[cableshaft]

Just did some test trips of that distance, and for me (based in Chicago) it would be about $200 for flights of the same distance.

But that just takes me to St.Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit. I've been to all of them before, and there's some nice parts about them, but they're not a completely different culture like Paris is to London. Hell, St. Louis is just barely in a different state.

Pretty much all the chain stores are the same in every city you go to in the US, so it really enforces the sameness of the country. There's unique landmarks and museums and parks and local restaurants, but half the city is going to look the same as every other city.

Detroit is actually the closest comparison to London/Paris, because you can go through a tunnel at the edge of Detroit to Windsor Canada, and then you do get a bit of a culture shift.

But with Paris, further travel to other very different cultures are just some quick and cheap train rides away, whereas I just have more Canada.