Great rip-off restaurants if you don't know where to go ............ I go to one down by L'Ecole Militaire. Great food, superb company (they always welcome me) and reasonable pricing .............
Yep. Mallorca is reasonable at worst. Amsterdam is another expensive city. Worth it though for the...Rembrandts.
I suppose what you have to keep in mind is that Paris is still a busy working city. Put another way, when the last time was that you met a pleasant Londoner within the city? It's not to say they aren't nice people, just that within certain environments they are different. Couple that with tourists in Paris not speaking the language and you can start to see why they appear short. Outside of Paris, the French are lovely, only in France can you make friends with the local baker by visiting every day for fresh croissants and a pain for lunch. You don't get that in Greggs!
A time capsule from 1894 has been found buried inside a bridge. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-34054847
Basic economics says that restaurants in tourist areas will be overpriced and of poor quality. Overpriced because the scarcity value is in the location. There are few locations in, say, Piccadilly Circus, so rents can be as high as a kite. The restaurateur has to charge more to be in the location. Poor quality because there is no need to create repeat business. There will be enough fresh trade that you will lose money by supplying better quality food and you will not benefit from customer loyalty. Quite often a walk of three streets will be enough to change prices and quality quite drastically. I drive my family mad when we're abroad by refusing to eat anywhere remotely touristy. "No, let's walk down this dodgy sidestreet to the restaurant with all the caged cats by the kitchen door". Vin
That's very true. When I lived in London I don't think I noticed it, but now living away and having to travel there a fair bit, I can never get over how stressed, isolated and impolite everyone in town is! Makes me very happy every time getting back down to Brighton.
I strongly advise you to spool up IPlayer and watch "World's busiest railway 2015" - I presume it was publicity for this that led to the comment on the radio. We found the programme by accident. It's beguiling, bewildering and astounding in the way only good BBC documentaries can be. The section on the Bombay rush hour is in programme one and is hilarious and horrifying in equal measure. Some of the station stops are fifteen seconds. Nine people die every day on the railways in greater Bombay, most of them walking across the tracks along with a few falls, which you'll understand if you watch it. Here's a preview: Vin
I was in Florence and walked down a sidestreet on the other side of the Arno (away from the main sights) and found a dubious looking café with 2 cheap tables outside right on the street. Had a great pizza and ice cream with wine for unbelievably low price served by a young man with the face of an angel. One of my favourite memories.
Just had an e-mail from a 'psychic' calling himself Exceptional Ron. Now even if I was gullible, I wouldn't consult a psychic called that.....doesn't exactly fill you with confidence, does it?
Here you go, entirely free of charge. You'll be astounded how well I have read you over the ether: You are a person prone to bouts of self-examination. This is in sharp contrast to a striking ability you have developed to appear very socially engaged, even the life and soul of the party; but in a way that only convinces others. You are all too aware of it being a façade. This means that you will often be at a gathering and find yourself playing a part. While on the one hand you’ll be talkative and funny, you’ll be detaching yourself to the point where you will find yourself watching everything going on around you and feeling utterly unable to engage. You’ll play conversations back to yourself in your head and wonder what that person really meant when he said such-and-such — conversations that other people wouldn’t give a second thought to. How have you learned to deal with this conflict? Through exercising control. You like to show a calm, self-assured fluid kind of stability (but because this is self-consciously created, it will create bouts of frustrated silliness and a delight in extremes, or at least a delight in being seen to be extreme). You most easily recognise this control in how you are with people around you. You have learned to protect yourself by keeping people at bay. Because in the past you have learned to be disappointed by people (and because there were issues with you adjusting to your sexuality), you instinctively keep people at arms’ length, until you decide they are allowed over that magic line into your group of close friends. However, once across that line, the problem is that an emotional dependency kicks in which leaves you feeling very hurt or rejected if it appears that they have betrayed that status. Because you are prone to self-examination, you will be aware of these traits. However, you are unusually able to examine even that self-examination, which means that you have become concerned about what the real you is. You have become all too aware of façades, of sides of yourself which you present to the world, and you wonder if you have lost touch with the real and spontaneous you. You are very creative, and have tried different avenues to utilize that ability. It may not be that you specifically, say, paint; it may be that your creativity shows itself in more subtle ways, but you will certainly find yourself having vivid and well-formed ideas which others will find hard to grasp. You set high standards for yourself, though, and in many ways are a bit of a perfectionist. The problem is, though, that it means you often don’t get stuff done, because you are frustrated by the idea of mediocrity and are wearied by the idea of starting something afresh. However, once your brain is engaged you’ll find yourself sailing. Very much this will likely lead to you having considered writing a novel or some such, but a fear that you won’t be able to achieve quite what you want stops you from getting on with it. But you have a real vision for things, which others fall short of. Particularly in your academic/college situation, you are currently fighting against restraints upon your desire to express yourself freely. Your relationship with your parents (there is a suggestion that one is no longer around, or at least emotionally absent) is under some strain. You wish to remain fond of them but recent issues are causing frustration – from your side far more than theirs. In fact they seem unaware of your thoughts on the matter. Partly this is because there are ways in which you have been made to feel isolated from certain groups in the past – something of an outsider. Now what is happening is that you are taking that outsider role and defending it to the point of consciously avoiding being part of a group. This will serve you well in your creative and career pursuits. You have an enormous cynicism towards those who prefer to be part of a group or who exhibit any cliquey behaviour, and you always feel a pang of disappointment when you see your ‘close’ friends seeming to follow that route. Deep down it feels like rejection. However, for all that introspection, you have developed a sensational, dry sense of humour that makes connections quickly and wittily and will leave you making jokes that go right over the heads of others. You delight in it so much that you’ll often rehearse jokes or amusing voices to yourself in order to ’spontaneously’ impress others with them. But this is a healthy desire to impress, and although you hate catching yourself at it, it’s nothing to be so worried about. There’s also an odd feeling that you should have been born in a different century. You might be able to make more sense of that than I can. There are some strong monetary shifts taking place at the moment. Both the recent past and what’s in store over the next few months represent quite a change. You have links at the moment with people abroad, which are quite interesting, and will look to yield worthwhile results. You’re naturally a little disorganized. A look around your living space would show a box of photos, unorganised into albums, out-of-date medicines, broken items not thrown out, and notes to yourself which are significantly out of date. Something related to this is that you lack motivation. Because you’re resourceful and talented enough to be pretty successful when you put your mind to things, this encourages you to procrastinate and put them off. Equally, you’ve given up dreams a little easily when your mind flitted elsewhere. There are in your home signs of an excursion into playing a musical instrument, which you have since abandoned, or are finding yourself less interested in. (This may alternatively relate to poetry and creative writing you’ve briefly tried your hand at and left behind you.) You have a real capacity for deciding that such-and-such a thing (or so-and-so a person) will be the be all and end all of everything and be with you for ever. But you’d rather try and fail, and swing from one extreme to the other, than settle for the little that you see others content with. Conclusion: It’s very interesting doing your reading, as you do present something of a conundrum, which won’t surprise you. You are certainly bright, but unusually open to life’s possibilities – something not normally found among achieving people. I’d say you’d do well to be less self-absorbed, as it tends to distance you a little, and to relinquish some of the control you exercise when you present that stylized version of yourself to others. You could let people in a little more, but I am aware that there is a darkness you feel you should hide (much of this is in the personal/relationship/sexual area, and is related to a neediness which you don’t like). You really have an appealing personality – genuinely. Many thanks for doing this, and for offering something far more substantial than most. Vin Courtesy of Derren Brown, via: http://micro.lonegunman.co.uk/post/363542737/derren-browns-forer-experiment-text
I mentioned that I was watching this Monday and last night. Interesting stuff. Fancy the 600 quid a night suite?
