Places to Visit.

Good shout Maestro and I will start the ball rolling with two places
1. Lisbon - suggest use local transport which is old fashioned rickety tram, new fangled tram top Belem, local bus (such as to the aquarium) and local train which could pass through Benfica out to the castle. A nice compact city and very close to the airport.
2. Porta Pollenca in North Majorca. Palma is a lovely city in the South but the bay in the North is absolutely beautiful. The hotels that I would recommend are the Daina in the centre and Illa D'or at the end of the pine walk although this is on the upper end of the expense bracket.

 

Some people hate it, and I respect that, but apart from carrow road my favourite place on earth is disneyworld Florida. Don't knock it till you've tried it!

 

Quayside Plaza (near Town Hall) in Yarmouth for a great meal

Neu Camp in Barcelona - fantastic

The Pyramids - ignore the poverty

 

Yes, I agree on the Neu camp in Barcelona - well worth it. Park Cuell (Gaudi's park) was pretty amazing too.

 

Prague - ignore the brothels and sex clubs, just walk everywhere, take in the fantastic architecture, and for a real treat, walk over Charles Bridge, both sides of the road all the way across the Bridge it's packed with all forms of entertainment!

I'd call it a "must do before I die!"

 

Oslo is a beautiful place and is home to very friendly and welcoming people. You will need plenty of money though as a pint of beer is around £8 and a standard 2 course meal will set you back £60! The last time I went there was a week before the awful atrocity commited by that bloody maniac! I'm due to go back over to Norway in June cant wait!

 

Norway is lovely - went there on a cruise a couple of years ago and the scenery is fantastic - it is bloody expensive though as Warky says.

I love Canada and would move there tomorrow if I had the money and my favourite city is Venice.

Place to avoid - Casablanca - a ****hole without the hole.

 

Norwegian Airways or SAS from Gatwick to Oslo is about £40 for a return flight I normally do Oslo and then fly onto Bergen and back to Gatwick. The other city in Scandinavia that I love to go is Copenhagen. Again great people a relaxed and friendly culture but bloody expensive! Everything in the Scandinavian countries is just so spotless and feels so fresh.

 

...went to Bergen in the 70's and stayed at a Norwegian families with an au pair i met in UK ( on a friends basis- unfortunately ) and had a great time, though very expensive. also the bars sold spirits or beer, but not both. very strange.

 

Barcelona, always welcome. Same goes for anywhere in Catalonia really. Obviously Camp Nou being the main attraction but we also host the worlds best beach

 

Love Edinburgh, no real opinion on Glasgow at the moment although its slightly negative based on a couple of short visits. Isle of Arran off the west coast of Scotland is quite nice. Love cycling on the north Norfolk coast. Chester is a nice city as well, my granddad was quite fond of Chester and lived there for a while so visited quite often.

Away from the UK I would recommend Africa, particularly Kenya. Morocco's a great place for a different culture.

I prefer Washington DC over New York but it's still great. The civil war stuff is interesting so Gettysburg is a must.

 

As soon as I saw this thread I was going to reccommend Prague, such a lovely city, stupidly cheap (80p pints everywhere) and easy to get to. I've got a friend of a friend who runs a couple of businesses out there (shameless plug for the Blind Eye Hostel & Clock Tower Bar Crawl), and he showed us around a bit. The city centre is beautiful, but slightly off the beaten track it's worth seeing their TV tower, and the Cross Club, which both have briliant stories behind them:

TV Tower - the actual tower, other than the fact it's pretty tall, is fairly unremarkable, it's the sculptures on it that make it special. In the middle of the night, the artist David Cerny placed these giant (truck sized) crawling baby statues on the main roads into the city, without any explanation. Each night for a month, he'd go out in a pick-up truck and drag the babies further into the city, until they all converged on the TV tower. Then in a night they were all welded onto the side of the tower, so there's these creepy babies on it.

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Cross Club - This is brilliant. A group of junkies without a penny between them started squatting in a disused building. After a year or so there, one of the cleverer ones realised they weren't being kicked out, so they may as well try for squatters rights. I can't remember the exact conditions, something like having a chair, table and a mattress in it without being evicted for 3 years. Anyway, they managed it, got squatters rights and suddenly these junkies had a shell of a building, but still no money. Again, these junkies turned out to be pretty clever. There was a scrap yard for old soviet buses next door, and realised there was a lot of metal going spare there. So, one of them learnt to spot weld, and they built a pub entirely out of bus parts. Quite literally everything, the walls, ceilings, stairs, lights, and 3 story beer garden, are made entirely from bus parts. Eventually they used ever last piece of scrap, and had a functional pub (you don't need a license to sell beer in the Czech Republic, it's deemed not alcoholic enough (they are one of the worlds biggest drinkers)), so they tarmac'd the scrap yard to make the car park. The whole place is incredible, and way off the beaten track. Well worth a visit.

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I've not really travelled too extensively (working on that), but my other favourite European city would be Florence. It's just such a lovely place, if you like art you'll be swamped in it, it's churches rival anything in Europe, and the whole place just has a great vibe to it. The ice cream is exceptional, and it's pretty reasonably priced. The hill the other side of the river from the city gives you a spectacular view, and is a great place to sit and have a few drinks on a warm evening. I genuinely prefer Florence to Venice, where they just seem to hate tourists despite being utterly dependant on them (don't get me wrong, it's a lovely place, but no more than you expect), and whilst Rome is also amazing, I just felt much more comfortable/happy in Florence.

Sticking with Italy, Pisa is maybe worth a few hours of your time, if that. The tower, and everything of interest, is in a two-acre or so site, and the rest of the city is a crumbling, urban mess. They charge you about €30 (I think) for 30mins up the tower and back, and actually when you see it it's not that tall. The other buildings on the site are nice, but they charge you to visit every single one. Stay in Florence (or Siena, which is supposed to be brilliant too) which is an hour's train (for like €7 return) away, and spend a morning in Pisa, it's not worth spending any more time there.

Also, I really don't think Vienna is worth a visit. It used to be fashionable to have a summer palace there, and it was practically untouched by the World Wars, so they're all intact. They've got so many buildings that should be museums, that they end up being McDonalds and Subways, which kind of ruins them. I spent a day there, and that felt like enough to me, after wandering around there wasn't really much to do. The Natural History museum is ok, but it's an old-style museum, which consists mainly of stuffed animals, and 4 rooms of case after case of mineral samples. The main church is nice too, but Prague, Florence, the Vatican, etc all out-shine it.

 

Agree with everything you say about Italy but never been up the leaning tower of Pisa. Would also add Lake Garda - end of Casino Royale and beginning of Quantum of Solace were filmed there - it's a huge lake with plenty to do nearby. Venice isn't too far away either. Verona nearby is a must. Love Florence, been there 2/3 times. Siena, where the horse racing happens once a year and more Bond was filmed is good.

Vatican City, particularly the Sistine chapel is brilliant. Oddly the security guards don't let you sit/lie down to see the ceiling!

Sardinia, an island to the west of Italy but still part of Italy, is also nice and quiet.

 

Verona is superb as is Sienna and Lucca (not too far from Pisa).

If you explore the back streets of Venice and move away from the tourist traps of St Marks, Rialto and Accademia you'll find it a fascinating place and very atmospheric, especially at night.

Agree with DH about Florence - another fabulous place.

Behind Canada, Italy is my next favorite destination.

 

How marvellous! Just in from the pub to see not only my request for a travel thread granted, but well populated already

Have to agree with both Prague and Barcelona as top destinations, but in addition - courtesy of Ryanair when they were dirt cheap, I also went to Provence in S. France, (Nimes, Arles, Avignon and a 'jeep safari' around the Camargue delta) and Alghero in Sardinia. Both flights, (albeit several years ago) were less than £25 return

Santiago de Compostela in N.W. Spain is also totally amazing.

Next for me is a coin flip - Dubrovnik or Budapest. Any +ve feedback on both/either welcome.

Thanks to Maestro and Dave and DH for putting this up.

 

Seen the real Michelangelo's David twice now it's great. The square with the replica is fun. A lot of other great statues.

The Italians are mental drivers. A Spaniard (they tend to barge into you, cut queues and cross roads without a care) pedestrian in rush hour Rome would end well!

 

I was in Siena the day before the 'palio', the horse race round the Piazza del Campo! What an amazing city, smaller and more compact than Florence, where I was beforehand.
Much further north, the villages clustered around Lake Garda make for a very relaxing break, where you're more likely to catch a paddle steamer or hydrofoil than you are a bus or a train! The local limoncello liqueur is both cheap and totally divine