Thinking of going there end of April for three days, people's thoughts please on almost anything and everything. Warts an all, food, culture, atmosphere etc... Cheers in advance.
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Thinking of going there end of April for three days, people's thoughts please on almost anything and everything. Warts an all, food, culture, atmosphere etc... Cheers in advance.
Madrid is a more down-to-earth capital city than many in that it didn't used to have rip-off prices (although I haven't been there for a few years). The Prado art museum used to be free on Sundays. Oh, and try the churros con chocolate!
Barcelona is a different kettle of fish. Much more touristy and watch out for pickpockets and the tricks that are a precursor to them. Well worth a visit though but do book tickets in advance for Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia (church) as you won't get them on the day. A stunning and very original piece of architecture. The Nou Camp lacked atmosphere when I attended a game as everyone seemed to be neutral and who made their appreciation evident by polite clapping.
I had Barcelona/Madrid pencilled in for November..flight to Barca train to Madrid. Other things came up so had to cancel. Pretty gutted.
Dembe, you may be interested in a small carry-on (free of charge) piece of hand luggage that converts to the differing dimensions stipulated by Ryanair and easyJet, whether you use it as your sole piece of luggage or a supplementary reticule to a cabin bag that you pay for.
As the two airlines are charging as much for baggage as for passengers it's worth a shout. Just got one myself.
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Went to Barcelona last October and you're right about La Sagrada, it was heaving although well worth the visit. The bus tours are good value. you can hop on and off as you please and it's well worth stopping at Montjuic where you have great views of the entire city. One word of warning,avoid a company called Suntransfers for travel to and from The Airport. Didn't show up for our return and only a frantic dash for a taxi meant we caught our flight.
Piggy backing the thread, I’d appreciate any feedback on Berlin, Prague, Vienna or Budapest? I’m doing a tour in a couple of months. Cheers in advance
Went to Berlin five years ago and found prices to be much more reasonable than say London or Paris. The city is surprisingly compact and most of the main sights, Brandenburg gate , Reichstag and checkpoint Charlie are easily walkable. My personal highlights were The Naturkunde museum which housed a large collection of dinosaur skeletons including a T Rex and a very moving visit to The Topography of terror which is built on the site of the former SS HQ and documents Nazi persecution in those terrible times. A large section of The Berlin wall is nearby as well. You can do a city tour in a Trabant if the mood takes you.
All worth a visit but I've had a problem visiting modern-day Berlin after the incredibly intriguing visit I made there in the late seventies when the wall still stood (and which I became fascinated about). Vienna had the most cultured buskers I had ever come across.
From Budapest you could take the train to Bratislava and return to the former on a boat on the Danube. Prague has become almost too popular.
Madrid is a great City, go to the Las Ventas bullring, very impressive, did the tour and was blown away and learned a fair bit.
Head to the Plaza Mayor, which is a big square and a nice place to have a drink in the sun, San Miguel Market is a great place for some proper local tapas where you will find all the locals eating and drinking. And of course make sure you go to the Bernabeu and do the tour and watch the game if they are home.
And as for getting around use the Metro buy a 3 day ticket very cheap and easy to get around the City. Enjoy
I've been living in Barcelona over 20 years, tourists things speak for themselves but if you have specific's (good food, cocktails, jazz music, getting high etc) i can help. If you let me know your neighborhood maybe can point out some food places or points of interest.
If you have interest in the Spanish War I know an excellent walking tour (same for Madrid) that isn't your typical style of pointing at landmarks and spitting dates.
If you do do tourist things, buy tickets and go early, public transport to move around, and pick pocket are a ****ing scourge, however only seems to be idiots that it happens too!
Goya's black paintings in the Prado are simultaneously grim and stunning.
Look up wherever you are, there's always decent architecture above shop level (that applies in many places including Cardiff of course).
Did 3 of those 4 last year on an interail, Prague was a ****ing nightmare but i had a great time, THE PEOPLE lol....mind you last time i was there it was -18! We had food by the Castle that we thought would be a tourist trap but we were starving and moaning teenagers. some of the best food of the 3 weeks and pennies (got ripped off the next day by the river but you expect that in these places).
Berlin was really good, but this is such a spread out city (public transport is easy), but great for urban safari and i have to say the best people ever, cannot imagine Londoners or Barcelona folk ever being so open and helpful. Spent time in Kreuzberg.
Vienna was a very short stop but couple of the main museums and easy to find none tourist bars.
Berlin is excellent. It is huge and there is so much to see. It has so many levels of history - Frederick the Great, the Prussians in the 19th century, the Nazi years, post war, rise of East Germany, the wall years and the years since the wall came down.
We have been four times in the last few years and keep finding more places to see. I think Berlin is a 7 or 8 visit place there is that much to see.
Some which may interest you are the Stasi Museum - they were World class at espionage and the building is at it was when the wall came down. Some of the spying equipment is fascinating. Also worth visiting is the Stasi Prison - this is also as it was left when the wall came down. The prisoners were mainly political ones and there were more interrogation rooms than cells.
I used to be based in Bratislava for a couple of months but never got chance to do Budapest or Vienna. I’ve been to Prague for a day on business, it was gridlocked & the most tourists I’ve seen in one place. I need to find the right place to stay. I’m going south from Vienna, thru Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, then back thru Hungary, probably my last chance to see some of these countries
By the way for anyone who hasn’t been, Dresden is a stunning city.
Slovenia was an undiscovered gem when I visited it many moons ago. (In fact, I have some entries in the Lonely Planet guide as it poorly covered the NW part of the country at that time). Bosnia is beautiful but still suffers greatly from what is effectively ethnic sectarianism. Everyone knows of the charms of Croatia although it's very touristy, of course.
By the way, if anyone has personal experience of Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan I would be grateful for any advice.
Very much depends on your interests. If the Nazi period is your main interest then Topography of Terror, the Berlin Bunker and a tour of Tempelhof Airport are worth doing. The Holocaust memorial near the Brandenburg Gate is very moving - especially the exhibition underneath.
If it is the Cold War and the wall then the Wall Museum on Bernauer Strasse, the Palace of Tears at Friedrichstrasse Station - this was one of the few places where East Germans could cross in West Germany and you can still see the doors they used to go through. The East Side Gallery is a bit disappointing. It is at one of the few remaining bits of wall left and has the famous painting of Honecker and Brezhnev kissing. Much of where the wall stood is marked by a line of cobbles in the road/pavement - easily seen in front of the Brandenburg Gate and down to Potsdamer Platz. The DDR museum is small, but excellent and shows life as it was in East Germany until the wall came down - it was a planned economy without a real plan. The Checkpoint Charlie museum is a commercial one and pretty good. Checkpoint Charlie itself is a bit disappointing, because it is not the original building.
If you are into technology the German Technical Museum is brilliant. For general German history the national museum is excellent as are all the museums on Museum Island. If you are into Egyptology then the famous bust of Nefertiti is in the Neus museum.
Just wandering round Berlin is good as well - such as walking from the Brandenburg Gate along Unter den Linden to AlexanderPlatz. The city itself is enormous and many of the sites are quite a long way apart. However the public transport is brilliant. One thing that is interesting is that the trams are only in what was old East Berlin. West Berlin ripped them all up. The centre of what was West Berlin is mainly along the Ku'Damm which is a couple of miles from the Brandenburg Gate. Most of the best things to see are in what was East Berlin.
Bullshit jobs to be honest, nothing to what i studied. Worked 5 jobs since being here, only 1 was a local company going global, the rest are US and Swiss companies mainly.
Currently in a huge US IT company, helping them in-source what was previously serviced in Malaysia, was easy street that got complicated very quickly as our biggest centre was in Russia (previously acquired company). Effectively lifted about 300 plus people out (with their families and pets) to centres in Spain, Canada, Australia and Bulgaria. But if it was to disappear overnight, nobody would notice. As Murray Bookchin said:
while Social-Democratic and Communist theoreticians babbled about a society with "work for all," the Dadaists, those magnificent madmen, demanded unemployment for everybody.