Best "Big CITY?"

US passport fee is now $145. 120 is old news. If one only wants Canada (and Mexico) a passport card is $65.

 

Those prices are for first time applicants. Renewals are $110 and $30, respectively, if the prior one was issued less than 15 years ago. Just last month, I renewed both together for $140 total.

For residents of states offering Enhanced IDs and Drivers Licenses, consider upgrading to it. This functions like a Passport Card too, sufficient for folks visiting Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean by land or water. (Neither this Enhanced ID nor a Passport Card is valid for international air travel.) It also meets federal RealID requirements for domestic air travel for those of us in states where the regular DL or ID flunks those modern rules. Canada has a similar program. But between them, only BC, MB, MI, MN, NY, ON, VT, and WA are offering these enhanced licenses. QC apparently did for a while, but quit.

In Washington State, the upgrade to this Enhanced ID is $24 on a new or renewal license or ID (6 year expiration), or $4/year (to expiration) to upgrade an existing license or ID

 

So.....what are YOU doing to try to prevent that from happening ??
Something I hope.

 

Made me look! Guess mine's good into 2022. Choice of text for the first inside page gets me a bit pensive just now.


-Chap

 

We don't want this thread to get banished to FHoPolitics.....

 

That would only happen if somebody said something NICE about the fraudster....

 

I understand why he wears his ties long, if that's any help.

 

I'm a big city person person. I like Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Vancouver BC, Toronto, Chicago.

Plano's OK, but Dallas doesn't really excite me.

Most of my relatives lived in a farming town of 500 people, and the closest city was Little Falls, MN. I enjoyed visiting, but I wouldn't care to live there.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Just to confuse the tourists, the city of Victoria is on Vancouver Island, and the city of Vancouver is not. (Which could also explain some of the Summer weekend mayhem at the ferry terminals)

I'm not certain you need a passport to get into Canada from the US - various other cards also suffice - but you'll probably need one to get back into the US. Whatever you do, don't confess to even sniffing any wacky tobacky whilst on holiday, or you'll be banned for life. It's legal in Washington State, and soon to be officially legal in Canada, but the border is a Federal thing with different rules. So, the $120 in question could be part of your holiday expenses, or it could be part of your exit strategy. All kinds of places here you can be in the middle of a nowhere that has more bears than humans.

 

Vancouver Island (away from city) is also a hot spot for cougar/human interactions.

 

a lot of divorcees' there?

 

To re elevate this discussion, having 'wildlands interface' near a big city would be a benefit for some. Your opinions?

 

I think I mentioned this earlier. It's Shanghai's biggest problem as far as I'm concerned: while the city is lovely, you can drive for three hours and still not be in the countryside. Hong Kong was brilliant: 70% of Hong Kong's territory is national park, and you can be in fairly wild mountain forest areas within about 20 minutes from the centre of the city, even on Hong Kong Island. We lived about 30 minutes by car or 45 minutes by public transport from the centre of the city. But we were in a village of 50 people: in front of our house was a road, and then the sea, and behind us was untamed forest with wild boar and evil monkeys.

Sydney is OK for this: there are some good wild areas within easy reach. And if you drive west for about an hour and a half, you get to 3,000 miles of nothing at all. And Glasgow is brilliant for it.

While I love big cities, I think it's really important to be able to get out and relax. Seeing shapes and colours other than square and grey is important: I'm in Beijing today, and there's a LOT of square, grey concrete outside my window. Green really makes a big difference to your psyche.

 

"3,000 miles of nothing at all" - a very sad view of subtle interactions between stressed biology and playful geology. But I must let our loss there slide, because untrammeled forests do seem to be a thing for human mental health.

Parks within cities are one thing, and wild lands outside are another. As we seem to strive for the least, what is the least open, green, wild that compensates for urbanization?

 

Monkeys might seem evil but they are only among last remaining close human relatives who have not yet been snuffed. Give them a hundred years.

Monkeys are evil in many right senses of the word. But more evil than humans, I could not say.

 

Monkeys as a whole are too broad and varied a group for me to call evil or not.

But the monkeys who lived in the forest behind our house were evil. There wasn't a big monkey troupe (is that the word? I forget. I'll use it here anyway.) there: the big groups of monkeys were mostly on mountains a few miles away. But if a monkey was aggressive to the point of being a full-on, anti-social super-aggressive nutter, the troupe would throw them out, and they'd be exiled to near our house. So the monkeys behind our house weren't your normal monkeys: they were the absolute mental psychos

These ones were more evil than most humans. But not more evil than the Tsang family who lived at the end of our village. That, though, is another story.

 

It might help keep the rat and small yappy dog populations down.