Skondo wrote:

Truncated break in London this weekend. Originally supposed to be three nights, but changed to one night at the last minute. Masters tennis and dinner at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday, then British Museum and afternoon tea at the Ritz on Saturday. Mrs Skondo has wanted to do the latter for a while now and I have to say it was excellent.

All men are cunts though. The only people on the tube who gave up their seats to my heavily pregnant wife were women.

Why the fuck should I give up my seat cos your wife got pregnant. The world is overpopulated as it is. Those men are heroes.

London cunts. I fucking hate the place but love it at the same time. I think I'd like it more if I didn't have to go there all the fucking time.

I'm in Lanzarote at the moment. It's nice.

Me and missus thinking of going to Maldives for 5-7 nights with a possible 1-2 stop over in dubai. Anyone been to Maldives? Are there additional island taxes you have to pay above and beyond what you pay if you go with a package holiday I.e. With a tour operator example Travelbag? I know the transfer to the island of choice can be expensive depending on its distance to the mainland.

Nina wrote:

Am in Florence at the moment, B is busy with some work thing for Tommy Hilfiger and I wanted to visit some musea tomorrow when he still might be busy. Turns out most of them are closed on a Monday. Anyone been here before and has any ideas? Best bet seems to be to just wander around and look at the pretty towers from Assassin's Creed.

Climbing the dumino (I think that's the towers name) is cool as the view at the top is amazing. Florence is a very small town. The tuscany countryside is amazing but you need a car or bike to go see it.

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g187895-Activities-Florence_Tuscany.html

Lots on here which are free

Skondo wrote:

....because it's polite. We find it a bit of shock when we go to London as it's populated almost entirely by arseholes.

Don't worry about gonzo, he's only pulling your leg. He's a gent really. First time I met him he gave all the money in his wallet to a poor Romanian gypsy woman.

Yeah think there may be an entrance fee. Can't remember price / available discounts.

Florence is fantastic but Pisa is basically a ghost town, apart from in a direct line from the station to the tower.  Pretty sad.

Fancy a Scandi break at the start of Feb. Trying to decide between Copenhagen and Oslo, as the two cheapest-to-get-to places. Any advice or experience of either appreciated, yo.

Off to Berlin at the start of next month for a few days with the lady, with a quick jaunt to Hamburg for the footy thrown in too. Good eats in both cities please! Cheers if anyone can help.

Can't wait to get back to The Bird in the north part of the city. Best burger I've ever had.

Fuck to all holidays

PURE DELIGHT

Off to New York for five days in a few weeks. Any tips? Places to go? We have the main attractions sorted but open to any suggestions from people who have been before.

Yeah, we got a subway pass, 30$ and unlimited use for 7 days (I think, we were there 5 days and it was still cheap). Got us all the way to Brighton Beach, there's an old funfair and you can get good hotdogs there (that's what I've heard, didn't try them). That's a distance you don't walk. New York was more about just taking it all in than visiting specific places. We did a ride in the watertaxi, but after the sun set, so you get the skyline with all the lights on, found that quite charming myself. Must add that it was 9/11 so the two beams that lit up the sky where the Twin Towers used to be were on, not sure if that's the whole year round. 

And I'm back from Italy. We were both quite happy Saturday morning, as we had hardly had any unforseen costs, which is rare for us. So we went back in Switzerland, not taking the highway but some bigger roads. At least, that's what we thought. Car still had summer tyres on there, so didn't take the first hilly bit after we had coffee. Kept losing grip. Back to the border, go west in Italy and try again in another place. Crossed the border again to Switzerland, roads getting snowier, I don't trust it and check the map, wrong direction, we're just before a pass with a hair pin road that's fairly steep. B wants to return, but at that point it starts snowing. Decided to call breakdown service, they'd send someone. After an hour he shows up with snow chains, only 200 euros. Great. He also advised against going back and continuing, taking two passes before being on the highway again. Never been so scared in my life, at one point it was just hairpins and snow, everywhere you looked was white. We already managed to turn 180 from the road onto a gas station before (managed to avoid everything), so I wasn't feeling very confident we were doing the right thing. A snowy highway,  an expensive burger king meal and a way to expensive hotel room in Germany. That's how Saturday ended. Sunday the roads were cleared and we could luckily continue at a normal pace. When we saw my mom she told us you're not allowed on German highways with summer tyres in winter, so we were lucky no accidents happened, that would have gotten really expensive. 

Anyway, we're home again and have some nice snow chains as a souvenir.

We've all just come back from New York.  We had a great time just wandering about tbh.  I'd really just confirm what g has said above.  Embrace the subway and it's 7 day pass but try and walk a lot too.  Much like London it's great to zip around underground but you miss a lot of things by doing this.

The best touristy thing you can do is head up to the top of the Rockefeller- get the right day and the views and air quality are ace.
Times Square is a shit hole but has the flashy lights.
If you have enough days it's quite nice to get a train from Grand Central (which is also jaw dropping) and head somewhere up-state just to have a gander at smaller town east coast life.
With all city breaks I try not to impose an itinerary on myself and just embrace the flow of wherever it is - I'd recommend this attitude.  You feel more at home and less stressed.
Brooklyn Bridge is brilliant too.
If you're looking to eat somewhere I'd also recommend finding one of the corner shop come buffet bars. It's kinda like eating in a Spar but with absolutely fantastic Buffett food - from traditional American food to awesome Chinese.  It's ace but a bit flight of the conchords.
Dunno if you heard about this called brexit or not it's also no longer cheap.  Once the sales tax is added on and then the tips it's probably at the very best, in line with here.  Last time I went I felt pretty rich this time I was paying £3 quid for a pretzel off a street vendor.
Don't have a pretzel from a street vendor - the salt on there will take a man down inside 20 seconds.

You can see a bit of the way we came down there:


That's where we had to go, somewhere up there between the trees:


The sticks that stick out in a few places mark the road we took:


Guessing how wide the road actually is:


But there was a pretty lake at the end, after this little villages started to appear, gave you the feeling that when something went wrong, there would be a warm place nearby to stay:


In the area of the first two pics (road to the Maloja pass, taken from the south west) were loads of people stopping, putting snow chains on, we had an Audi in front of us that left some nice wavy tracks in the snow, and local busses just went up and down like nothing was really happening. Pretty sure if I ever might end up driving somewhere were there's snow, I'll change tyres before. This isn't the first time, previous time was in the USA and we weren't sure what tyres where on the car, the ranger said we could go up, but once the snow on the road was a couple of inches thick and no one around, we decided to turn.