I have never experienced that. What airlines force you into middle seats? Every airline I have every flown has 2 options. You either pick your own seats or first come first serve.
I'm talking about the really cheap options through some of these third-party travel agencies that will occasionally email with incredible rates -- those are usually leftover seats no one else wants, like crappy middle seats. Your standard search for Delta, United, etc on Expedia or other travel sites will let you choose.
10 days in France and you say it cost you $6000. Airfare would have been at most $2500 for both of you flying into Paris. I definitely agree that you guys away from the coasts get a bit screwed on airfare. I've searched KC and Indianapolis and it's hundreds more than the coasts.
It was probably between $5000 and $6000. The costs I do know are airfare and hotel/train/museum/tour passes. Airfare was roughly $2400. Hotels, train tickets, museum passes, and the two tours we went on (Normandy, Mont St. Michel) totaled roughly $2400. $4800 already with no meals accounted for yet.
Meals for two people for the remainder of the time were probably in the $500 - $700 for two people for 10 days. I never sat down and added them up so it might have been more. What we tried to do was buy pastries locally for breakfast and eat cheap or from the local grocery stores for lunch. We'd splurge on dinner.
Airline costs shocked me to be honest. When we went in 2009, the cost was around $1000-$1100 for our tickets and that included a second flight from Paris to Rome!
I'm not up to speed on domestic airlines in the US that can get you to a hub cheaper, but when I lived in the US Southwest was a cheap way to do it. Unless you bought the tickets last minute though the tickets are still not outrageously priced.
Going from Indy to a hub isn't terrible. We could fly out of Chicago and sometimes Cincinnati has flights to Europe. Indy does have several cargo flights every week to Luxembourg, so maybe I can stow away on one of those.
That leaves $3500 for 10 days. You two spent $350 a day. That requires spending a great deal of money on a hotel. There are so many options nowadays. Staying in an expensive hotel is not a requirement. Now this might be irrelevant to you since you can afford to spend whatever you want but I'm trying to point out to others reading this that you do not need these huge sums of money to travel. I've done everything from sleeping at train stations to staying in expensive eco-resorts, all inclusive resorts, and high rise hotels and there are so many ways to travel without spending a fortune. Of course you're free to spend as much as you want but it's not necessary.
Hotels in downtown Paris are around $200/night for modest accommodations, give or take $20. That price is for a small, one room hotel room with its own bathroom. I don't recall what our stay was in Normandy per night, but my wife booked all the hotels, the train to/from Normandy, and the two tours and it all came to $2400 so we were paying less than $200/night for hotels.
There is no way I'd stay in a hostel or a super cheap, 1 star hotel. I'll spend for decent accommodations.
Keep in mind that there are plenty of places around the world that are much cheaper than France. IND to Bogota through JFK is $650. When I was in Africa there were tons of Americans there because there were super cheap RT $500 tickets to Cape Town from JFK.
Other than Europe, there are only a handful of places I want to go at this point -- a couple of Asian and North African destinations and maybe Peru. I was in Brazil in 2004 and found it "meh." I was in South Korea in 2004 and definitely want to go back because I think I missed out on some things I needed to see.
If it was me, and this is all personal opinion, and I was going to spend $6000 on a 10 day trip I would hit up the Maldives, Seychelles, Raja Ampat Islands, Galapagos, or something of that nature. If I was set on Europe I would rent an apartment since you can get much nicer accommodation that way. Stockholm is crazy expensive but you can rent an apt for much less than a hotel without much trouble. I would also look at the internet. There are so many resources available. I spent $10 a night living in an awesome Chateau in the French Alps in Chamonix. I think I got a bit lucky with that one but regardless travelling does not have to cost you $6000 for 10 days.
If anyone wants to travel you can hit up most of the world for less than $50 per day plus airfare.
Can you rent an apartment for 7 to 14 days at a time? For that short period, do you save that much over a hotel?
There are a couple of travel agencies that do offer insane deals on packaged European vacations and get good reviews, and we've thought about trying one when we want to go but are crunched for time.