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I'm going on an unexpected trip to London in a couple weeks. It'll be my first time there, and I'm staying for 6 days. Being my first time, I'm totally fine with doing a whole lot of touristy things. My questions are: -Which of the popular London sights should I group together to see in the same day / how much time should I budget for them? -Any suggestions for less touristy things to do with any remaining time I might have? Thanks!
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May 5, 2014 03:23
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elwood posted:Are both of you going alone? If not there is an easy way to get 2 for 1 vouchers for lots of attractions. I'm also not going alone, or rather I'm meeting someone there. But since you mention it, what's the easy way, or do you just show up and buy it for two? On that note, is the London Pass worth it? It looks like quite a lot of the top attractions are free, but the pass seems to cover most of the others. I suppose it could be a good deal if we can actually make it to several of the ones listed in the span of a day or two. Regarding the subway, it looks like a 7 day travelcard is what we'd need. I'm not too sure about the zones and whatnot... I mean, it seems like almost everything is in 1 or 2, but then we might also do Windsor Castle (4) and obviously we'll need to go to/from Heathrow (6). But it seems like a waste to get a 1-6 card just for the airport.
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May 6, 2014 07:52
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MagicCube posted:You said you're going to Pompeii which is good. I recommend going there first and spending half a day to 3/4 of a day there and then on the way back to Naples stop at Torre Annunziata to see the Villa Poppaea and then stop at Ercolano and visit Herculaneum. It's better to go there after Pompeii because it's much smaller and you'll need more energy for Pompeii. If you're slow walkers then plan a full day for Pompeii, but I went around the whole place in 5-6 hours and saw everything. Get there right when it opens if you can because I was the only person there for about half an hour and it was surreal. This is all good advice. If you're not spending time in Rome, you'll have plenty of time for all of the above, likely with days to spare. Definitely visit Amalfi; you have the time and a car so there's no reason not to. From my research for my trip last year, I didn't see much else to do in Naples besides the above, so I wouldn't plan to spend a whole lot of time there. I skipped Sorrento and Capri so I can't speak to them.
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May 6, 2014 08:24
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Pablo Bluth posted:Windsor Castle isn't in zone 4 last time I checked. It's slightly further out of London than Heathrow. It's an entirely reasonable day-trip but you'll need to jump on an overland train to do so. Ah, you're right. It's strangely difficult to find the right Windsor Castle with just Google Maps. Helpful link, thanks. edit: I found this link also very helpful in understanding the details. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 09:01 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 08:40
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Pablo Bluth posted:The 2-for-1 option for certain attractions requires you to print off attraction-specific coupons from here in advance. When you arrive at London you need to buy a 7 day travel card. It must be the orange paper version sold by National Rail so you need to visit a train station kiosk (Not the Oyster card or the pink paper travelcard sold from the Underground. Don't buy from Heathrow or on-line). Then when you get to a particular attraction, give them the relevant coupon you printed off before you left. So apparently I need to bring my own passport-size photo in order to buy a 7 day travelcard from the railways.  Luckily I have a spare left over from last year, so I have all my coupons printed and am ready to go. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 02:40 on May 8, 2014 |
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May 8, 2014 02:38
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HookShot posted:Make sure it's not a UK-sized passport photo you need.  Of course it couldn't be that easy.
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May 8, 2014 07:53
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bionictom posted:One museum that hadn't been mentioned is the Modern Tate gallery, I thought it was spectacular and spent a whole afternoon there. Hollow Talk posted:That's a good suggestion! The Tate Modern is probably my favourite museum in London, the building alone is stunning, and they usually have good exhibitions. If you happen to go there on a nice day, the walk there along the riverside is actually quite nice, either coming from Waterloo or from London Bridge (via the Borough Market), instead of simply coming over the river via the Yep, I think that's on the list. We developed a pretty nice itinerary over the last couple days, should be a fun trip.
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May 9, 2014 06:13
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My wife and I are considering going to the Netherlands and Belgium in early May. I'm going to dive into some of the relevant posts in recent pages/the first page, but a couple initial questions: - We like to be active on vacation (though not in a rush), and usually mostly do touristy things, with a dash of other recommendations mixed in. We won't be sitting around drinking or smoking at all. If we go for ~11 days, should we think about adding one other destination, or is that about the right amount of time for the two countries? - My wife really wants to see the tulip fields in all their glory. If we can get there on May 6th at the earliest, is that still a good time, or is it slightly late? Thanks guys.
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Jan 24, 2020 06:56
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Thanks for the comments last week. We found a decent flight and I put together a very rough itinerary just to make sure we'd have enough time for everything, because we'd have about a day and a half less than expected. Is anything here way off base? Day 1: Arrive in Amsterdam, be tired, canal tour Day 2: Day trip to Keukenhof Day 3: Museum overload - Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank house Day 4: Half day trip to Zaanse Schans, maybe some parks in Amsterdam after (or maybe Haarlem?) Day 5: Day trip to either Delft or Utrecht? Day 6: Rotterdam, stay overnight Day 7: Spend the day in Antwerp on the way to Ghent Day 8: Ghent Day 9: Day trip to Bruges Day 10: Brussels, stay overnight Day 11: Flight from Brussels Thanks for the feedback.
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Jan 31, 2020 04:32
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Dance Officer posted:You're also spending the night in a lot of different places and wildly underestimating how much time that's going to cost you. I recommend you stay in one place in the Netherlands, and one in Belgium. Considering your plans I'd say Amsterdam and Antwerp will suit you best. There's a train service from Antwerp straight to Brussels Zaventem airport, so you don't need to stay the night in Brussels either. Hmm, it would be 5 nights in Amsterdam, 1 in Rotterdam, 3 in Ghent, and 1 in Brussels. The single nights I thought might be worth it to save us from taking the train through the same area two days in a row, but yeah we could just as easily not do that. For Belgium, I just chose Ghent because it's in the middle of the cities we're visiting, but if Antwerp is just as convenient (or more so) then that will work too. Thanks. Sand Monster posted:Reserve your Anne Frank house tour in advance. It sells out quickly, but they have entry fairly late in the day. We did Van Gogh when it opened and the crowd wasn't too bad at all for the first hour or two. Yep, for sure.
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Jan 31, 2020 16:09
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Dance Officer posted:If having to do this 4 times in 10 days sounds like a lot of work, that's because it is. I mean, I appreciate the perspective, and we'll definitely look at doing 6 nights/4 nights instead, but just in general I've never fully understood why it takes people so long to switch hotels. I guess I pack light and keep stuff in my suitcase most of the time (and don't have kids), but based on past trips it only takes a few minutes each to pack, check out, and check in. There's some extra walking with a carry-on to the new place involved, but for me at least it's a mild annoyance that doesn't take anywhere near as long as an hour or two of extra train travel. I guess I'm just glad to have the flexibility of staying or switching without much trouble either way. Anyway, with that rough itinerary, my main concerns were more that I wasn't sure if we have enough time in Amsterdam proper (like 1.5 - 2 days total, so we could cut Rotterdam for more Amsterdam if we want), and I wasn't sure if one day in each Belgian city is a reasonable enough approach.
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Feb 1, 2020 05:31
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Gatts posted:I was determined to visit Japan this May but the cruise ships with Corona Virus have me wary. FWIW, unless the virus spreads a lot more than it has so far in Japan (which it may), this spring is likely to be one of the best times to visit that you could hope for. Not only is spring already a great time to go, but by far the biggest crowds at all tourist destinations are from China, which will probably be nonexistent for quite a while. Not to mention the cheaper prices due to others staying home. If it were me, I'd go during peak cherry blossoms and savor the relative emptiness, but I unfortunately went last year instead...
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Feb 17, 2020 08:57
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To be honest — and I know I'll get the pitchforks for this — a couple years ago I had room for a short 5 day trip (even less with travel), and found a really cheap flight to Ireland, so I just went for it and had a great time. It wasn't leisurely of course, but I saw the main tourist sites in Dublin, drove through Wicklow and visited Kilkenny and Cashel, spent time at a bunch of spots on the Dingle peninsula, and hiked for a few hours all along the Cliffs of Moher. It was abbreviated, sure, and I would have stayed longer if I could, but it was enjoyable and not even all that rushed. That said, there's no way in hell I would then go to Scotland for only 4 days... I'd just travel at a slower pace and maybe visit Northern Ireland too. Regarding driving, I had no trouble on the left side of the road at all, it was very easy to get used to. It's definitely weirder to be on the right side of the car, especially using the stick I'd imagine, but I can't drive manual so I just had to pay 10 times more instead.
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Feb 19, 2020 08:59
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Despite my best efforts to actually do this in advance for once, my wife and I are planning another last-minute trip, this time to Spain in about a month. Here's the rough plan: Overnight: Fly to Madrid Day 1: Madrid Day 2: Madrid Day 3: Day trip to Toledo Day 4: Train to Seville Day 5: Seville Day 6: Seville Day 7: Train to Cordoba Day 8: Train to Granada Day 9: Granada Day 10: Train to Madrid Day 11: Fly home We'll mostly be doing the typical touristy things (cathedrals, churches, museums, parks). Seem reasonable enough? We thought about removing a day in Seville and adding two more days at the end for a total of three days in Barcelona (flying there from Granada), but probably going to pass on that idea and visit Barcelona another time. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Sep 6, 2022 |
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Sep 6, 2022 01:34
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Saladman posted:Toledo is probably better as a day trip from Madrid rather than doing a checkin checkout, even though the train to Cordoba stops there so you’ll be retracing your steps. Thanks, updated for clarity, Toledo was indeed intended to be a day trip. And yeah, the train rides are pretty short, so I don't know, it doesn't seem that exhausting to me. Maybe writing "Train to x" for a day is unclear that it's only a couple hours at most and we have the rest of the day to spend in the destination city. But yeah, it does seem expensive... do people not usually take trains visiting these cities? It looks like certain flights can be slightly cheaper and obviously shorter, but with added time at airports it probably doesn't save much. I guess a rental car is an option, but then we have to deal with parking everywhere. Do these cities/train stations have luggage storage lockers available, like I recall from trips to other countries? We would be arriving in each city too early to check in to any hotels, although now that I think about it, in the past we've typically just checked luggage at hotels upon arrival in the morning, so I guess that works too. edit: Oh yeah, are credit cards (mostly Visa) widely accepted? runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Sep 6, 2022 |
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Sep 6, 2022 17:00
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Saladman posted:Definitely 100% do not take planes for this itinerary, it'll take way longer than the trains and it won't save you much money really since you have to get to and from the airports. Planes only really start to make sense when the train trip would be longer than about 7 hours. A 5 hour train ride is usually more or less equivalent to the time it would take to get to that place by a ~45 minute flight, considering door-to-door. Thanks for all this feedback. We're not too concerned about the budget so we'll stick with the trains, just didn't want to overspend unnecessarily. And yeah, we've frequently left luggage at hotels in the morning, I just kind of forgot... I'm a bit rusty on international travel. We still have a few hours to change/cancel the flight, and I just noticed a better flight returning a day later, so we might just add one more day to the trip. I'll be pretty tired the first day since I don't sleep well on planes, so I definitely wouldn't mind one more day in Madrid. It sounds like one more day in Granada would also be a solid choice.
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Sep 6, 2022 22:18
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distortion park posted:The thing about staying longer in cities is that you get to spend your extra time doing one of two things: This is a very fair point, and to some extent I agree that time off the beaten path can be more memorable. We do like to keep pretty busy while traveling though, just not so busy that we're rushed. Wish we had the vacation time to really chill out and still see all the places we want to see...
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Sep 6, 2022 22:31
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Heh, given all the Cordoba comments, I feel like we may as well just stop at the cathedral on the way from Seville to Granada and not even stay the night there...
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Sep 7, 2022 07:21
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runawayturtles posted:We still have a few hours to change/cancel the flight, and I just noticed a better flight returning a day later, so we might just add one more day to the trip. I'll be pretty tired the first day since I don't sleep well on planes, so I definitely wouldn't mind one more day in Madrid. It sounds like one more day in Granada would also be a solid choice. I ended up switching to the better flight, and we're gonna just add the extra day to Madrid. If we've seen enough of Madrid to be satisfied at that point, maybe we'll take a day trip to Segovia. And now back to buying train tickets, as I read that buying them in advance is cheaper...
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Sep 11, 2022 01:25
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runawayturtles posted:I ended up switching to the better flight, and we're gonna just add the extra day to Madrid. If we've seen enough of Madrid to be satisfied at that point, maybe we'll take a day trip to Segovia. Trip report, the itinerary was a bit rushed at the start mostly because of really bad jetlag, but overall it was good. Biggest takeaway for future travelers to Spain: Don't just buy long-distance train tickets in advance, buy day-trip tickets as well. The morning and evening trains to popular day-trip destinations (like Toledo) completely fill up, even in the shoulder season. We had to switch some days around to get morning/evening tickets; for same-day we could only get there by 1pm at the earliest. Buying all train tickets in advance also avoids the enormous pain of getting Renfe tickets directly as a tourist. The Renfe kiosks are broken for foreign passports, as far as we could tell, so the only options were 1) wait in the customer service line, or 2) use the Renfe mobile app, which seems broken for foreign credit cards, but works with paypal.
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Oct 16, 2022 19:04
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SurgicalOntologist posted:The best option is not to buy directly from Renfe but from a third-party like raileurope.com. Yeah, raileurope was easier in my experience also. Not cross-border, you need a passport (or Spanish ID) for all high-speed rail travel in Spain. edit: We didn't consider raileurope for tickets once in Spain because the site says that they must be printed out, however we saw plenty of people using QR codes on their phone so it probably would have been fine. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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Oct 17, 2022 18:48
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Residency Evil posted:What'd the final itinerary end up being? Ended up looking like this: Overnight: Fly to Madrid Day 1: Madrid - Royal palace, plazas Day 2: Madrid - Prado Day 3: Segovia day-trip Day 4: Train to Seville - Maria Luisa park, river walk Day 5: Seville - Cathedral & Alcazar Day 6: Seville - Museum of Fine Arts, flamenco show Day 7: Train to Cordoba - Mosque-Cathedral, bridge Day 8: Train to Granada - Chapel/Cathedral, San Nicolas plaza Day 9: Granada - Alhambra/Nasrid/Generalife Day 10: Train to Madrid - Reina Sofia, El Retiro park Day 11: Toledo day-trip Day 12: Fly home
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Oct 17, 2022 19:22
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Residency Evil posted:Sounds like we had very similar trips. We hit up El Escorial, but missed Granada/Cordoba. I think when we come back to Spain, we'll either hit Northern Spain/Barcelona or go back to southern Spain. Were Granada/Cordoba worth visiting? We loved Seville, but felt very meh about Madrid. Granada is worth visiting mostly for the Alhambra, a vast palace/castle complex with remarkable Islamic architecture and gardens. The place really takes a full day to explore, especially given the large crowds and countless tour groups. It also provides some great views of the city (and creates some great views from elsewhere in the city, most notably San Nicolas). I think it should be a strong consideration if you go back to southern Spain. If you do, I wouldn't skip seeing the tombs in the chapel, and the cathedral probably has the most ornately decorated interior of any that we visited. I don't think Cordoba is a must-see, but I don't regret going. Stepping into the mosque-cathedral is a distinctly unique experience. Granted, I would have greatly appreciated the mosque architecture with or without all the retrofitted Catholic stuff.  We didn't stray too far from there, but the bridge behind it makes for some nice photos (especially at night), and it was cool to wander around some of the narrow alleys and patios covered in potted plants.All that said, Seville was probably also my favorite, and none of the other cities really had the same feel.
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Oct 18, 2022 00:30
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My wife recently brought up Stockholm as a potential next trip, so I started working on a small itinerary that also includes Gothenburg and Copenhagen. Haven't gotten too far yet, but seems like it could be a nice 1.5 week trip or so, taking a train between each city. I was talking to my parents the other day and they highly recommended taking a Baltic cruise instead. Normally I ignore their boomer cruise recommendations, but it does seem kind of appropriate for the Baltic region. Are there any cruises in this area that don't switch ports every single day, trying to cram in as many as possible? It would be cool to spend 2-3 days each at Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Tallinn, for example.
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Mar 25, 2024 20:16
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Yeah, to clarify, I'm not much of a cruise person either, the appeal is primarily to take care of all the traveling overnight so we can just focus on seeing some nice cities. It kind of makes sense to me for the Baltic region because all the capitals are ports and are close enough that extra days on the water shouldn't be necessary.BabyJebus posted:We took a Baltic cruise last summer with more or less a full day in each port but no overnights. It's not how we normally like to travel but it was an interesting way to get a little taste of each city and see where we might want to go back to for an extended visit. I was just thinking this earlier, if there's one that begins/ends in Stockholm/Copenhagen then we could add some days before and after, seeing the same amount of those cities we ordinarily would, with some bonus days in the other capitals. Seems worth considering at least, though I expect a more standard trip with a couple trains is still more likely due to our schedule inflexibility.
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Mar 26, 2024 04:20
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Residency Evil posted:We're doing Stockholm and Copenhagen in May, taking the train between the two. Yeah I saw that upthread, something about doctors wanting to visit Sweden this time of year... no toddler here though Threadkiller Dog posted:The stockholm<>copenhagen train ride is pretty sweet as an option. There is a sleeper train also iirc. Is it the direct line that's sweet or is it similarly nice with Gothenburg in the middle?
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Mar 26, 2024 20:44
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runawayturtles posted:I was just thinking this earlier, if there's one that begins/ends in Stockholm/Copenhagen then we could add some days before and after, seeing the same amount of those cities we ordinarily would, with some bonus days in the other capitals. Seems worth considering at least, though I expect a more standard trip with a couple trains is still more likely due to our schedule inflexibility. So I ended up finding just a few potential cruises, but they weren't at great times for us and would have been too long if adding multiple days before and after. Looks like terrestrial transit it is. In other news, we had to again postpone our already-postponed trip to the Netherlands in early May, so we're gonna do this trip instead in late May. We don't have quite enough time to include Gothenburg, so it'll just be Stockholm and Copenhagen with a couple day trips, and the suggested high speed train between them.
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Apr 1, 2024 07:09
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Coco13 posted:The Cinque Terre trails are gorgeous hikes. I wish it didn't rain as much when I was there, would have loved to do more segments instead of just one. Yeah, only one was open when I was there like 11 years ago, but it was great.
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Apr 5, 2024 17:00
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So I'm trying to book that Stockholm to Copenhagen train for the end of May, and because our mid trip travel day happens to fall on a weekend, there are no direct tickets left, only longer routes with a bus in the middle for double the price? Is that typical?
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Apr 11, 2024 05:40
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Ras Het posted:That's probably because of track maintenance work rather than it being sold out. kissekatt posted:As Ras Het said, it must be because of maintenance/development as busses are normally not part of that route at all. Even if the trains were sold out they would still show up in your search, just with a "sold out" instead of a ticket price. Ah, I see. That's unfortunate. Wife gets very motion sick on busses, so might have to fly instead, which would be cheaper and faster anyway...
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Apr 11, 2024 18:36
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