TRAVEL, TRIP, JOURNEY

This year we will travel to the south of Spain for our holiday. We are going by car so
we will have to take the ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao. The journey by ferry will take
24 hours which I am not looking forward to. However, I think it will be worth it as it will
be my first trip abroad.

travel/travelling (nouns)

Travel is the general term to describe going from one place to another. We can
talk about someone's travels to refer to the journeys he makes:

His travels abroad provided lots of background material for novels he wrote.

Travelling is also a general term which refers to the activity of travel:

Travelling by boat between the islands is less tiring than travelling by road.

I don't do as much travelling as I used to now that I'm retired.

Travel often crops up as part of compound nouns. Compare the following:

Make sure you keep all your travel documents safely. You can obtain your travel
tickets from the travel agents in the High Street if you don't want to order them over the
Internet. Some of you may suffer from travel sickness. Air travel may well give you a
bumpy ride. If you don't have a credit or debit card, make sure you take plenty of
traveller's cheques with you.

We often use travel as a verb:

I love to travel during the summer holidays. This year I plan to travel all around the
Iberian Peninsula.

journey (noun)

A journey is one single piece of travel. You make journeys when you travel from
one place to another. (Note that the plural is spelt journeys, not journies):

The journey from London to Newcastle by train can now be completed in under three
hours.

We can talk about journeys taking or lasting a long time:

How long did your journey take? ~ Oh, it lasted for ever. We stopped at every small
station.

We occasionally use journey as a verb as an alternative to travel, although it

may sound a bit formal or poetic:

We journeyed /travelled between the pyramids in Mexico on horseback.

trip (noun)

A trip usually involves more than one single journey. We talk about day trips,
round trips and business trips. We make journeys usually, but we go on trips:

I went on a day trip to France. We left at 6.30 in the morning and returned before
midnight the same day.

The round-trip ticket enabled me to visit all the major tourist destinations in India.

Where's Laurie? ~ He won't be in this week. He's gone on a business trip to

Malaysia and Singapore.

The trip went well. It was an old car, but we didn't break down in four weeks of
travelling

expedition (noun)

An expedition is an organised trip whose purpose is usually scientific

exploration of the environment. You go on expeditions, just as you go on trips.

Numerous expeditions to The Antarctic have ended in disaster.

Are you going to join the expedition up the Amazon this year, like the one Tom went
on last year?

Less dangerous and less adventurous are shopping expeditions when you are
hunting down particular goods or bargains and fishing expeditions when you go
in search of fish which are not easy to locate or catch.

safari (noun)

A safari is a trip or expedition to observe wild animals in their natural habitat in

Africa, usually. You go on safari to safari parks. In days gone by, you might
have worn your light cotton safari suit for this purpose:

His one ambition in life was to go on safari to Kenya to photograph lions and tigers.

cruise (noun and verb)

A cruise is a holiday during which you travel on a ship or boat and visit a
number of places en route. When we cruise, this is exactly what we do:

They cruised all around the Mediterranean for eight weeks last summer and stopped
off at a number of uninhabited islands.

My parents have seen nothing of the world so are saving up to go on a world cruise
when they retire. They are hoping to take a trip on the cruise liner, the QE2, in 2014.
voyage (noun)

A voyage is a long journey, not necessarily for pleasure, on a ship. We don't talk
about voyages very much in the present time, but historically they were very
significant:

His second voyage (1493 - 96) led to the discovery of several Caribbean islands. On
his third voyage (1498 - 1500) he discovered the South American mainland.
(Christopher Columbus, the great explorer)

EXERCISES:

http://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/58.html

http://www.english-test.net/esl/learn/english/grammar/ei078/esl-test.php

http://lingue.altervista.org/game_vocabulary_travel.htm

http://www.ejerciciodeingles.com/ejercicios-cuando-usar-travel-trip-journey-
rellenar-huecos/