these discounts do have pretty specific use cases, stringent rules, and identity checks. If you do hit all the boxes though, they might just be the best deal in the sky. 

So, to help you save on the next family trip, here are some of the best youth travel discounts available out there right now:

Aegean

GenAIRation is Aegean’s travel program for young travellers aged 18-25 years old and includes 15% off all flights. The discount is valid for all flights, and can be combined with other promotions too — that’ll be a really nice bonus when the airline runs sitewide sales!

Members will also receive coupons each year, which entitle you to 2 free 23 kg checked bags, and 50% off the fee to travel with a pet.

It’s super easy to join the program too, you’ll just need to register for an account and upload ID or your passport so they can confirm your age. An added bonus is that you don’t need to be a student, so it’s available to everyone in that age category.

Is it worth it?

Absolutely! Given there are no real restrictions on when the discount can be applied and how easy it is to join, it is well worth it for any traveller that is eligible.

Air France

Air France offers Youth and Student fares with proof of age or enrolment. Youth fares are for those aged between 12 and 24 years old, while Student fares are available to students aged  18 to 29.

The tickets include up to 2 checked bags (up to 23 kg each), are refundable with a fee of €100-€250 return, and have increased flexibility if you need to change flights, meaning you’ll just need to pay for any price difference.

To find the fares, you just need to select Youth or Student when entering your route on the airline’s website, and then select the Youth or Student fare when booking. 

Keep in mind that these tickets won’t be cheaper than the airline’s cheapest standard fare, but will work out cheaper than if you were to add bags and flexibility separately.

Note: These fares aren’t available on all routes, some notable exceptions are trips departing from the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Is it worth it?

If you need to travel with the 2 checked bags and would find the increased flexibility useful, then yes. If you just want a cheap flight and are used to cramming your stuff in a backpack to save money, we’d go elsewhere.

KLM

KLM is pretty similar to their partner airline Air France in that they have Youth (12–24 years old) and Student (18–29 years old) fares, which are not your typical discounted ticket.

These fares include 1 extra 23 kg checked bag, are refundable with a fee of €100-€250 return, and have increased flexibility if you need to change flights, so you’ll just need to pay for any price difference.

To find the fares, you just need to select Youth or Student when entering your route on the airline&rsqu