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OGS-Remix posted:I'm going to go to Copenhagen in the beginning of August and will I need to carry cash around? I thought Europe was mostly digital now, like either credit card or payment apps. Mostly, yes. Denmark especially so. The issue comes up at like flea markets and such where you either need cash, or every loving country has its own Venmo-style thing that foreigners usually cannot use, like how Venmo only allows users with US banks and US cell phones.
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Feb 27, 2024 08:23
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Carbon dioxide posted:I am considering doing a hiking trip in the Mercantour national park in southeast France. Late July is totally fine for hiking in the Mercantour area - it goes very high, above 3000m or so, you can even drive to around 2900m on the main road, so if it is hot, you just adjust your hiking route accordingly. I was up there in early Aug a couple years ago, it was fine, didn’t need AC at all in Briançon (just north of Mercantour, and in all honestly completely indistinguishable), and it was quite chilly at night - to the extent that getting up in a tent before the sun hits it would have been rough. Early Sept opens up some lower routes, but honestly the high stuff is better (at least imo, hiking in forests is boring) and July gets you substantially more sunlight. All of the snow in the Mercantours is gone by mid July, so all high altitude routes will be open from ~early July until ~late October. For stops on the way, Alsace could be nice, not sure how much of a detour that would be but Kayserburg, Ribeauville, and all sorts of things around there like Haut Konisgberg are cool. The Burgundy countryside is also of moderate interest - I spent a week there a couple July’s ago and it was lovely but way too much time. But plenty nice for a day to stop somewhere like Vezelay / Semur en Auxois. Neither is worth a trip out of your way, but both are very nice as an overnight stop.
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Mar 10, 2024 12:20
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Has anyone been to the Champagne region? We’re driving from Chantilly to Metz on a Sunday in a few weeks, and have to leave Chantilly in the morning and only want to be in Metz at night (and have been there before and have been around Chantilly before). Champagne is smack in the middle but it seems to be more or less a black hole in terms of interesting stuff in the area. The wikivoyage article is almost completely empty. Epernay looks like it has some champagne cellars, which we don’t care about as we’re driving and neither of us actually likes champagne. Chalons en Champagne looks maybe cute for a couple hours? Reims would probably be fine enough for a 4-5 hour stop on a non-Sunday, but not sure about on the weekend. I could probably spend about 5 minutes at the cathedral. I’m just not seeing anything that catches my eye between Pierrefonds to the west and Verdun on the east. We’re also fine with stopping in Epernay for two hours and Chalons for two hours and marking Champagne as "complete" if nothing catches our eye in that time, but wondering if anyone’s been there or if it’s just famous for the name and not because anyone intentionally visits. We’ve driven through several times and never stopped, and I’ve failed at finding anything that catches our eye before, but this time I think we’ll stop and check it out regardless of our ability to scope out anything of interest to us. Saladman fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Mar 19, 2024 |
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Mar 19, 2024 23:21
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Looks neat! Nice to see some trip reports + photos of relatively unusual places. I don't think I know anyone personally who has been to Albania, and not many to North Macedonia. I bought Bradt's North Macedonia guide and read through it a few months ago, looked like it was fairly interesting but not so stunning that it would become the next tourist-swarmed Montenegro - with all the upsides and downsides that come along with that statement. Albania's always interested me too, both for the scenery (I can't get enough of mountains + sea, especially simultaneously) and the unique culture (both historical and Cold War era). It's also amazing how much the Balkans have developed in the past 15 years; their GDP per capita has like, tripled, in every country. I guess like what happened to central-eastern Europe in the late 90s-early 2010s.
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Mar 28, 2024 17:48
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Ferdinand Bardamu posted:Heh, I was just there last fall. I hit Ljubjlana, Bled, and Bohinj. I wanted to go to Predjama but couldn't make time for it. I agree with its beauty, I lived on the other side of the mountains in Bolzano and Trento for awhile. Huh, is it noteworthy compared to the Bolzen area? We were tentatively planning to spend about 12 days split between the Dolomites (probably around Cortina) and the Slovenian Alps this September, mostly hiking, or doing whatever else is in the area when it's raining. We spent a week in Slovenia about 10 years ago, but just in the cities, of which Ljubljana was nice, Maribor blew, and we thought the tiny coast was kinda alright. Generally we haven't travelled much to areas with Swiss-like mountains, or if we have we don't go to the mountains when we go there, since we live in Switzerland and don't need to drive 10 hours for it. But, we figured this September we'd do something new... and also a friend is coming with, and she's a Country Counter. I'm sure we'll love it, just generally wondering if it would be different enough to be worth driving 5-6 hours from Bolzen/Trento, rather than driving like an hour south to Garda. For us it's like a 10 hour drive, which is part of why we'd split it up in the Dolomites.
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Apr 1, 2024 16:45
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Carbon dioxide posted:The closest thing I can think of is that some of the microstates offer unofficial tourist stamps at the tourist info. I have one from Liechtenstein. They don't stamp on entry. Yeah Lichtenstein Tourist Office and San Marino Tourist Office are the only ones I can ever remember seeing in Europe that are purely tourist stamps, i.e. no way to even get one officially. There's also some idea that fake passport stamps (e.g. Machu Picchu or whatever) can be seen badly by immigration officials, although I don't know if that's just an old wives' tale as no one ever cared about my Liechtenstein Tourist Office stamp, and I doubt anyone knows what a Liechtenstein is, and it says "Tourist Office" on it, and it was the first stamp on the first page of my last two passports.
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Apr 2, 2024 16:21
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Ferdinand Bardamu posted:Has much changed at the Colosseum / Forum since 2011? I might be going back in October. Back then, I just walked up to the Palatine Hill ticket office, purchased a combo ticket, then cut the line at the Colosseum. This was during the summer, so it was crowded but manageable. But I realize that Instagram has ruined everything, so... Yes, anything you want to do in Rome, book in advance online. This accelerated even more post-COVID. Rome was always ridiculously popular and crowded, even before Instagram, although some places got absolutely over-touristed like Trevi Fountain (absolutely skip, it's like a metal concert mosh pit there now in terms of crowds) and the Pantheon (now requires payment and queueing to go in - although it's still pretty spectacular). Rome is big though, and once you're outside of the medieval center and the Vatican itself, then it's fine. E: I don't think the forum actually sells out, but you can have long queues. Some things completely sell out, and other things sell day-of tickets but with stupid queues. I was there in April a couple years ago and decided not to go in because of the queue — and I was sick and had been in a couple times before. Saladman fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 17:46
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Hedgehog Pie posted:I actually have a very nice picture of my brother and his fiancee at Trevi from not long before covid. It's possible they were just really lucky, I can't remember what time of year they went. We were there in April two years ago and staying right on the corner of it for five days, so I got a pretty good idea of the crowds - but it might be slightly better in October. It was busy at 11pm and 8am, and it was absolutely jam packed - like you'd have to push your way to actually get to the fountain itself - from like 10am until 9pm. Even going around the very edge of the square to get to our apartment was a pain in the rear end, having to shove through a bunch of abysmal quality Italian cuisine restaurants run by aggressive south Asian touts, and shove through ravenous packs of selfie takers. It was like this for about 14 hours a day and one of the spots I've hated the most in years of travel:  Ferdinand Bardamu posted:Garda is incredible, I'd go there over driving through the Dolomites (which are also nice) since you live in Switzerland. One thing I'd recommend for September/October hiking in the Bozen area is to hike the Chestnut Trail / Keschtnweg. I would take the train to Brixen/Bressanone and walk from the station up a hill to the start of the trail. I would make it to Chiusa, where you have to wander past an abbey that overlooks the town. The Alpe di Siusi / Schlern is across the narrow valley, always in eyesight, while you walk. It's where Terrence Malick filmed part of his last movie. We've spent a fair amount of time in Garda, probably at least two weeks all together. Absolutely a top-notch destination for us, but I'll probably head back there later in spring with a different friend who wants go to climbing in Arco, so at least for this trip we'll pass by it. Chiusa looks nice, and I wanted anyway to find an excuse to drive over the Gardena pass. We had a ski trip with friends booked for Corvara in mid-March 2020 that obviously never happened, and I've been hoping to get there for four years now. We'd be going like Sept 1-Sept 14, so it'd be quite a bit before any fall colors start.
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Apr 3, 2024 09:08
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Chikimiki posted:Jesus the internet and cheap flights were a mistake... Wish I could have visited 10 years ago when I had the opportunity Well, this is what it looked like in 2004:  which is how I remember it the first time I went in 2009. Still super crowded, but you could actually get to where you want to go if you were slightly dedicated. The other photo was taken in September 2018. which went from "crowded" to "pure Disney-esque misery." E: Actually I exaggerated a bit, at 9:20am on a Thursday in early April, we were able to get up to it with no problem.  But in the early afternoon it was as terrible as in the stock photo. This was around 11:50am in February 2011, on a Tuesday:  So actually I guess in the morning it's fine. It was mega crowded enough like the first photo often enough that that's my memory of it, but apparently I remember it as worse than it actually was. Even though we stayed right next to it for 5 days, the only photos we took were at 9am on that Thursday - which was like our third day there. Saladman fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Apr 3, 2024 |
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Apr 3, 2024 09:46
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Chikimiki posted:Glad it's not like that all the time. Still, I stand by my point that the internet, and especially social media, was a great mistake Agreed. At least Facebook and Twitter are dead now. I kinda like Instagram, but yeah it did lead to the death of any "hidden gem," at least in Western Europe. Now that I liked a couple posts I looked for about hiking in the Dolomites, half my IG feed is now recommending dozens of different hikes in the Dolomites. Looks great, but definitely will lead to thousands of people like me going to those same places. (I am aware that I am part of the problem.)
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Apr 3, 2024 09:55
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Petanque posted:On the topic of Italy, I recently booked a trip for mid-October, getting a steep discount on business class seats (just under twice the price of economy!). I'll be there for two weeks, planning to spend half my time and Rome and the other half out of Florence. My question is about the latter; I had plans on going to other towns in Tuscany while I was there, but I don't drive and would need to take buses/trains to get around. I have Siena/Lucca on places to consider, any other suggestions on where to go for someone based in Florence with no car? There won’t be any real way to use public transport to get to the smaller Tuscan cities, like Volterra or San Gimignano. If it’s your first time in the area, and you only have one week, and since you’re in shoulder season (but still with great weather, most likely), your first idea sounds really nice - Florence, Sienna, and pick either Lucca or Bologna if you really want. FYI that Pisa sucks except for the campanile, so if you do go there, make sure it’s like a half-day trip and you don’t overnight. If you spend 3 days in Siena then you’d probably want to go to the Tuscan countryside, but you’d need to hire a private driver or go with a tour group. This should be easy to arrange on the spot, like with AirBnB experiences. I’ve only been around there driving, but I have a fair number of friends who won’t drive in Italy, with its third world traffic standards combined with strict adherence to obscure rules like ZTLs, and the confusing mixture of posted speed limits sometimes being a joke, and sometimes actually being meaningful. Also since you’re not going with a car, keep in mind that changing hotels sucks and costs you at least a couple of daytime hours checking in and checking out and figuring out what to do with your bags or going back to the hotel to recollect them. So you could do like 3 days Florence, 2 Siena, 2 Lucca, but you could also do 4 Florence and 3 Sienna. I’d strongly recommend only traveling by train as well - which will be fine with the itinerary you were mentioning.
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Apr 4, 2024 21:43
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Cinque Terre is nice. They don’t have an "off" season but they do have a "not insane" season, which is any time from mid September to mid June. Vernazza gets packed to the walls, but the other 4 towns don’t get nearly so crowded, and they’re all chill in the evening / night, even in summer, as the vast majority of people there are day trippers. Still, there are equally beautiful places in Italy that can be visited in summer without being in a Hajj-like crush of tourists, like the Amalfi coast or the northern lakes. Not that I’d recommend any of those for the poster traveling to Italy by public transport in October. Ferdinand Bardamu posted:I've also been to San G a few times without using a car Ah, yeah I see actually from Siena it’s not too bad, direct hourly bus, takes 50 min. From Florence it was terrible. (No directs, ~2 hours each way.)
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Apr 5, 2024 07:32
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Alright, got our Slovenia and Dolomites trip all set for September; my friend bought her tickets yesterday into and out of ZRH. We've got 12 days including the flight days, both of which are at 10am, so the first day that allows us to still do quite a bit. So, 11 days to figure out what to do in case of good weather, and a backup of something interesting to do in each area in case of bad weather. Maybe a best question for the Bolzano person: is there a good hiking app for Italy, like how SuisseMobile has an amazing map of every single route in Switzerland with incredibly precise detail? I know there's AllTrails and OpenStreetMap, but those such junk in comparison... and AllTrails seems to charge a ton of money now for their phone app. E: Finally found it for Italy: https://sentieroitaliamappe.cai.it/index.php/view/map/?repository=sicaipubblico&project=SICAI_Pubblico and they have an iPhone app that's pretty decent. Not quite as good as SuisseMobile but still very helpful. I'm also kinda surprised at how few lakes there are up in the Dolomites. Normally my go-to to plan a hike is to look for high-altitude lakes, then try to find somewhere nearby to bivouac. SwissMobile even helps with that, since it signals grassy areas vs. pebbled areas, so you don't even have to guess. Looks like high altitude bivouacing is OK in Austria and Italy if you're not in a park, and super not allowed in Slovenia under any circumstance. E: Ok, the Laghi di Sopranes lakes look absolutely amazing. That's one route figured out... I guess these are hyper-specific questions that I don't even know where one would ask, since I don't know anyone who has lived in that area and hikes. Country subreddits are pretty useless for hiking information that's more detailed than what someone could find in 5 minutes on Instagram. E2: Now after reading way more about it, wow Switzerland and Austria sure are a lot more relaxed about wild camping and drone flights than Italy and Slovenia. Saladman fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Apr 7, 2024 |
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Apr 6, 2024 21:35
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Busy Bee posted:Any recommendations for multi day hikes in Europe that include accommodations? Something a few steps above staying in a hut. I don't mind paying extra for a package that includes everything. The Haute Route and the Tour du Mont Blanc are the two typical ones that are very well serviced by actually-nice mountain hotels (rather than mountain huts). You can get your stuff sent from hotel to hotel and just have to carry a daypack between them, I think it's not cheap but it's Switzerland so I guess that is pretty obvious. IMHO Haute Route is more beautiful than TdMB, and I've done about 2/3rds of TdMB and maybe 3/4 of the Haute Route, but only as either dayhikes or overnights, never in a continuous stretch. Otherwise I don't think there are many through hikes where you could stay in a hotel every night very easily, it'd either be staying in huts, or a lot of LONG rear end hikes to get from valley to valley where you can get a real hotel. There aren't many real hotels off-roads in the high mountains. Some, just not a lot. There's probably also a through hike in Bern Oberland where you could hike from hotel to hotel, as Bern Oberland also has a lot of mountain hotels. Do be aware though that the SAC's mountain "huts" are actually still very nice inside, spotlessly clean, and pretty much identical to a ski mid-lift station where you'd have lunch and stuff. It's just dormitory sleeping which is the (to me) unbearable downside, which is also why I don't stay in huts unless 100% obliged to do so. Going to sleep is fine, but someone always gets up and repacks their entire life at 4:30 in the loving morning.
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Apr 7, 2024 10:35
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Saladman posted:There's probably also a through hike in Bern Oberland where you could hike from hotel to hotel, as Bern Oberland also has a lot of mountain hotels. Turns out this is called the Bern Oberland Traverse, and it is indeed a hotel-to-hotel hike. https://www.alpenwild.com/trip/bernese-oberland-traverse/overview/ I have done that entire route (although again not in one trek). It’s lovely and it’s easier than the Haute Route, depending on your physical condition. For a normally fit person who is not at all overweight and who regularly hikes, the Oberland Traverse over 5-6 consecutive days would be challenging but not grueling. Haute Route can easily be grueling, and also it’s much longer. $14,000 for a couple so it’s not cheap if guided. lmao. You could organize it yourself for like a quarter of that price and still stay in the mountain hotels. Depends if you’re rich enough that saving $11,000 is not worth it instead of spending five or six hours doing your own logistics. Saladman fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Apr 7, 2024 |
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Apr 7, 2024 15:56
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Went on a bike tour of Rome today, and our guide had all her poo poo stolen while showing us some stuff. She had her backpack on the ground at her feet in a not especially crowded area, and someone snatched it - even though we were both looking right at her, and the bag was at her feet. Pretty brazen! That was on literally the first stop, so we cancelled the tour, then had lunch, then the tour company called us back with a replacement guide. Biking around Rome was surprisingly safe feeling, and also fun except for the Medieval center was awful to bike in, and the Colosseum was awful to bike around. I think I’m permanently done with the medieval center for the rest of my life now, what an absolute awful poo poo show of people. Even the fairly large square in front of the pantheon was jam packed both times we went. Didn’t even dare walk to Trevi Fountain, although we were morbidly curious.
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Apr 13, 2024 14:21
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Ferdinand Bardamu posted:Yikes. I am done with Rome and Florence forever, but my girlfriend has never been. And I bought tickets for a concert in early October that takes place in Ferrara. Can't even redirect our trip through Munich instead, because Oktoberfest will be happening in that timeframe as well. Yeah but Ferrara flies through Milan? Milan is not my favorite Italian city but it’s fine. It’s only Florence and Venice that are an absolute shithole. Rome is nice except for the medieval area and the Vatican… and even St Peter’s is insanely incredible despite being a tourist hellhole. Medieval Rome is out for me though, definitely never going back there unless it’s to very briefly point out "lol" and then leaving to a nicer part of Rome. Trastevere is great, just spent the whole afternoon and evening and also last night here. It’s crowded but not in the same kind of way. I haven’t actually been to Venice since I was a kid, but I find Florence unbearably awful so I can’t even imagine how bad Venice is. Maybe I’ll check it out next pandemic. Also some people enjoy Disneyland. I don’t personally get it, but for people who enjoy that then even Florence, Venice, and medieval Rome are probably great. I don’t mean to diss people who enjoy that, it’s just absolutely polar opposite what I would do by choice.
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Apr 13, 2024 21:17
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mobby_6kl posted:Does anyone know how's the EV charging situation in Scotland? I have a trip coming up next week and I ended up with a Polestar 2 because they had a deal and it was like half the price of a loving Aygo. I was super happy until I realized I've no idea what's it like there, and it's probably not like Norway or even Sweden. The distances aren't too large though so hopefully it'll be ok somehow. Yeah, probably it depends on when you went. I guess I'd just avoid it between like, Easter and late September. For EVs you can also use Tesla superchargers, just download the app in advance. There are charger stations in Ft William, Inverness, Dundee, three halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and one in Aviemore. For non-Tesla chargers, I find them using PlugShare and I have some badge that works in most of Europe that I can't remember the name of because I haven't used it in so long, as superchargers are increasingly ubiquitous. I think a lot of the newer charging stations built in the last couple years just let you use contactless card payment, so that you don't have to dick around with an app, which would be the benefit of them over using a SC. Just get lunch somewhere and your car will be full by the time you're done. It takes the tiniest bit of planning, but you travel enough here that I'm pretty confident you'll manage without being one of those idiots who has to get their rental electric towed to a charging station.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:36
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Doom Rooster posted:Like everyone else, my wife and I are doing Italy this fall. Rome -> Florence -> X. That X is ideally a town up north with good stuff to do, but mainly as an access point for a big full day hike in the Alps/Dolomites. 99% of the lifts close in late September or early October in the Alps, e.g. this one in Merano which has an lol URL: https://www.seilbahn-hochmuth.it/en/?how-to-write-a-thesis-for-research-paper=&cHash=4c82f097bdca776ae61387f65ff28238 ("How to write a thesis for research paper," lmao) You can still hike out of season, but it's harder since you have to go from the valley or - if you have a car - the highest accessible road (which is typically only a few hundred meters above the valley), and sometimes paths are effectively closed (e.g. seasonal bridges over torrents are removed) although it is quite rare to see a path completely inaccessible, unless there's snow. Signposts are sometimes taken down so pathfinding can be harder in later season. Trails never actually "close," like there's no legal prohibition from out of season hiking, but they do become harder and more dangerous. Lugano would be a good possibility, it's on a beautiful lake, easy to access by public transport, and it has a bunch of easy day hikes, either from the city itself (up San Salvatore or Monte Bre) or slightly further out and lift-assisted up Monte Tamaro and then walking however far along the ridge until you want to go down, either by foot or lift, depending on your fitness level. Switzerland is really pretty ideal for mountains by public transport. Italian mountains are... barely adequately accessible by public transport, and then only if you really do your research in advance.
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Apr 17, 2024 08:32
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Flyndre posted:I’m going on my first international solo travel outside of work in more than a decade this summer. I am quite familiar with travelling in Europe, but not in the Balkans. That should be borderline OK as long as you are not budget sensitive, and as long as your trip ends before mid-July, when European summer holidays start. After that point, it can be actually impossible to find a hotel last minute, e.g. two years ago in mid-August, we booked *literally the last room, in any hotel* in Split about two weeks before our travel date. Dubrovnik will likely be actually-100% booked out even in early July. It is not rare in Europe to have hotels and AirBnBs and hostels and etc at actually-100% capacity, so personally I would not recommend travelling in Europe using only day-before bookings in July or August, unless I was traveling by car. It might be OK in the first half of July, but you might end up without literally anywhere to stay, which has happened to both my wife (slept on a beach in Corsica, August, with friends) and myself (solo travel, randomly crashed a big grill party in a park where people were speaking English, ended up having some woman there host me on her couch for the night, also August). So if you do go that route, what I'm saying is book the night before you travel somewhere, not day-of once you're arriving somewhere.
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Apr 30, 2024 17:57
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Flyndre posted:Thanks all, booked 3 nights in Sarajevo and 2 nights in Mostar now. I'm thinking the afternoon train from Sarajevo to Mostar. Going to look at Dubrovnik tomorrow but it'll probably be 3 nights there as well. Looking forward to this trip! That sounds like a solid plan to me. If you get bored in Dubrovnik on the 3rd day, you can always just do a daytrip somewhere. I've done a couple trips with friends where we booked too many days in a city that ended up being too boring (specifically looking at you, Valencia) and we just rented a car last minute and did some stuff a bit outside, and looked for activities. There's probably no city over 100k* people in Europe that doesn't have 3 days worth of fun stuff to do. I still book last-ish-minute even in high season if I go anywhere that has weather-related activities, e.g. going to hike in the Dolomites in September, but I'm not going to book anything more than 3-4 days out, because I don't want to be stuck in Cortina for 3 days if it's pouring rain the whole time. But, I am also expecting an 80% chance that the only thing we'll be able to find so short in advance (if weather is good) is a campground. Unfortunately it's also increasingly common that even hotels require you to cancel > 2 weeks in advance, sometimes > 4 weeks in advance, to get a full refund. Not so long ago, you could book on spec and cancel ~72 hours in advance if the weather turned to poo poo. Anyway, nothing you're planning is particularly weather dependent. *Wow, the entire district of Dubrovnik - not just the city - is only 115k people? It sure felt a lot bigger... I guess that's how it is when 80% of the houses are vacation homes that get used 10-12 weeks of the year.
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May 5, 2024 21:43
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Recommendations for things to do in/around Barcelona, San Sebastian, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, and Paris over the next few weeks? We've got a few days in each. With just generic info like "things to do" then just check Wikitravel, as those places will have good detail for generic tourist info. If you want more useful information, then what do you like to do? Have you been any of those places before? I know Paris quite well so if you have specific interests I can probably give more specific recommendations than "see the Eiffel tower, walk around the Marais, and go to the Louvre".
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May 6, 2024 19:22
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Fitzy Fitz posted:I've never been to Europe. I've already looked up more stuff than I can possibly do, so I was just wondering if anyone here had some personal "must dos" around any of those places. We're hoping to do museums, shopping, food, architecture, history, hiking, biking, kayaking, caves, live music, art, festivals, other cultural things, trains, parks, gardens, fountains, etc. Not trying to be a jerk with asking "give some more details", it's just that "must dos" vary enormously from person to person. e.g. most "top 10 things to do in [big European city]" lists are personally not my vibe, since I don't like huge crowds and have little interest in European art pre-1850, and zero interest in sculpture. So on that line, I vastly prefer the palace of Fontainebleau to Versailles, and much prefer the Museum of Anthropology (Quai Branly) to the Louvre. So, my must sees are very different from people who love crowds and who love traditional European art. Despite that, I do really like Sacre Coeur because it has a great view of the city, and the metro station to get there (Abbesses) is famously bizarre -- it is a spiral staircase of what must be like 7 uninterrupted flights to get out of the metro (e: apparently 176 steps), so there are always old people struggling on the stairs, or people waiting for 5+ minutes to take the one tiny elevator. Paris is extremely bike-able now, with lots of separated bike lanes. Their mayor has been going on a jihad against cars, which is generally great. We rented e-bikes and went around a couple months ago, and I was surprised at how extremely pleasant it was. We're going back this week by car, which will be less pleasant, but we have to pick something heavy up. You can even do kayak tours near Paris now, particularl this one in Crecy la Chapelle looks cool to me and we're thinking about doing this weekend : https://locadventure.com . I notice their website is only in French, but English is very widely spoken in Paris. I speak French but occasionally in the past few years I've even come across people working service jobs who address us in English (even when we're speaking French between one-another), sometimes who don't even speak French at all. Menus, etc, are almost ubiquitously in English. If you're into bouldering at all, that's the same Fontainebleau that's the bouldering Mecca as where the famous chateau is. For any sort of artistic niche you have, there is inevitably going to be a world class museum for that. Me, I like photography and contemporary art, and they have that in spades. The Institut du Monde Arabe usually runs extremely good contemporary art exhibits (e.g. right now: https://www.imarabe.org/fr/expositions ). The Centre Pompidou does good art exhibits as well, although it usually focuses on modern art (which is an increasingly misleading and out of date term...) rather than contemporary art. Avoid the Latin Quarter for food - it is on lists of "must see" in Paris for its boutiques and restaurants... but those lists are like 30+ years out of date. Now every boutique is a fridge magnet and novelty t-shirt store, and the restaurants all sell reheated chicken nuggets for €20 a plate. There's still some amazing stuff there like the Pantheon, just avoid the shops and restaurants. For anything that is even remotely famous: you need to book in advance, at least one day. Don't show up to any museum that is even vaguely remotely famous, and expect to get tickets on the same day. Maybe you can - and maybe you can with a two hour queue - or maybe you can't. Anyway, decide the day before. Same warning for food if you care about restaurants -- a large number of restaurants will book up a day or two (or even more) in advance. You can always get something decent to eat, but if you want something particular, then book in advance.
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May 7, 2024 16:12
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