I had a friend/co-worker (both) who had his English relatives over to Ottawa, Ontario. While there, they had hoped to take a drive out some day to visit another cousin. They figured it was a day trip. Said cousin lives in Vancouver, Canada.
The drive is 44-45 hours non-stop. 4400-4500 km. One way. Double it for a round trip.
So it is a day trip. On Venus.
Not soon after I got married we were on holiday in the Yorkshire Dales and I thought I'd introduce my wife to my grandparents who lived 'just round the corner, up the road' in Newcastle. When we actually came to doing it, we realized it was actually a one way trip of two hours. Fortunately, my wife having feared an awkward hour or so in a front room over a pot of tea for all that driving, my 90+ year old grandfather - on his *second* thirty year marriage - could still outwalk me and took us to the beach for icecreams and all sorts.
But the worst error of judgement I made along these lines was a trip to Stockholm. We'd previously travelled to Varberg (on the west coast of Sweden) by driving from the south coast of England to Harwich, taking a ferry to Esbjerg in Denmark, driving across Denmark and across the Oresund Bridge and 'round the corner and up a bit' to where our holiday place was. To Stockholm we had in our heads that it was the same trip but instead of 'round the corner and up a bit' it was just a straightforward drive 'across' the width of Sweden. When we actually came to look at a map in detail the day before (the day before!) we realized, ummm, just how much further 'up' Sweden Stockholm is and just how big the country is generally. Our ferry docked at noon and unfortunately as well as ironically we were the last car off at 1pm. We then had 600 miles to drive to our hotel that night. Oh dear. (A bit like me waking up one morning here on the south coast and thinking 'oh, I'll just drive to John o'Groats (the other end of Scotland). After lunch').
Anyway, knowing the Danish speed limits are generous (90mph) whereas the Swedish ones are much lower (60mph) I took the first section and we drove across Denmark in two hours without stopping. Across the bridge and then off we went northwards. Only to make matters worse about an hour in it started raining. The only stops we made were to change drivers and sit two very small children on a potty before racing on. Littlest one singing 'skog, skog, skog' through the miles of forest. Skog is Swedish for forest. Eating on the way, sleeping when not driving or navigating. We hought about stopping overnight on the way but I was constantly recalculating speed and distance as we got slower and thought we could still reasonably do it. As we got closer to Stockholm big trucks on narrow 'motorways' throwing up a lot of spray. It really was a memorable journey we still talk about. We arrived at the GPS location at midnight although it then took us 15 minutes to actually find the rather obscure hotel which was not a fun quarter of an hour! Never again. We now *firmly* know how big Sweden is - and we only covered a third of it. [1]
I once spoke with some English gamer friends who lived in the greater London area. I asked why they didn't get together - they had told me where they live and it looked like about 60 km at most. One of them indicated with the lovely highways around London (M-somethings), it could take 4 hours to make that journey.
Yes, our roads are spectacularly overcrowded and awful to drive on. 60km could easily take four hours. Tess and I were astonished when our last trip to TravCon (135 miles) only took 3 hours to drive home round London's M25 orbital. A record time no question about it - but it was just before things started shutting down and the roads were quieter than usual.
On my first visit to Sweden, my friend's father picked me up at the airport and apologized for the roads being so busy. We were on a motorway where there was like *one* car visible ahead of us and one behind maybe. My jaw dropped. (Not quite like that more recently, admittedly although only a couple of years ago driving across Sweden once more (Goteborg to Oskarshamn) we had the occasional moment like that which was really wonderful as a driver. We also had an entire lake to ourselves beside our holiday cottage (partly because we went at the end of August which is 'out of season'). I sometimes forget not only how big Sweden is, but how empty it is.
So that's basically both ends of the density equation - Canada and Europe (assuming we didn't want to throw in Taiwan or Hong Kong or something).
My experiences of those last two were entirely on public transport so I couldn't comment.
Ones expectations are usually driven by the things one is familiar with.
My Scottish Cousin was up for a visit (he now lives in Oregon with his Missourian-cum-West Coast wife) and I wanted to take him for something unique, Canadian and enjoyable. He was skeptical but he went along. I saw/heard the skepticism, but I didn't grasp why. The thing we were going to get (not that he knew that apparently) is about a 10" long, deep fried, airy plane of dough in an oval shape that then has good things put on top (hazelnut spread, strawberries and chocolate drizzle, cinnamon sugar and lemon, etc). I had failed to realize that he did not know what the item was and the name "Beaver Tail" had him figuring I was going to take him for the literally tail of our lovable water-dwelling, lodge-building giant rodents. You don't recognize the gaps that those from other areas have if something is well known to yourself.
Hah!
The ObTrav of that last writes itself.
As for distance/space, the experiences above are always something I keep in mind when players visit a *world* with population codes of 6 or less. OK, so the starport is likely to be busy/crowded perhaps - especially if it's an enclosed habitat type of world, but step outside and it could well be a *long* way between people; even on a small world.
tc