"How was your journey?" or "How was your trip?"

Which one of these questions would you use? Well, it probably depends on from which side of the Atlantic Ocean you are speaking. I was recently viewing a dvd from an EFL course in which a man from the UK asked a man from Japan who had just arrived to his city by plane "How was your journey?". Up until that time I wasn't aware that people in the UK used the word "journey" in such contexts, because in the States, we would normally say "How was your trip?". So I decided to do some research. According to Michael Swan in his book Practical English Usage (2005, Oxford Press, p. 536), people in the UK normally use either journey or trip in such a context where Americans generally only use the word trip. He also said the following: "A journey is one 'piece' of travelling. A trip is a return journey together with the activity which is the reason for the journey" (p.590).
So I understand that the British make a distinction between the two words which is somewhat different from the distinction that we make in the States. For us (in my opinion), the distinction is that the word journey is more formal and literary, so for that reason we generally would not say to someone "How was your journey?". However, at the same time, we might refer to a person's "spiritual journey" (more literary) but never his/her "spiritual trip" (but if we were in the hippy era we could say his/her LSD "trip", but I digresss!).
I welcome comments from my friends from the US and the UK (and other countries) regarding this topic. I would especially like to know if in any part of the US anyone would ever say "How was your journey?"