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thanks for the information, friends.
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Jul 13, 2023 20:17
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kiimo posted:Seems important to the conversation My train just today got cancelled, so I had the privilege of rebooking it for 6.55am for 4 times the original price lmao
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Jul 13, 2023 20:34
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Train strikes in Italy aren't exactly news I would say. It's about a coin flip whether you will encounter them or not when you go to Italy, so they might as well put in the newspaper that there is no strike.
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Jul 13, 2023 20:42
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Entropist posted:Train strikes in Italy aren't exactly news I would say. It's about a coin flip whether you will encounter them or not when you go to Italy, so they might as well put in the newspaper that there is no strike. We got married in Italy a few years ago, and when we were scoping the place out - in a small city in the north but with a train line - we decided to use the public transport a couple times just to see how it would be for guests that didn't want to rent a car. Our first attempt, the train (twice per hour) just like... didn't show up. We talked to a conductor, he said that the driver didn't show up to work today so the next train would come. The second weekend we went down there to do stuff, we also decided to try PT one more day. That day, there was an unannounced strike that we only found out while on the platform, again after asking a platform attendant who, for some reason, still was working. If you didn't speak Italian then lol, lmao, at figuring it out. Normally the main trunk rail lines in Italy are actually good (the InterCities), but holy poo poo the branch lines are always bad. Still, driving within major Italian cities is a bad idea and it is always better to take the ICs if your trip is like, Naples->Rome->Florence->Venice->Milan, and risking the 1% chance of a strike, rather than 50%+ chance of a first-time-Italian-driver getting massive fines by not understanding how ZTLs work or how automatic camera toll roads work, plus Italian driving being one of the world's most chaotic and Italy is specifically not covered by normal credit card rental car insurance.
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Jul 13, 2023 21:13
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To be fair to the Italians, I'd say least half of the really crazy poo poo I see on the roads there is from Swiss/German/Dutch plates who are just excited to be in a place with no traffic enforcement
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Jul 13, 2023 21:35
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I drove into Italy once with my own car. It was Florence, Livorno, Mantova and a bunch of small places so it made sense for that trip, and I'm at least European so I know a bit what I'm doing. I didn't really encounter anything crazy to be honest, probably I did not go far enough south.greazeball posted:To be fair to the Italians, I'd say least half of the really crazy poo poo I see on the roads there is from Swiss/German/Dutch plates who are just excited to be in a place with no traffic enforcement Or maybe it was this... don't dox me
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Jul 13, 2023 22:01
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Entropist posted:I drove into Italy once with my own car. It was Florence, Livorno, Mantova and a bunch of small places so it made sense for that trip, and I'm at least European so I know a bit what I'm doing. I didn't really encounter anything crazy to be honest, probably I did not go far enough south. The only thing that bothers me in the north really is that the highway onramps are EXTREMELY short, such that you either need a very fast car and good reflexes, or you have to be willing to come to a dead stop while merging onto a highway, which is very atypical in other European countries that normally give you more than like 50m of merging straightaway. The ZTLs can also be very confusing, even being fully aware of them I've driven through some accidentally. I've never received a ticket, but I've also very rarely driven an Italian-plated car. Some of their autostradas are also camera-only, e.g. the A36 north of Milan, and they only have signage in Italian that indicate that you are on a paid autostrada and you need to pay on a lovely Italian website within 48 hours or they fine you. Maybe it has gotten better since I last drove it in like 2017, as I know that's becoming more common in other countries now, especially with bridge and tunnel tolls being like that, so maybe people are getting used to it. Italy was the first place I ever encountered a toll road that was operated by hidden camera (i.e. not a big booth that you drive through with a camera pointed at you, but a seemingly-regular autoroute that has cameras recording your plates super discretely and you never pass through any sort of booth). I for sure agree that for itineraries that aren't the typical Naples-Rome-Florence-Milan a car makes a lot of sense. Even the surroundings of big cities like Rome have terrible public transport, like getting from Rome to Lago di Nemi by public transport is pathetically awful.
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Jul 13, 2023 22:32
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Saladman posted:The only thing that bothers me in the north really is that the highway onramps are EXTREMELY short, such that you either need a very fast car and good reflexes, or you have to be willing to come to a dead stop while merging onto a highway, which is very atypical in other European countries that normally give you more than like 50m of merging straightaway. Saladman posted:The ZTLs can also be very confusing, even being fully aware of them I've driven through some accidentally. I've never received a ticket, but I've also very rarely driven an Italian-plated car. Some of their autostradas are also camera-only, e.g. the A36 north of Milan, and they only have signage in Italian that indicate that you are on a paid autostrada and you need to pay on a lovely Italian website within 48 hours or they fine you. Maybe it has gotten better since I last drove it in like 2017, as I know that's becoming more common in other countries now, especially with bridge and tunnel tolls being like that, so maybe people are getting used to it. I guess I was lucky to avoid those things! I only used the A1 and A22 which had booths, and the 'highway' to Livorno was free (and in a terrible state with short ramps). And looking them up now, apparently I got at least close to some ZTLs without being aware of them, though maybe they did not exist yet back in 2019.
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Jul 14, 2023 02:25
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We did have driving as always resort if we weren't able to find another train (Rome to Venice) but I really didn't fancy driving after seeing the drivers behaviour in both Rome and Naples lol (Naples especially, that poo poo was like Mad Max) We were lucky to get on the train we ended up on. Roma Termini was chaos and when we were waiting for our 7am train (which was delayed and had no platform at 6.45am) people were lining up for the trenitalia office who probably hadn't realised their train had been cancelled. They had Buckley's of getting on another one by that stage, we got the second to last tickets on the 7am the afternoon before
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Jul 14, 2023 05:19
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I've seen ramps just directly ending into the main lane without a merge lane at all in the UK.
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Jul 14, 2023 07:58
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von Braun posted:Me and my SO are going to Costa del Sol and are thinking about visiting Gibraltar to look at the monkeys and perhaps taking the ferry to Marocco. Anyone know how often they travel across per day? And is it really worth it? I think there are ferries every hour or so. But you wouldn't go from Gibraltar. Algeciras is right across the bay with a big port. But you'd probably not want to do Gibraltar and Morocco on the same day. We went to Ceuta and then crossed over to Morocco from there. I would not recommend Fnideq, but maybe you have to go further into town than we did to get to the nice part. I think Tangier is bigger and is probably a better bet.
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Jul 14, 2023 08:13
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In a couple of months we have an early morning flight out of Naples to get back home, so we are heading back from Sorrento the day before to stay overnight. Considering catching the ferry from Sorrento in the morning and spending the day on Ischia, then ferrying to Naples late afternoon. I have an overwhelming sense of dread that a ferry cancellation is going to leave me stuck on Ischia and not able to get back to Naples before my flight. Am I being dramatic? How reliable are the ferries?
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Jul 14, 2023 10:09
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Magic City Monday posted:I think there are ferries every hour or so. But you wouldn't go from Gibraltar. Algeciras is right across the bay with a big port. But you'd probably not want to do Gibraltar and Morocco on the same day. Yeah agreed, it's like a 90 minute ferry across the strait so spending 3 hours of a packed day on a ferry (probably more like 4 once you factor in waiting, embarking etc) feels like kind of a waste. Gibraltar is fine for a day trip, I've actually been there twice funnily enough. There's enough to do to keep you interested - get the cable car up the Rock and potentially walk back down. Check out the monkeys. There's the central town area that's kinda interesting, and you can enjoy how it's just this random patch of ultra-British patriotism wedged away in Spain. There's so much cool poo poo to see and do in Morocco I'd just save it up for another trip to be honest.
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Jul 14, 2023 13:15
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Carbon dioxide posted:I've seen ramps just directly ending into the main lane without a merge lane at all in the UK. And even on the German Autobahn I found some extremely tight interchanges and onramps on some of the rural West German routes.
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Jul 14, 2023 17:26
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Entropist posted:You can find some interesting things in Belgium too, like the Charleroi inner ring road and this extremely tight roundabout cloverleaf monstrosity near Liège https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZN57bmaLePu8zp956 . Whelp, I thought it was just an Italian thing. Probably I just notice it more when flying to more distant places where I rent a car, since a Fiat 500 has a 0-100 time of "incredibly loving slow" (apparently around 12-14s, depending on model), and I tend to rent whatever car is 1 class up from the worst car available.
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Jul 14, 2023 20:30
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Just got back, had a blast one question though did the swiss get more fun over the last 20 years, or was bern just more fun than zurich all along?
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Jul 15, 2023 02:52
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kiimo posted:Seems important to the conversation Well. I sure hope that’s cleared up in the next three weeks. Speaking of Italy, how’s the dependence on cash there? Specifically in Florence, and maybe in some of the day trip towns on the area. I haven’t been to Italy since….15 years ago? So my data is outdated
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Jul 15, 2023 04:59
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I haven't needed cash really anywhere in Italy but Capri, but ymmv
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Jul 15, 2023 05:07
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webmeister posted:There's so much cool poo poo to see and do in Morocco I'd just save it up for another trip to be honest. And as far as I know none of the cool poo poo is close to the coast?
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Jul 15, 2023 14:32
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Carbon dioxide posted:I've seen ramps just directly ending into the main lane without a merge lane at all in the UK. Yes we do this very commonly. Right indicator on and time for high stakes zipper merging! 
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Jul 15, 2023 21:11
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SurgicalOntologist posted:I spent a week in Chipping Camden maybe 15 years ago, I don't think we did anything besides take walks in the countryside between villages. Which was nice, mind you, I remember that trip positively, but I don't know if anything was particularly noteworthy. The whole Cotswold area was absolutely swarmed with tour buses, mostly East Asian. Some towns were so full we couldn’t even find a place to park that was close enough to make it worth the half hour walk each way into a town of 8 cottages and two pubs. It’s quaint and all but goddamn, it is like a neat local thing, absolutely not worth a tourbus stop for someone on a weeklong trip of England coming from Beijing. I liked Bath a lot, although £28pp for entrance to the Roman bath (~70 min self guided tour) is pretty loving exorbitant. The town was nice though and also jam packed because it was graduation on Friday. We had some time to kill and drove though Cheddar Gorge, anyway not a big detour to our last hotel. It was kind of neat, definitely a surprise to see in southwest England. Also like the other poster said, not noteworthy to anyone who has ever been to an actual mountain or canyon in their entire life. Anyway no regrets as I went for family reasons and had to be +/- 1 hour from Oxford and Bristol, so happy enough to have seen it but it’s a like a 6/10 daytrip destination if you live in Oxford, a 4/10 weekend visit if you live in London, and a 0/10 if you live further than that. The other problem with the cute Cotswolds towns is they all have fuckoff packed busy roads running directly down the high street, and every public square was converted into a hideous parking lot. The traffic in the town centers was so clogged and shocking I got some good photos of it, will have to add that in when I get back to a computer.
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Jul 16, 2023 13:27
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kiimo posted:did you go to Lake Bled Go to Lake Bled!  And whilst you're there, hop on a bus to Bohinj. 
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Jul 16, 2023 16:18
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Saladman posted:The whole Cotswold area was absolutely swarmed with tour buses, mostly East Asian. Some towns were so full we couldn’t even find a place to park that was close enough to make it worth the half hour walk each way into a town of 8 cottages and two pubs. I'm in the Mendips now and there are basically no tour buses (possibly because the weather is terrible) but every single town that might be pleasant to be in is impossibly ugly due to every road being packed with parked cars. I agree that it's pretty shocking, I guess the residents prefer it that way but I wouldn't want to live like that.
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Jul 16, 2023 17:07
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I’m kinda surprised the tourists go to the towns with car-packed centers vs ones that pedestrianized. Or is that all there is in that part of England?
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Jul 16, 2023 17:12
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smackfu posted:I’m kinda surprised the tourists go to the towns with car-packed centers vs ones that pedestrianized. Or is that all there is in that part of England? I don't think there are that many pedestrianised ones in the Somerset area - even Bath's pedestrianisation is pretty limp (there's also a "Clean Air Zone" but it doesn't apply to private cars lol). Still not much pedestrianisation but imo the north of England (north of Manchester/Yorkshire Dales) does the cute towns with nice farmland thing better, although it's pretty hit and miss.
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Jul 16, 2023 17:17
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smackfu posted:I’m kinda surprised the tourists go to the towns with car-packed centers vs ones that pedestrianized. Or is that all there is in that part of England? They tend to stay away from Norwich city centre because of this exact thing
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Jul 16, 2023 19:44
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After years of Top Gear talking about how insane the Italian roads were, I was prepared for the worst. My first time driving there was in Milan/Northern Italy and I was immediately amazed at how much better/more orderly it was than anywhere in the United States.
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Jul 16, 2023 21:38
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kru posted:They tend to stay away from Norwich city centre because of this exact thing Aye, that’s a fair point, a lot of the tour buses have minimal required walking due to the age of the clientele.
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Jul 17, 2023 02:50
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Trip report after 5 days in Madrid, 5 days in Ibiza, 5 days in London Subway system in Madrid is very good but requires you to preload a card. Food and drink is amazing and cheap. Ibiza is taxi only, no Uber or Lyft. Close to NYC prices at most places but a couple local spots were more affordable. London is mostly expensive as expected and everywhere except Picadilly/Leicester Square closes around midnight. London subway is great since you can just tap to pay on entry/exit. I visited during Wimbledon and a couple stations had the gates open but I still tapped to pay since it was never clear whether both the entry/exit gates would be open since you need both open to avoid any penalties. In any case, I'm happy to support public transit. I was also witness to an attempted mugging in a London subway station but a dad intervened and slowed down the teenager long enough for the victim to recover most of her goods. I had quite a few questions about paying with card vs cash. Everywhere used handheld payment units and I paid with my Chase Sapphire with no issue including taxis in Ibiza. Most places DID NOT ACCEPT CASH. I traveled with 40 EUR and 40 GBP. I used my cash at Madrid's El Ratro flea market at one stand selling belts that only took cash (most had handhelds) and a laundromat in Ibiza that had a card reader that didn't work. That laundromat also apparently included detergent in the wash but I was unsure and bought some generic Tide pods. In London, I was only able to use cash on my final day at a pub. They found it amusing that I was trying to get rid of my cash since, for my last drink, I emptied my pockets and asked "What can I get for this?"  Passport control at Madrid was about 30 min despite long lines. Passport control at Heathrow Terminal 5 is amazing, completely automated gates that scan your passport and takes no time. Security at Madrid, Ibiza, and even Heathrow was super fast, about 10 minutes. Really enjoyed my trip, thinking of doing a 3 week Eurotrip next year. 1 week in London at the beginning of Wimbledon, 1 week in Ibiza, a few days in Glasgow for the Open Championship then a few days in Belgium for Tomorrowland. Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Jul 17, 2023 |
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Jul 17, 2023 05:57
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smackfu posted:I’m kinda surprised the tourists go to the towns with car-packed centers vs ones that pedestrianized. Or is that all there is in that part of England? This was Burford, on the main (and only) street:  Basically everywhere was like that. Bradford-on-Avon was the town that was so tiny vs. so crowded that, after driving through, we decided to just go to Cheddar Gorge and head to our AirBnB. Cheddar Gorge was packed with tour buses (carrying tons of cyclists) as was Bibury (packed with East Asian tour groups) and Bath (packed with tour groups of teenagers from every country in Europe). Arlington Row was actually about as crowded as Disney World. It's very cute and all, but there are also tons of equivalent very cute little towns in Germany and Switzerland and Italy that have zero tour buses and 1/1000th as much traffic. Bath was the only town we went to with a significant pedestrianized area – a lot of it has been pedestrianized sometime after 2018, based on Google Streetview's most recent image being from then. We liked it a lot – the whole center is pedestrianized, not sure when distortion park went there. E: I had a good enough time, it is pretty nice and probably extremely quaint on a May or October day with nice weather, I'd just not recommend it to anyone that isn't already living nearby, nor recommend it to anyone at all in July and August. If they pedestrianized their quaint little towns I'd probably recommend them to people who don't mind crowds, but without the pedestrianization they're just awful with such traffic ... to which we contributed. Josh Lyman posted:In London, I was only able to use cash on my final day at a pub. They found it amusing that I was trying to get rid of my cash since, for my last drink, I emptied my pockets and asked "What can I get for this?" We were also almost totally unable to use cash in southwest England. I think every place we ate in had a "card only" sign, and eventually at some point we gave £20 as a cash tip to a waitress because we were leaving and had ???? to do with the money, and I'd rather give it to someone than go to a ripoff airport counter-change kiosk. Not sure if hotels had cash, we only had about £100 in the first place and only had success at one restaurant to use most of it. Saladman fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Jul 17, 2023 |
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Jul 17, 2023 09:43
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smackfu posted:Aye, that’s a fair point, a lot of the tour buses have minimal required walking due to the age of the clientele. That was actually an extremely niche joke from Alan partridge, which you had zero way of knowing - still true though!
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Jul 17, 2023 11:19
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I really liked Norwich, especially because of the lack of cars in the centre. I hope Oxford also continues to infuriate the gammon-right with their LTNs. Cars bad!
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Jul 17, 2023 11:23
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vanity slug posted:I really liked Norwich, especially because of the lack of cars in the centre. I hope Oxford also continues to infuriate the gammon-right with their LTNs. Cars bad! I love driving but I really don’t understand why so many people are opposed to limited driving in city centers, except for shop owners that sell heavy stuff (eg plant stores, furniture stores). Everywhere should implement ZTLs without a second thought. Like oh no, you have to walk five minutes from a parkhouse instead of spending 5 minutes driving in circles looking for a street spot. Full driving bans are more complicated since it can suck for local residents or people with reduced mobility. I think the best long-term thing about COVID was the reduction of parking spots, increase in terraces, and huge acceleration of traffic control zones. I guess also the increased acceptance of home working for careers where it is viable. Card being accepted everywhere is a nice bonus too, although imo it has gone a bit too far with cash *not being accepted* in a lot of places. Like if you’re a Chinese tourist with only UnionPay, how would you even independently travel around the UK or Denmark or whatever now? I know China is also terrible for foreigners going to China for the same reason, since you need a Chinese account to pay for anything and cash is not frequently accepted anymore.
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Jul 17, 2023 12:31
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Saladman posted:I think the best long-term thing about COVID was the reduction of parking spots, increase in terraces, and huge acceleration of traffic control zones. This is honestly fantastic, they did a bunch of this in Sydney where I live - just blocking off entire lanes of traffic for outdoor dining, terraces etc. So much better when you can just sit outside and relax without busy lanes of traffic zooming past. Stuff like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.85...i8192?entry=ttu quote:I know China is also terrible for foreigners going to China for the same reason, since you need a Chinese account to pay for anything and cash is not frequently accepted anymore. We spent a month in China back in 2019 and had no real problems just using Mastercard and Visa cards. The most annoying ones were when somewhere expects you to use the WeChat Pay or whatever on your phone, which yeah needs a Chinese bank account. But at least back then it wasn't a huge drama - the only one that really springs to mind was wanting to use a train station vending machine, but you could only use a phone payment. An old bloke came over to help, and with some charades I gave him the cash and he bought what I wanted so it all worked out. Weirdly we had more issues in a couple of South American countries (definitely Brazil and at least one other), where you could use Visa for everything but Mastercard wasn't widely accepted.
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Jul 17, 2023 12:55
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webmeister posted:We spent a month in China back in 2019 and had no real problems just using Mastercard and Visa cards. The most annoying ones were when somewhere expects you to use the WeChat Pay or whatever on your phone, which yeah needs a Chinese bank account. But at least back then it wasn't a huge drama - the only one that really springs to mind was wanting to use a train station vending machine, but you could only use a phone payment. An old bloke came over to help, and with some charades I gave him the cash and he bought what I wanted so it all worked out. I have a friend who just spent 2 weeks going around a couple big cities in the center now - Chinese American (speaks Chinese, reads it poorly) - and he had a nearly impossible time paying for stuff. That's all very secondhand though, so either post-COVID changed things and/or maybe he just sucks at figuring out alternatives. My like five minute Google search tells me though that Alipay recently started accepting foreign credit cards and allowing you to set up an account, but also that people on Reddit are complaining about it not reliably working in practice (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/chinalife/comments/14sml1m/anyone_tried_wechat_linked_to_overseas_credit/ ).
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Jul 17, 2023 13:44
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you can link mastercard / visa to alipay now, which pretty much everyone accepts. except for the home of alipay, hangzhou, where you have to pay with loving coins to get a subway ticket. if you do not have wechat, a chinese phone number, and a way to pay with either wechat pay or alipay, you are well and truly hosed in china unless you wanna argue about using cash with every vendor edit: just use trip.com to get train tickets. accept that you'll pay 2-5 bucks more per ticket. you might have to go to the manual gate every time because you're a filthy foreigner.
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Jul 17, 2023 14:01
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Interesting, I guess that’s a recent development. We had Chinese phone numbers and I’d installed WeChat, but at that point you couldn’t link to a non-Chinese bank account. We pre-bought all of our train tickets, and from what I remember you have to go through a separate line anyway since you don’t have a national id card to scan.
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Jul 17, 2023 16:18
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Looking for Stockholm recommendations for August. We'll be on a modest budget and with a 4 year old. My partner will spend most of the day on a conference so I need to entertain the kid and myself for hours at a time without going bankrupt. In case I get some time for myself, I enjoy music, history, art in general.
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Jul 17, 2023 22:50
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Doctor Malaver posted:Looking for Stockholm recommendations for August. We'll be on a modest budget and with a 4 year old. My partner will spend most of the day on a conference so I need to entertain the kid and myself for hours at a time without going bankrupt. The Vasa museum is exceptionally unique, and probably would be cool for a four year old. Definitely cool for a six year old, and definitely cool for you. Other than that, there's a lot of green space and parks, some free and some not like Skansen which is a zoo-slash-historical-reenactment-village, which is kinda neat and also extremely 4 year old friendly. I thought the photography museum was neat but it would bore most 4 year olds to tears.
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Jul 18, 2023 08:49
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The stockholm medieval museum is neat and free. But I mostly remember it for the existential dread the gallows section imparted in me as a kid, so migth be a bit much for a 4 year old. Actually I suspect daycares just brought kids there to scare them shitless from time to time.
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Jul 18, 2023 14:15
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