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The Science Museum (in London) and Bletchley Park (day trip) are both must-dos IMO.
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Oct 27, 2018 00:05
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Entropist posted:This only applies to certain kinds of skates though, like the ones that they use in hockey. The ones typically used in the Netherlands don't go around the ankles for example. I just googled "Dutch Skates" and sure enough, and I've also never seen anything like that before. I've lived like half my life in Switzerland and my wife loves skating and I have never seen someone wear those, even in figure skating. What's next, skating in wooden shoes?
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Oct 27, 2018 00:38
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Saladman posted:I just googled "Dutch Skates" and sure enough, and I've also never seen anything like that before. I've lived like half my life in Switzerland and my wife loves skating and I have never seen someone wear those, even in figure skating. What's next, skating in wooden shoes?  The traditional cheapskate cheap skates consisting of a piece of wood with iron/steel under it aren't too far off from wooden shoes. Still used by people these days too:  I had a plastic version of this as a child and, and almost all the kids (and poorer people) in my village used those traditional wooden things or the plastic version with plastic clasps. Entropist fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Oct 27, 2018 |
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Oct 27, 2018 01:21
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Saladman posted:Kind of OT but if your ankle goes sideways when you stand in skates, then you have catastrophically mis-tied the laces on your skates or they're the wrong size. Your ankle should be 10000% immobile, even a tiny bit of movement will be a nightmare and hurt your feet and make everything more difficult, just like for ski boots, which fortunately don't require laces. Despite the snow, they didn't really do winter sports where I grew up so I have only the rink staff to inform my experience. Also we have about a month to travel after that so I'd rather limit my risk.
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Oct 27, 2018 02:06
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Nam Taf posted:^^^ hah, I didn’t mind brick lane for curry a couple of years ago. The trick was to skip the first few touts and never accept their first offer. FYI, if you do end up going, it’s BYO. Yeah I'm sure you can get good food, but last time I was there everything was covered in "#1 TRIPADVISOR BEST CURRY IN LONDON" banners and fronted by aggressive touts which are both Chinese military parade level of red flags to me.
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Oct 27, 2018 02:22
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webmeister posted:Yeah I'm sure you can get good food, but last time I was there everything was covered in "#1 TRIPADVISOR BEST CURRY IN LONDON" banners and fronted by aggressive touts which are both Chinese military parade level of red flags to me. Yeh that’s fair. I’d spent all afternoon down at Mother Kelly’s smashing beers with a local mate of mine and he took me up there afterwards via a store for more beers to BYO. He definitely made a point to really find a good deal - I think we paid £15 each for 3 courses? I think it’d be much harder as a foreigner because you wouldn’t know what to expect from a good deal.
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Oct 27, 2018 06:04
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River cruise out to Greenwich – Cutty sark, National Navel museum, Greenwich Observatory, The fan museum ( one day I'll talk somebody from in thread in to going to that one...) Churchill War Rooms. Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum is good but probably not particularly unique when compared to other large metropolitan natural history museums. Kew (or if you're really in to plants/gardening, day trip out to RHS Wisley gardens) Don't do Stonehenge. Our museum tend to be free entry but have paid-entry special exhibitions. These exhibitions are often very well reviewed so it's worth doing a but of research to see what it currently on. Pablo Bluth fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Oct 27, 2018 |
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Oct 27, 2018 06:25
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Nam Taf posted:Yeh that’s fair. I’d spent all afternoon down at Mother Kelly’s smashing beers with a local mate of mine and he took me up there afterwards via a store for more beers to BYO. He definitely made a point to really find a good deal - I think we paid £15 each for 3 courses? Wait... You negotiate for restaurant prices?
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Oct 27, 2018 06:48
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Entropist posted:We use them in long track speed skating / marathon skating, which is the only known type of ice skating here. I'm pretty sure the ones they use at the Olympics for that are some evolution of this too. Skates with ankle support are considered to be for losers who can't skate properly. That includes me, so I use them I used to skate on those wooden things which is probably why I never really got into it even though my family's from Friesland. They were said to be "better for kids" or something but that was bullshit.
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Oct 27, 2018 07:55
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Entropist posted:We use them in long track speed skating / marathon skating, which is the only known type of ice skating here. I'm pretty sure the ones they use at the Olympics for that are some evolution of this too. Skates with ankle support are considered to be for losers who can't skate properly. That includes me, so I use them Wait wait wait. There's skates with ANKLE SUPPORT? Why did nobody told me this as a kid? Maybe with those even I could've learned to skate.
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Oct 27, 2018 08:27
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Beachcomber posted:Wait... You negotiate for restaurant prices? Yeah it’s a thing in brick lane, kind of expected actually. Haven’t seen it anywhere else in the uk though.
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Oct 27, 2018 08:53
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Lady Gaza posted:Yeah it’s a thing in brick lane, kind of expected actually. Haven’t seen it anywhere else in the uk though. I've seen it on the Curry Mile in Manchester. Really anywhere where you've got wall-to-wall restaurants it's easy enough to do.
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Oct 27, 2018 18:38
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Thanks for the London recs. To the people who mentioned Millwall, I was at their game today haha, it was pretty enjoyable.
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Oct 27, 2018 19:01
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saltyslug posted:Thanks for the London recs. To the people who mentioned Millwall, I was at their game today haha, it was pretty enjoyable. Well done for surviving
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Oct 28, 2018 18:27
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Just got back from my Alsace trip; thanks for the great suggestions, everyone! Will see about posting some pics tomorrow but it's late here now and I'm going to bed. Just a few quick thoughts: - I think the Strasbourg Cathedral is the most magnificent building I've ever laid eyes on. You're walking around Place Gutenberg and you peek around the corner at Rue Merciere and the front facade just blots out the entire loving sky from like three blocks away; I swear you can physically feel it looming over you. Then you walk towards it and start to get absorbed by all the amazing details and sort of lose your sense of scale for a bit, until you realize you've been walking for quite a while and it's still pretty far away, and then you suddenly notice the teeming mass of humanity underneath it and realize that those tiny little undecorated bits wayyyyy down at the bottom that form the base of the building are taller than every single person around you and the sheer size of it just does your head in. It is truly amazing. - Strasbourg was a great city, but goddamn does the traffic there suck. Maybe I'm just spoiled from living in the west of Ireland for the past few years, but I haven't seen traffic that bad since I lived in Atlanta, and it wasn't just rush hour or something, it was like that all the time. I will say parking out at the Hospital Hautepierre worked out pretty well; only took like twenty minutes to get to my apartment via the tram and a short walk, and the trams come like every few minutes. Much better than paying twice as much to spend twice as long trying to drive anywhere in the city. (Also, Chikimiki was spot-on about the crazy cyclists; they're even worse than white van men, especially when walking through a construction zone where the pedestrian path narrows to the width of a single bike.) - The Alcasian villages were all beautiful, as was the countryside around them. Driving through the vineyards and up into the forested hills was amazing. Literally every village looked like something out of a postcard. It'd be hard to pick a favorite, really, but I'm leaning towards Kaysersberg. Don't get me wrong, Eguisheim and Riquewhir were stunning and all, but Kaysersberg has plenty of gorgeous buildings, that lovely river running through the middle of town, and the castle on the hill, and I also loved all the artists' workshops in town; really beautiful work being done there. - French working hours take a bit of getting used to. Many places close up for a couple hours around lunchtime, for instance. Also, restaurants have very limited opening hours; lunch is basically from 12 to 1ish and dinner is from 7 to 8:30, maybe 9. Want to eat outside those times? Too bad, ain't gonna happen; you're stuck praying you can find a shop that's actually open today so you can buy some cheese and a baguette or something. You basically have to book a table if you want to eat anywhere, too; I was turned away from random places when trying to walk in at opening time on a Thursday night. When you do actually manage to score a meal, you can bet it's gonna be a drat good one, though.
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Oct 30, 2018 03:49
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Many Alsatians in Alsace?
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Oct 30, 2018 04:31
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dennyk posted:
Great to hear you enjoyed your time here! In hindsight, I should have indeed warned you about restaurant hours, since 90% of all eateries close between 14:00 and 17:00 in France, and it is even worse in small villages. You just get so used to having fixed meal times that you don't really pay attention to it anymore. I would blow Dane Cook posted:Many Alsatians in Alsace? You mean Alsatian dialect speakers? If so there are quite a few, mainly the older generation and people living in the countryside. In Strasbourg you'll mainly hear French and German, plus all languages the tourists and parliamentaries speak. People will seldom use some Alsatian expressions when speaking french as well.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:08
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I mean Alsatian dogs.
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Oct 30, 2018 23:32
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I was pretty bummed out when Pomerania turned out to have almost no Pomeranians in it.
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Oct 31, 2018 00:23
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Dubrovnik was also sadly free of Dalmatians.
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Oct 31, 2018 00:34
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This forum is certainly full of shitzus though
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Oct 31, 2018 01:28
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We are debating spending 2 whole days or 4 whole days in Marrakech, Morocco and my gf is concerned there will be no night life and it will be unsafe to wal karound. I think 4 days would be great. Is there enough to do and see and is there alcohol and good times to be had in Marrakech for 4 days
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Oct 31, 2018 02:13
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I mean I don't mind people asking Morocco questions here but can we just be clear that Morocco is in Africa, not Europe?
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Oct 31, 2018 07:14
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Carbon dioxide posted:I mean I don't mind people asking Morocco questions here but can we just be clear that Morocco is in Africa, not Europe? What about questions about Ceuta or the Canaries? Or if a time traveler from 300 AD comes and posts in this thread? Marrakech is very safe, even though there are muzzlems they are not all terrorists and it’s no more unsafe than London or Paris. You will get hassled way more but it’s not at all a safety issue. 4 days is fine for Marrakech, but there’s not that much within day trip distance. Going south of the Atlas, like to Ait Ben Haddou, would be a good (although fairly long) overnight trip. IMO it depends if that’s 4 days just in Marrakech, or if the entire trip is 4 days in Morocco.
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Oct 31, 2018 07:50
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Looking for ideas about my next vacation... My husband and I took a train from Berlin to Prague a few years back, and it passed through the most stunning little villages. We'd like our next trip to be somewhere kinda European small town with access to sites and other villages, either by train or bike. We both like Germany a lot, so we started researching there, but I'm super open minded. The general plan would be to fly in on a cheap flight (so, relatively near an airport), get to the village, and then spend a week+ exploring. Hobbies: hiking, canoeing/kayaking, swimming, drinking beer, maybe ziplining or rock climbing if it's nearby. Any ideas? So far I'm looking at Füssen (near Munich), Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Munich), Lindau (not sure where we could fly in), Dinkelsbühl (ditto)... Anyone have ideas for a trip like this? My husband just started a stressful job, so I think a remote getaway is what he has in mind, but flying in from the US means an airport is required. We like to plan far in advance, so this would be around May 2019.
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Nov 1, 2018 19:15
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Betazoid posted:Looking for ideas about my next vacation... My husband and I took a train from Berlin to Prague a few years back, and it passed through the most stunning little villages. We'd like our next trip to be somewhere kinda European small town with access to sites and other villages, either by train or bike. We both like Germany a lot, so we started researching there, but I'm super open minded. The general plan would be to fly in on a cheap flight (so, relatively near an airport), get to the village, and then spend a week+ exploring. Hobbies: hiking, canoeing/kayaking, swimming, drinking beer, maybe ziplining or rock climbing if it's nearby. 100% one of the little towns along the Rhein between Mainz and Koblenz (St. Goar is the typical one). It's seriously one of the most beautiful parts of Germany and there is a ton of stuff to do in the area.
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Nov 1, 2018 19:45
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Betazoid posted:Looking for ideas about my next vacation... My husband and I took a train from Berlin to Prague a few years back, and it passed through the most stunning little villages. We'd like our next trip to be somewhere kinda European small town with access to sites and other villages, either by train or bike. We both like Germany a lot, so we started researching there, but I'm super open minded. The general plan would be to fly in on a cheap flight (so, relatively near an airport), get to the village, and then spend a week+ exploring. Hobbies: hiking, canoeing/kayaking, swimming, drinking beer, maybe ziplining or rock climbing if it's nearby. You should definitely look into Slovenia, it fits all your boxes. Especially if you like remote getaways, as you won't be running into many tourists, especially if you're just going from village to village. Also, consider Tirol in Austria. Fly into Munich (or Innsbruck) and it's only a couple hours away by car. There are a trillion little villages that are super picturesque and perfect for hiking/walking/etc. Kitzbuhel, the Tux Valley, Soelden, lots.
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Nov 1, 2018 19:53
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Betazoid posted:Looking for ideas about my next vacation... My husband and I took a train from Berlin to Prague a few years back, and it passed through the most stunning little villages. We'd like our next trip to be somewhere kinda European small town with access to sites and other villages, either by train or bike. We both like Germany a lot, so we started researching there, but I'm super open minded. The general plan would be to fly in on a cheap flight (so, relatively near an airport), get to the village, and then spend a week+ exploring. Hobbies: hiking, canoeing/kayaking, swimming, drinking beer, maybe ziplining or rock climbing if it's nearby. For that time of year and for doing outdoor activities, I'd really recommend in the southern Alps or completely south of the Alps, like somewhere in the Dolomites, Liguria (e.g. Finale Ligure), Cote d'Azur (e.g. Menton, Eze), Lake Garda (one of my personal favorites place ever), Lugano, or somewhere in Slovenia like Bled. You're almost guaranteed good weather any of those places, whereas somewhere north of the Alps it's really up to good luck whether you get awesome weather or 10 days of overcast skies with drizzle and 14°C. It's also well before the tourists start arriving in huge numbers, so you can even go to places that are normally overwhelmed with people like Kotor or Cinque Terre. May is really risky for outdoors vacations north of the Alps, but depends on your exact timing and exact location. But anywhere in Germany it will be too cold to comfortably swim (probably 14-18°C). If you really want to risk it with northern Alps, Innsbruck and Chamonix would be the two places that jump to mind that would fit your bill, with the later in May the better as those places start coming to life around the end of May. It CAN be nice, but it's really up to luck, although again depends exactly when in May. Major airports like Zurich and Munich are almost certainly going to be much cheaper and less hassle than trying to fly into the actual closest airport to your destination. Trying to fly somewhere like Baden-Baden or Innsbruck would probably take longer than flying to Munich and taking a train to your final destination. If you want a truly remote getaway you'll probably want a car since it sounds like you want to do activities and not just sit in a chalet and relax. Switzerland has great public transit even in tiny villages in the countryside, but I doubt anywhere else comes close, although maybe Austria is OK. Definitely not Italy and I doubt they're great for small countryside villages in Slovenia/Croatia/Montenegro either.
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Nov 1, 2018 20:03
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Betazoid posted:somewhere kinda European small town with access to sites and other villages, either by train or bike. This is something of an oxymoron. Small towns very rarely have good rail links, even in Germany.
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Nov 1, 2018 21:33
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Julio Cruz posted:This is something of an oxymoron. Small towns very rarely have good rail links, even in Germany. Well, commuter towns often do, but then the task is finding one that's worth visiting and not a shithole built for people who love to drive an hour each way to work in the city
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Nov 1, 2018 21:37
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Ras Het posted:Well, commuter towns often do, but then the task is finding one that's worth visiting and not a shithole built for people who love to drive an hour each way to work in the city I probably should have specified "interesting small towns". Like there are plenty of smallish places with stations in eg the Ruhr valley but I don't think that's what the OP was talking about.
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Nov 1, 2018 21:46
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What's the best way to get from Barcelona to Madrid
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Nov 1, 2018 22:48
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Waroduce posted:What's the best way to get from Barcelona to Madrid Train, probably. Barcelona's airports are both outside the city so accounting for time to get to the airport, pass through security, wait for the plane, etc, you can probably already be most of the way to Madrid by the time you take off if you go by train. Seriously for most European countries the answer to "how do I get from this place to this other place in the same country the fastest/cheapest" is probably always going to be take a train, except if the two places are on the opposite sides of the country (e.g. London and Edinburgh) or there's a sea in between.
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Nov 1, 2018 23:02
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Mikl posted:Seriously for most European countries the answer to "how do I get from this place to this other place in the same country the fastest/cheapest" is probably always going to be take a train, except if the two places are on the opposite sides of the country (e.g. London and Edinburgh) or there's a sea in between. London to Edinburgh is only slightly further than Barcelona to Madrid, and IMO the train would be the best option there too if trains in England weren't all so loving expensive.
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Nov 1, 2018 23:05
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Madrid to Barcelona trains are also really expensive compared to other high-speed trains in Spain, so much that the people I know use other options like taking a bus, taking a high-speed train to another Catalonian city and then a local train, or flying.
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Nov 1, 2018 23:24
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Entropist posted:Madrid to Barcelona trains are also really expensive compared to other high-speed trains in Spain, so much that the people I know use other options like taking a bus, taking a high-speed train to another Catalonian city and then a local train, or flying. I need to be there Saturday midday for athletico v Barcelona leaving from Barcelona. The high speed is like 130$...I wanna do a bus but not sure how or who to use...
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Nov 1, 2018 23:41
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Waroduce posted:I need to be there Saturday midday for athletico v Barcelona leaving from Barcelona. The high speed is like 130$...I wanna do a bus but not sure how or who to use... I think in Spain there is ALSA, and the European intercity bus operators such as Flixbus probably run that route too. At least for the European operators, these things are best ordered online. e: A quick search surprisingly shows mostly ALSA and very little of the other operators that you find throughout Europe. I guess they've cornered the market in Spain. Have a look there, they have a site in English. Entropist fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Nov 1, 2018 |
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Nov 1, 2018 23:49
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Waroduce posted:I need to be there Saturday midday for athletico v Barcelona leaving from Barcelona. The high speed is like 130$...I wanna do a bus but not sure how or who to use... Lame, it looks like Spain does not permit Flixbus to run any national routes. Flixbus is a new bus carrier in Europe and it's way better than any of the legacy national carriers like ALSA, but for within-Spain routes it looks like you'll have to use an older carrier like (https://www.alsa.com). It's just going to take like 2-3x longer than the train. There are also usually still low-speed trains that are probably going to be the same speed and price as the bus.
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Nov 2, 2018 00:12
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Waroduce posted:What's the best way to get from Barcelona to Madrid https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Barcelona/Madrid
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Nov 2, 2018 02:52
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Thanks, all, for the tips! These suggestions are super helpful!
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Nov 2, 2018 15:05
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