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Alrighty I'm in Barcelona for 5 nights, where can I find the best tasting 'tapas' meal I hear that it's quite a popular dish!
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Jul 22, 2022 11:46
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RoRz0r posted:Alrighty I'm in Barcelona for 5 nights, where can I find the best tasting 'tapas' meal I hear that it's quite a popular dish! It's been a while since I've seen a troll post in T&T! E: Except you have no rap sheet in 12 years of posting on SA with 67 posts, so maybe you are serious? You basically asked "Hi, I'm in New York City for 5 nights, where can I find the best tasting 'appetizer' meal? I hear 'appetizers' are quite a popular dish!" "Tapas" is basically just the word for "general appetizers of any part of Spanish cuisine". Saladman fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Jul 22, 2022 |
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Jul 22, 2022 12:44
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Sorry about that. I am genuinely in Barcelona though and open to recommendations for good local food. Spending the days doing all the usual tourist activities and the evenings relaxing, gonna head to Two Shmucks when it opens this evening. Fantastic stuff
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Jul 22, 2022 12:47
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Cheese Thief posted:Sure I bet. I rented a car in Croatia and drove around Slovenia. Make sure you get a vignette / sticker when you are driving around Slovenia or you will get a large fine. I think we had to pay around 200 euros or something.
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Jul 22, 2022 12:50
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RoRz0r posted:Sorry about that. Surgical Ontologist lives (lived?) in Barcelona and s/he posted a few pages back quite a lot of detail, including Two Schmucks: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3318901&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=353#post523602835 and if you control/command F on that page there might be some other relevant suggestions there too. I've been a couple times recently for a few days each, but only by myself for work trips, and I don't really eat out unless I travel with people.
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Jul 22, 2022 12:50
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RoRz0r posted:Alrighty I'm in Barcelona for 5 nights, where can I find the best tasting 'tapas' meal I hear that it's quite a popular dish! There are no tapas in Barcelona, because tapas are free with your drink and if it's not free it's not tapas. Go to Madrid. Maybe you can find some good pinchos in Barcelona though.
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Jul 22, 2022 13:53
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Thanks heaps, I've got a nice map of locations now. Tossing up if we should if we should check out Montserrat on Sunday, we love a good walk. Silly question, will Google but, any book shops with a decent selection or ENG books?
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Jul 22, 2022 14:02
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You can get free tapas in Barcelona, but probably not anywhere a tourist would have reason to be. It's not tapas, but Carrer Blai has tons of pinchos places and worth bar-hopping there to be able to try a variety of little dishes. For tapas*, off the top of my head, some famous more traditional places are Quimet i Quimet, El Xampanyet, and Cal Pep. But most Catalan/Spanish restaurants or bars have tapas to some extent so you can get them everywhere from nondescript local bars (cheap and a solid chance at being good) to Michelin-star establishments (who knows, I assume good, report back if you try one). As you probably saw in my other post, our favorite in the center is La Alcoba Azul. I'll mention also El Nacional, a little pricey for the quality but it's worth stopping by for the atmosphere. It has 3 bars and 4 restaurants I think, all the bars have tapas I assume and one of the restaurants is a tapas restaurant. We typically eat at neighborhood places, choosing more by the atmosphere than the food. Not sure it's worth going out this way, but our most frequented joint is probably Maravillas on Placa de la Concordia . It's on a beautiful church square, kind of a town within the city, and at the right time of day it has an amazing bustling atmosphere with kids running around and playing while the parents get drinks and tapas in the various restaurants around the square. Although at those times, it can be hard to get a table. Most neighborhoods have places like that, probably the more recommended one for tourists would be Gracia, I don't have any particular recommendation but it has 3-4 plazas like that. *if you're not a stickler like Entropist Here's a good English bookstore: https://goo.gl/maps/MQcroAgiUrx5dMpbA Also, not sure how many places there are like this, but big bookstores (or big stores that have books, like fnac) will have some English shelves. It's worth wandering into small bookstores too, you never know. Edit: yes, we still live here. Considering coming back to the US within the next couple years but not sure we can afford to live there anymore. SurgicalOntologist fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Jul 22, 2022 |
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Jul 22, 2022 15:18
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Thank you so much for all the recommendations, especially the book store! Currently on Carrer de Blai enjoying the chaos, loving this city so far.
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Jul 22, 2022 20:46
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Last night while out for a walk I passed a guy who had a loving meerkat on a leash, he was just sitting outside a café and hand-feeding the tiny creature like it was a puppy. Cute and all but I'm 99% sure that it's a really bad idea to have a meerkat as a pet and I just felt sorry for the poor thing after the surprise of seeing it wore off.
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Jul 24, 2022 10:38
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found some temptingly cheap flights to Munich or Copenhagen for the fall; for entering the Schengen area, I suppose I should still expect to provide proof of a negative COVID test result within 72 hours of entry?
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Jul 24, 2022 18:39
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:found some temptingly cheap flights to Munich or Copenhagen for the fall; for entering the Schengen area, I suppose I should still expect to provide proof of a negative COVID test result within 72 hours of entry? Nobody knows. At the moment it's not required, but you should keep an eye out for the specific country. The Schengen area doesn't have its own covid policy. quote:On June 1st, the obligation to provide proof – vaccinated, recovered or tested negative – ended when entering Germany. Excluded are people arriving from a virus variant area. However, no country is currently classified as a virus variant area. I'd buy the tickets if you want to go. At worst they'll require vaccination and/or negative test, I'm very confident there won't be a complete entry ban.
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Jul 24, 2022 21:56
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mobby_6kl posted:Nobody knows. At the moment it's not required, but you should keep an eye out for the specific country. The Schengen area doesn't have its own covid policy. thanks  and worst comes to worst i'm pretty far out and can cancel with minimum penalty
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Jul 25, 2022 01:40
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Barry Bluejeans posted:Last night while out for a walk I passed a guy who had a loving meerkat on a leash, he was just sitting outside a café and hand-feeding the tiny creature like it was a puppy. Cute and all but I'm 99% sure that it's a really bad idea to have a meerkat as a pet and I just felt sorry for the poor thing after the surprise of seeing it wore off. We had someone walking their big-rear end nandoe in the center of Amsterdam this week, without a leash. Apparently perfectly legal with the right paperwork, but I can't imagine that's fun for the bird...
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Jul 25, 2022 14:51
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I asked a bit back about taking the train to Venice. That's not going to work for our trip so I'm looking at flight options now. Getting from Treviso airport to Venice seems pretty straightforward. It's a lot cheaper. Anything I should know?
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Jul 25, 2022 22:18
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Entropist posted:We had someone walking their big-rear end nandoe in the center of Amsterdam this week, without a leash. Apparently perfectly legal with the right paperwork, but I can't imagine that's fun for the bird... There is/ was a rhea getting around too. It was in Luxembourg City over the weekend: https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/1945603.html Probably the same bird? Never heard the word nandoe but looks like the same as a rhea. E: oh, nandoe is the Dutch word for rhea. Gotta be the same bird then if I saw it in Luxembourg and you in Amsterdam within the last few days. Unless it’s suddenly a popular pet. Saladman fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Jul 26, 2022 |
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Jul 26, 2022 09:03
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Huh! We saw him in Ljubljana in June, I guess!
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Aug 2, 2022 18:51
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So, our Italy trip in September (starting in Rome and ending in Venice) originally included a day trip from Rome to Pompeii. For various reasons we decided to stick to the North and skip the Amalfi coast entirely early on in our planning, but I later learned that Pompeii was on my partner's bucket list so we decided to shoehorn it in. Last week, we found out our airline had to cancel our original flights home and we were re-booked to leave a day later as a result. It ended up being way easier to bump the rest of our trip post-Rome by one day than any other re-jiggering, so that leaves us with an extra day at the beginning. It makes sense to take the day trip to Pompeii and spend the night so it doesn't feel so rushed, and we can also potentially either visit Herculaneum or the Naples Museum before heading back to Rome the next day. Anyone have opinions on a good area to spend one night? I'm thinking either Naples or Sorrento? It'll likely just be a hanging out for the afternoon/evening, not really doing any sightseeing.
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Aug 4, 2022 16:57
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kuddles posted:So, our Italy trip in September (starting in Rome and ending in Venice) originally included a day trip from Rome to Pompeii. For various reasons we decided to stick to the North and skip the Amalfi coast entirely early on in our planning, but I later learned that Pompeii was on my partner's bucket list so we decided to shoehorn it in. They’re both connected by direct train to Pompéi and Ercolano and they’re both equidistant on the same line from Pompéi, so it doesn’t really matter. That said you have to get back to Naples to take the train to Rome, and you want to do the Naples Museum (quite good, I recommend) so probably central Naples makes more sense. Naples is a nice town, its bad reputation is like 15 years out of date, minus very occasional trash strikes. The port of Naples sucks though so don’t expect to do a nice seaside walk in the evening if you do stay there. There are some big hills with great sea views though even in central Naples.
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Aug 4, 2022 17:58
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kuddles posted:So, our Italy trip in September (starting in Rome and ending in Venice) originally included a day trip from Rome to Pompeii. For various reasons we decided to stick to the North and skip the Amalfi coast entirely early on in our planning, but I later learned that Pompeii was on my partner's bucket list so we decided to shoehorn it in. I can't answer your actual question, but just in case you dont already know about it, there is an absolutely amazing abandoned roman city just a short train ride from Rome itself. Ostia Antica is huge, beautiful and normally not very crowded. If I remember correctly the nearest metro stop is Pyramide, then the train itself takes about half an hour. I've probably said it many times already in this thread but the day spent in Ostia was 100% my favorite day of the holiday. You can walk for miles around the remains of the city, and majority are at least 50% intact buildings.
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Aug 4, 2022 18:31
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Yeah, Ostia Antica came up in my research. My partner has her heart set to visit Pompeii, partially due to a research projects from her college days. But we might check it out as well provided we are not dead tired since it's already going to be a whirlwind few days in Rome.
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Aug 5, 2022 13:03
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kuddles posted:Yeah, Ostia Antica came up in my research. My partner has her heart set to visit Pompeii, partially due to a research projects from her college days. But we might check it out as well provided we are not dead tired since it's already going to be a whirlwind few days in Rome. Herculaneum, Villa Oplontis, Pompeii, and Ostia Antica are all quite substantially different fwiw. Pompeii and Ostia Antica are the typical kind of "mostly shoulder high ruined walls, with city streets and floors including occasional mosaics in situ". Herulaneum is interesting because there are still a lot of roofs and the full structures and lots of paint still intact. Villa Oplontis is in such perfect condition that you could be forgiven for thinking it is a modern reconstruction. Pompeii and Ostia Antica are the same kind of ruins, but they still have a different feeling since Pompeii is in a barren Fall Out style apocalyptic wasteland without a tree in sight, whereas Ostia Antica is in more like a Last Of Us apocalyptic overgrown jungle. We visited Pompeii and Ostia Antica a few years ago on the same trip and I burned out of Pompeii pretty fast since we had just been at Ostia Antica so I'm not sure I'd recommend visiting them back-to-back, but YMMV on visiting ruins and they're both really cool and very extensive sites. Visiting Herculaneum, Villa Oplontis, and Pompeii back to back was fascinating.
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Aug 5, 2022 14:15
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Something I was curious about, when I was in Scotland a few years ago our guide mentioned if we were going into England we might want to switch out our Scottish bank pound notes for Bank of England notes as some locations may not accept them the further south we went. Is that really still an issue?
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Aug 9, 2022 15:39
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Yes it's extremely weird but Scotland prints their own bank notes*, and while these are still the same UK pounds**, smaller shops in other parts of the UK might not accept them. You'll always be able to go to a local bank and exchange them, as far as I'm aware. I think it may be the same for Northern Ireland as well. * and not even by the central bank - three separate Scottish banks are currently allowed to print banknotes. The wiki page is good reading on this ** more or less - see wiki page above and this one
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Aug 9, 2022 15:45
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Ended up finding a flight deal to the Azores. Going for 10 days in early Sept. Does anyone have any recommendations on which islands to visit for sure and which to avoid? We will be flying into Ponda Delgada. Definitely want to do some whale watching, maybe snorkel or a try scuba excursion, and hike.
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Aug 9, 2022 17:25
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SixFigureSandwich posted:Yes it's extremely weird but Scotland prints their own bank notes*, and while these are still the same UK pounds**, smaller shops in other parts of the UK might not accept them. You'll always be able to go to a local bank and exchange them, as far as I'm aware. I think it may be the same for Northern Ireland as well. I've also encountered the other way around just the once, a local store in a small Scottish village up north not accepting England bank notes. I'm pretty sure that was just a case of nationalism but yeah.
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Aug 9, 2022 18:29
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dms666 posted:Ended up finding a flight deal to the Azores. Going for 10 days in early Sept. Does anyone have any recommendations on which islands to visit for sure and which to avoid? We will be flying into Ponda Delgada. Definitely want to do some whale watching, maybe snorkel or a try scuba excursion, and hike. Never met anyone who has mentioned the Azores, but I've always been curious. Would be interested in getting your impressions if you remember to post back here after your visit! TripAdvisor forums for specific places are sometimes good, sometimes terrible, and sometimes barren wastelands. It looks like it gets quite a fair number of posts ( https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowForum-g189123-i1054-Azores.html ) so at least for sure it's not a barren wasteland. I haven't found any better forums for travel, especially now that Lonely Planet not only closed their forums, but they also permanently erased everything. I like T&T but it's only reliable for places that are pretty commonly visited in Europe, N America, and E/SE Asia. I asked a while ago about the Balkans and we're in Montenegro now, along with approximately half of the Netherlands, and cars from almost literally every other corner of Europe -- Ukraine, Turkey, Denmark, Spain, a fair number of Spanish, tons of other Balkans, Greeks, Swiss, Germans, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and I even saw a Luxembourger today. I think Norway, Finland, Moldova, and Portugal are the only countries in Europe where I haven't seen a car here from, not counting microcountries. Edit: even saw a Kazakh car yesterday. Also good god it always gets me in August going to the mountains, how many people have no clue how to drive in the mountains. You want to go slow? That's totally fine, but you want to go slow and there's 20 cars tailing you? Pull off at a safe point, or don't be a dumb gently caress and go 20 kph the whole time and then suddenly accelerate with your pedal to the floor whenever you see one of the rare safe passing straightaways. Saladman fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Aug 12, 2022 |
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Aug 10, 2022 15:26
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SixFigureSandwich posted:Yes it's extremely weird but Scotland prints their own bank notes*, and while these are still the same UK pounds**, smaller shops in other parts of the UK might not accept them. You'll always be able to go to a local bank and exchange them, as far as I'm aware. I think it may be the same for Northern Ireland as well.
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Aug 10, 2022 17:07
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I have a question about the German 9 euro ticket. Everything I've read online seems to confirm this but it sounds too good to be true, so I'll just double-check: if I buy the 9 euro ticket in, say, DB's app, I can really just show that ticket in a local public transit bus in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern or whatever and it's just as valid even though it's not DB? Does this mean that drivers and conductors have effectively given up on systematically checking tickets, because I can't figure out how else this could work (outside of services that have 1st class seats I guess)? Excluding ICE trains and non-public operators like Flixbus or Thalys, naturally. What about subways and trams; if there's a gate you show the QR code but if there are no gates you just hop on?
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Aug 11, 2022 12:11
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They'll probably still check if you have the ticket and it's valid. I'm not sure any German subway/tram station even has a gate. Generally you just hop on, and someone might check your ticket during the ride.
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Aug 11, 2022 12:27
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Yeah, German trams and U-bahn are basically on the honour system. There's no check to enter, and checks during the ride seem rare though they do happen. I don't know how it works for buses though, normally the driver checks when you enter. But it was already possible to use various DB train tickets on local transport at your destination so they must have a system for this.
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Aug 11, 2022 12:37
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i definitely had at least one friend who went onto the s-bahn without their student pass once and then a transit cop came around to check and then kicked them out at the next stop they're rare, but they're still here and there
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Aug 11, 2022 14:58
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I got my ticket checked in Hamburg metro once and I had completely misunderstood the system and my ticket didn't turn out to be valid. Pleading the dumb tourist card worked though
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Aug 11, 2022 21:55
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Going round trip to London for 17 days. I want to see as much of the UK as possible without overextending myself tooo much. Ideally hit up Edinburgh and Dublin as well. Any good advice or recommendations on where to stay, what to see, etc? I’m doing plenty of research myself but y’all have given me great advice in the past so tia.
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Aug 12, 2022 01:32
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:i definitely had at least one friend who went onto the s-bahn without their student pass once and then a transit cop came around to check and then kicked them out at the next stop When I visited Berlin with some friends we had one friend who was feeling particularly cheap that day and decided to risk not getting a ticket while the rest of us did. Unfortunately for him, we got conductor checked that day, and he didn't have enough cash on hand. They actually sent a bill to his mum in Singapore, which I found pretty impressive. I'm not sure if she did though.
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Aug 12, 2022 02:08
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Ibblebibble posted:When I visited Berlin with some friends we had one friend who was feeling particularly cheap that day and decided to risk not getting a ticket while the rest of us did. Unfortunately for him, we got conductor checked that day, and he didn't have enough cash on hand. lol drat, gotta love the dedication of german bureaucracy
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Aug 12, 2022 02:54
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AlliedBiscuit posted:Going round trip to London for 17 days. I want to see as much of the UK as possible without overextending myself tooo much. Ideally hit up Edinburgh and Dublin as well. Any good advice or recommendations on where to stay, what to see, etc? I’m doing plenty of research myself but y’all have given me great advice in the past so tia. Usual rules apply, don't go somewhere for 5 minutes just to say you went. It really depends what you want to see and are interested in. I reckon 2-4 full days in Dublin, depending on what you're after. I spent a long weekend there and didn't run out of things to do (I am a UK national), but I really like museums and wandering and eating/drinking. The Little Museum of Dublin is really good, and I thought the Guinness Storehouse was genuinely fun despite being one of those branded hyper-touristic things. Edinburgh is similar, and it depends if you want to get up to Arthur's Seat or something else out of the city centre whilst you're there. The National Museum of Scotland is pretty good, and has a fun geology section. I wouldn't bother with the castle. Fountainbridge is a good spot to stay - out of the main city hustle and bustle, but super easy to walk into town and has lots of places to eat and drink. Bonnington is really convenient too. Bath is a nice place to visit, and the Roman Baths are worth going to. You can also get to Stonehenge easily, which seems like a no-brainer if you have such a decent amount of time to play with. What are your interests, are you after city breaks or a mix of city and countryside? Do you want to go to the beach? You don't mention the time of year you're visiting, either, and that will make a big difference because Edinburgh in August and Edinburgh in February are very different trips.
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Aug 12, 2022 17:32
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Have you been to London before? If not, I would definitely drop Edinburgh or Dublin, and probably Dublin. You can’t/shouldn’t really spend less than 5 days in London if you haven’t been there before, and it eats an entire day to travel between those three places. IMO I’d look for places of interest between London and Edinburgh depending on your interests and willingness/ability to rent a car, eg York, Cambridge, Bath, Windsor, … there’s definitely plenty in England for 17 days, and with Scotland you can easily spend 17 days in Great Britain. If you do go up to Edinburgh I’d personally suggest getting a car but depends how much you like landscapes and how much you like driving. And season, I wouldn’t bother between mid Nov and late March. I’ve road-tripped all over England but never Scotland, but suggestions really depend on what you like, towns, food, landscapes, culture, … The UK in general has amazing food, despite the outdated stereotypes, but you’ll have to spend like five minutes looking and not just go in the first pub you see. To be honest Dublin isn’t really any more convenient to a trip to London than is like, Madrid. Sure it’s a 45 minute flight instead of 2 hours but getting to/from the airport etc that one extra hour of flight time is almost irrelevant as you’ve lost a full day either way.
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Aug 12, 2022 20:43
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Losing a day is possible, but not necessarily so. Fly out in the morning and you'll have half a day in Dublin to explore and get your bearings. Drop off your bags and check in to the hotel, walk around, eat dinner, hit up a pub for a pint, etc.
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Aug 13, 2022 22:10
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Thanks y'all for the answers on the 9 euro ticket.
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Aug 14, 2022 09:44
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