I spent a lot of time in Prague in the early 90's, a friend moved there (he is or is not CIA), and the Czech airline always gave me free tix, wonderful place.
The beer, the microskirts, the nightlife. It was amazing when I first went there, no chains, no McDonalds, no Hard Rock. The signs at stores were stark and grim, "Restaurant", "Shoe Store", etc. Not eating beef or pork was very hard, because that was the only thing anyone had. I had to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant run by the Vietnamese embassy. It was passable.
Once the chains came, I was in Prague once and there were 2 American girls behind me, they said "do you think he speaks English?" (I dressed to look as local as possible), One came up to me and asked if I could tell her where the Hard Rock Cafe was. I threw together a few words in Czech, and some nearly authentic Eastern European gibberish and gave her a very long, unintelligible response. She said thanks, and they started to walk away, I then said, in perfect English "Don't go there, its full of dumb tourists, go find a real Czech pub!" Oh, the shocked look on their faces...LOL
I have the same story. A Hard Rock opened on 57th in Manhattan. All the tourists flooded the place. It was sickening to see the herds of idiots stand in line to graze there.
Only Hard Rock I ever went into was in Reykjavik, before it became a tourist destination. It was pretty desperate because Iceland only had two good rock bands/stars (Bjork and The Sugar Cubes which Bjork was a member).
Istanbul is a very interesting city to visit, but don’t stay in a touristy area.
Paris never gets old.
I'd never been there, but I was skeptical and not crazy about vacationing in Manhattan. But Mrs. Cougar talked me into it last summer.
I've walked Paris streets for hours and hours. I always find something charming - a little park or square, unexpected fountains and nice little bistros.
It's one of my favorite cities in the world. We took some friends there last time we went and they were very deliberative about what they wanted to do and wanted to plan everything out. I told them, "It's Paris, you can't **** it up. Just walk out of our airbnb and pick a direction."
We lived vicariously through
Quebec City
None. I've been everywhere man, I've been everywhere (translation: many national parks are where I intend to go).
Pompei.
My son loved Prague, said he could spend days just on the Charles Bridge. Said the city had been untouched by the war and that counted for a lot.
Yah, from what I've seen it's beautiful country! I will google that phrase! Thanks
Toronto has the culture of NYC or Chicago but much cleaner, welcoming and more polite. Lately it can be very expensive.
Yeah, versus Warsaw, which was not all that pretty...
I would love to go to Bhutan, mostly for the incredibly wild flight in and out of there. Its a very high elevation airport at Paro, and its limited to the size of aircraft, pilots flying into there have to be certified to do it.
