Yes, relativistically, you can travel anywhere in the Universe and only have seconds pass for your frame of reference. But I thought that Vega was the furthest star that you could travel to and from and then still have people you knew here on Earth that were alive. Also, I was totally wrong about Vega. I think that was my reading of Contact that gave me the thought. There are a LOT of systems that are inside of 30 LY from the Sun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_star_systems_within_25...
It is not necessarily true that more time is spent aboard a ship than light would spend taking the same path, as measured by an external observer.
If you had a ship capable of accelerating at 1g indefinitely, then as measured by the crew, they could cross the galaxy in only 24 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_ac...
To an observer who is self-propelled (and has enough energy), the speed of light (as seen by others) is no limit. It's not like you can fire your thrusters and NOT gain momentum and speed; or that, as you accelerate, the stars start passing by at the speed of light, and suddenly your ship jerks, ceasing to accelerate, because you hit an invisible velocity brick wall.