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Are the people who take food abroad the same ones that loudly proclaim that "We've been to XXXXXXX" but never set foot outside the UK populated hotel grounds?
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 21 Jun 15 at 22:24
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What an inordinately silly thread.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sun 21 Jun 15 at 22:29
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I can assure you that some do not set foot outside their hotel.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 21 Jun 15 at 22:34
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>>I can assure you that some do not set foot outside their hotel.
So what?
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"some do not set foot outside their hotel"
They don't even sit by the pool?
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>> "some do not set foot outside their hotel"
>>
>> They don't even sit by the pool?
probably on a witness protection program.
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>> What an inordinately silly thread.
>>
"How do you sleep?" will take some beating!"
:-)
Last edited by: John Boy on Mon 22 Jun 15 at 09:45
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We could do:
"What do you eat in bed on holiday"
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>> "What do you eat in bed on holiday"
I'd better go tweak the swear filter before BBD replies.
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Some people just want a weeks relaxation in the sun by the pool and why not?
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It takes all sorts but I would be bored rigid within a few hours. I like to explore new places, one reason we rarely return to a holiday destination. Our policy is been there, done that, move on.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 21 Jun 15 at 22:40
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Is that because the only view you had for months on end was fish swimming by your office windows??
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(My mate has a boat mooring at the Gareloch - was away for the weekend and when he came back towards his mooring the police came alongside and asked him to stop for a while - then the sub appeared!!)
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>> Our
>> policy is been there, done that, move on.
Only got one kid then ON?
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>> Only got one kid then ON?
>>
Zero, your better half must be pretty fed up in bed, if you only know one way to do it....
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I know a family that tend to visit the same, all inclusive, Mediterranean hotel every year. they even boast about knowing the staff by their christian names.
They've tried a couple of different destinations. At one resort on a trip to the beach, complained they had to pay for their ice-creams. They subsequently stayed in the hotel for the rest of the fortnight.
At another they treated themselves to a night out, as they'd seen a McDonalds on the way to the hotel. Booked a taxi as they didn't want to get lost - you could see it from where they were staying!
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>> I know a family that tend to visit the same, all inclusive, Mediterranean hotel every
>> year. they even boast about knowing the staff by their christian names.
I'm sure we all know people similar. Some people enjoy that feeling of familiarity when they go on holiday. They know what they enjoy and stick to that.
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OK I have my flak jacket and crash hat on.
Later in the year we are returning to a small luxurious desert island in the Maldives. I will try not to get bored reading a book under a palm tree, getting my back sunsinged while snorkeling, all you need are shirt and shorts, sandals optional. It must be good, we rarely return, the only other place I can think of returning to is Zell am See, when we skied. :-)
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 22 Jun 15 at 08:19
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Goodness me ON, I'd have kept that one very quiet, even with flak jacket etc!! :-)
From that other thread - "So all you are doing is buying sunshine, what a waste of a visit to another country. You could get the breakfast in Morrison's if you can do without the sunshine and flight."
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Someone has to keep the forum alive and give you lot someone to whinge at. :-)
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 22 Jun 15 at 09:36
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>> Someone has to keep the forum alive and give you lot someone to whinge at.
>> :-)
>>
OYE! That is MY job :-)
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Zell am See.
I was through there last week on the motorbike on the way up to the Grossglockner.
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>> Zell am See.
>>
>> I was through there last week on the motorbike on the way up to the
>> Grossglockner.
>>
I have walked across the lake, when it is frozen the council mark a path, ( the summer ferry route ), with Christmas trees in holes bored in the ice and put wooden benches along the path. Zell / Kaprun is the only place we have skied more than once.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 22 Jun 15 at 15:21
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>Later in the year we are returning to a small luxurious desert island in the Maldives.
We've been to the same atoll in Maldives about 6 times in the last ten years. We've tried others but haven't found anywhere else that has the same ease of access to the reef combined with the choice and quality of food available so we've given up trying.
If you just need to recharge the batteries why risk disappointment by experimenting.
Same reason we've been to same hotel in Cuba every Nov/Dec for the last ten years.
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>> >> I know a family that tend to visit the same, all inclusive, Mediterranean hotel
>> every
>> >> year. they even boast about knowing the staff by their christian names.
That sort of hotel and the resorts largely comprised of such establishments are well known/easily recognised. Plenty of them on Majorca with German and Dutch speaking zones too.
Keeps those who only want that sort of trip out of the hair of the rest of us.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Mon 22 Jun 15 at 08:44
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Booked a taxi as they didn't want to get lost - you could see it from where they were staying!
Must be related to the Northern Irish staff I was visiting. They couldn't tell me the way to the hotel despite it being pretty conspicuous and the perhaps the most major one in Belfast. Found a map on the premises, memorised my route and off I went. About 3/4 mile from memory although a taxi would have to go further, one way streets and all.
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>> Must be related to the Northern Irish staff I was visiting.
Or the staff member at New Lanark Youth Hostel who couldn't tell us where the war memorial was. We quickly discovered you could see it from the front door.
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Langawi Island now has numerous hotels but is designed along the lines of an American "resort hotel" , ie. one which reckons to provide all the facilities that a family could need on site. This seems ideal if all you want is to chill out and not tangle with the astonishing language, gastronomy, religious diversity and sheer cultural vortex of Malaysia, all to hand in nearby Penang.
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My missus and I went through a phase of going to the same Spanish resort, it was great as it was an all inclusive package so we could eat and drink in the hotel and then walk a very short distance to the beach each day. The hotel had some foreign food but we always chose the English options. It saves having to struggle through a menu all in foreign languages and then ending up with something you don't like. These days we prefer to holiday in the UK, I can't be bothered with travelling and particularly airports anymore. As long as I can have some real ale and a good smoke then I'm happy.
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>> It saves having to struggle through a menu all in foreign languages and then ending up
>> with something you don't like.
Working out a foreign menu, with phrase book and dictionary if necessary, is part of the fun of being away. Quite a few places in France where the English translation is wrong (and sometimes hilarious too).
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Years ago my missus went on one of those coach tours to Switzerland, I didn't go because I hate coaches so she went with one of her friends. Anyway she said it was great because the coach driver was such a nice bloke, he knew all the places where one could stop and get English food. Anyway on one stop, I think it might have been in France, she ordered steak tartare, thinking she was ordering a piece of steak with some sort of tartare sauce. According to her friend she almost feinted when she saw what was brought to her. A disgusting plate of raw mince even with a raw egg on the top. Her friend spoke pigeon French and asked the waitress girl to take it back to the kitchen and ask the chef to cook it. There followed some sort of argument but my missus ended up with fish and chips.
My missus has never forgotten that episode. Who in their right mind thought of eating raw mince? Was there a power cut one day and a chef though "ah, this is a good idea" ???
Since then my missus has distinct suspicion of foreign food.
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Actually it's very tasty. No different from eating rare steak which is basically raw in the middle. You eat oysters raw don't you. They're still alive.
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Don't think so, somehow, CGN, do you?
Who in their right mind thought of eating raw mince?
It's not mince, and that's crucial. It's prepared with a knife, not a mincer, and cut from a single piece of muscle. There's no hygiene problem because no part of it has been exposed to the animal's gut and the bacteria that contains. But then if you're a 'make sure it's well done' customer, we're wasting our words on this too.
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"Don't think so, somehow, CGN, do you?"
Well if not the oysters some sashimi surely?
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Definitely must be properly cooked.
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Good Lord no. Only fish fingers in our house.
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>> Since then my missus has distinct suspicion of foreign food.
Methinks the frosty one with the carotine nose is having a jolly good wind up here.
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Rolling eyes doesn't seem adequate, MS. I suppose Ukip has to get its votes from somewhere.
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What is the purpose of a holiday if not to spend 2 weeks doing something one enjoys.
Surely not to spend 2 weeks doing something someone else approves of?
I rarely go abroad on holiday, from wherever I am; 3 times that I can think of, and those were for the children.
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>> I rarely go abroad on holiday, from wherever I am;
.!
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 22 Jun 15 at 11:21
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>> What is the purpose of a holiday if not to spend 2 weeks doing something one enjoys
After all the tribulations that I've had over the last few years, I think I deserve a break on my terms. Holidays as a single parent with young children are always exhilarating, interesting and varied but never relaxing; having to be mum and dad never leaves me with any time for R&R. Now my daughter's at the age where she just wants to laze around, ignore the culture and do nothing all the time, we're heading somewhere all-inclusive in a few weeks where we can both do exactly that. And ****** to what anyone else thinks.
Last edited by: Dave_C220CDI on Mon 22 Jun 15 at 12:28
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>> And ****** to what anyone else thinks.
>>
Always the best policy.
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Some people are scared to mix with the locals horses for courses I suppose.They feel safe in the Hotel.
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On one of our trips we probably didn't stray more than 200 metres from the hotel. Just enough to get to the beach. I'm not interested in Spain as a destination, it just happens to have a nicer climate. If we can get English food and beer then we're well happy.
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>> scared to mix with the locals horses for courses I suppose.They feel safe in the Hotel.
I'd entrust myself to the locals almost every time Dutchman. Some of the posh hotels I've stayed in were little better than brothels and nests of bandits. No kidding. The locals are more likely to see you as a rather strange sort of human being than a walking wallet and chequebook.
Don't ask about the Lagos Meridien. Please don't ask. If you do I'll only lie, blush and look evasive.
Locals are cool though. They expect you to buy them a drink since you have more bread than they do (apart from the gangsters) but they don't have ambitions to steal your wad.
I still remember with great affection a lady in Ghana who thought I looked a bit peaky and kept feeding me ox-liver in a maternal way. 'Livah' she called it as she heaped more onto my plate with a kind smile.
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>> 'Livah' she called it as she heaped more onto my plate with a kind smile.
The lady was a seller of street food with a big vat of boiled rice.
People worry about hygiene in these places. But the only time I ever got the squits from food in Africa was in a friend's house in Lagos. When the friend saw the plate of rice and beans I was eating he snatched it away saying: 'You can't eat this!' and swiped the boy who had bought it in the street for me across the head.
The boy just tittered, and I got the gallopers.
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>> Don't ask about the Lagos Meridien. Please don't ask. If you do I'll only lie, blush and look evasive.
>>
What a tease you can be, AC!
What happened at the Meridien then?
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>> What happened at the Meridien then?
Nothing. Honestly, er...
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The concept of a 'holiday' is almost alien to me. This is because through great good fortune I have always treated life as a sort of holiday, although in truth I've done my share of starving, worrying, sleeping on floors and working in hard-graft prole jobs (and executive ones too). But all those things were the adventure part of the lifelong holiday. I've never felt I was staring into the abyss or really felt there was no safety net.
No one should be envious though. I despise myself a bit for failing to realise proper potential. Always been dead idle and self-indulgent.
As for mixing happily with the locals anywhere in the world, I've been doing it most of my life. How boring it must be to be starchy and reserved.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Mon 22 Jun 15 at 17:53
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True Armel I don't know what it means being reserved.Keeping to yourself is all well and good but how to you take other cultures in?
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>>Some of the posh hotels I've stayed in were little better than brothels...
According to William Faulkner, the best accommodation for writers: the mornings are quiet, there is a party every evening and you are always on good terms with the police. Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez followed this advice most of his life (maybe the relaxation helped them both win the Nobel Prize for Literature).
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>> According to William Faulkner, the best accommodation for writers: the mornings are quiet, there is a party every evening and you are always on good terms with the police. Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez followed this advice most of his life (maybe the relaxation helped them both win the Nobel Prize for Literature).
Those were proper brothels, not posh hotels with a string of dodgy camels knocking on your door. There's a real difference believe me.
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I know a couple who go to Mull every year for two weeks. Have done for 25 years. They enjoy it immensely, which is the main thing. They think I'm crackers going abroad to the USA, their reasoning being that if you travel abroad the native tongue should not be English!
I must admit, I sometimes have communication problems with the locals in the USA, just as I would have in Mull s'pose.
Last edited by: legacylad on Mon 22 Jun 15 at 20:40
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I also have another acquaintance who loves the outdoor life...backpacking that sort of thing. He spends many holidays in the Scottish Highlands, the Alps, Corsica etc. yet he resolutely refuses to go to the USA because of their politics. I know he would be blown away by the wilderness areas, long distance trails, National Parks etc. lying in his tent at night listening to Coyotes.
Nowt so queer as folk
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Tell him to go to Canada then. Plenty of wilderness, mountains lakes bears and coyotes and I would imagine that the political regime that is much more acceptable to him
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You have more chance of hearing crystal clear English in Mull and the other western isles than in many mainland cities.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 22 Jun 15 at 20:51
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That's interesting to know ON. I had thought, wrongly, that there would be a strong dialect. It is many years since I last went to Skye, thirty probably, and I cannot remember.
Don't plan on returning anytime soon either. It's the chance of rainy days. One after the other. Although that may be another totally wrong misconception I have, although when I have backpacked coast to coast, starting at Lochailort, Spean Bridge, Knoydart or Glenelg, it always seemed to rain far more in the west coast than the east.
Stunningly beautiful scenery though, when it's not raining. And as for those wind farms....
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>>Those were proper brothels, not posh hotels with a string of dodgy camels knocking on your door. There's a real difference believe me.
Did you established this via investigative journalism?
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>> >>Those were proper brothels, not posh hotels with a string of dodgy camels knocking on
>> your door. There's a real difference believe me.
>>
>> Did you established this via investigative journalism?
>>
Probing, rather than investigative, probably :-)
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>> Those were proper brothels,
Actually the nearest thing to a proper brothel I've ever visited was in the Gate back in the day. Purely social visits you understand of course. I can hardly believe it all now. Wouldn't have missed it for the world.
Everything changes constantly, nothing's ever quite the same as anything else, knowImean?
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 23 Jun 15 at 19:36
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I once had a run ashore in Tangier when it was a free port ;-)
Never saw the donkey show, though.
Last edited by: Roger. on Tue 23 Jun 15 at 20:43
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>> How boring it must be to be starchy and reserved.
Not if it's all you know ...;-)
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>>The hotel had some foreign food<<
No, the hotel had normal food, with English options for the foreigners.
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Surely a holiday should be what anyone booking it wants it to be... and as we are all different, we'll all likely to make different choices?
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Absolutely. If you spend your life constantly on the go sitting by the pool, beer in hand, will seem a very desirable way to spend a week.
If your life is a bit tedious you might like a bit of excitement for a week or two.
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>> Absolutely. If you spend your life constantly on the go sitting by the pool, beer
>> in hand, will seem a very desirable way to spend a week.
Precisely. The only thing I would also need is a good smoke with my beer, a drink's too wet without one.
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>> Precisely. The only thing I would also need is a good smoke with my beer,
Warm beer of course.
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Let's just call him Nigel, shall we?
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I don't think the real Nigel is on a wind up.
Ever wondered about the incessant mentioning of smoking?
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 24 Jun 15 at 12:32
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I'm a Brit, I go abroad, what do I do,
Well I do beach, I do sea and I do swim. I do local food, I do cheap drinks (sometimes to excess) and I like to sight see......
I also like to, rather self indulgently, photograph it, fiddle with it, and put it on youtube.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzpR9ocBL50
Music is Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra), a classical guitar piece composed in 1896 in Granada by Spanish composer and guitarist Francisco Tárrega
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>> www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzpR9ocBL50
Meant to add, all entirely shot with the wifes old pocket nikon coolpix s3100
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Did Granada a few years ago.
Staying at Nerja, hired a Seicento and found a wonderful road coming back. A local was delighted and called it 'valley of tears' or something romantic. Claimed it was the route the Moors took when they got chucked out of Granada.
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A local
>> was delighted and called it 'valley of tears' or something romantic. Claimed it was the
>> route the Moors took when they got chucked out of Granada.
I think that it's "the Moor's Tears", or something like that, and it's where the last moorish ruler turned for his last view of Granada, before he was expelled from Spain.
There's more, but I'll have to research it a bit more.
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"Sospiro del Moro"
(The moor's sigh)
There's a roadside restaurant there which was very good (twenty Years ago1)
It was king Boabdil.
Last edited by: neiltoo on Thu 25 Jun 15 at 14:25
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>> www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzpR9ocBL50
>>
>> Music is Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra), a classical guitar piece composed
>> in 1896 in Granada by Spanish composer and guitarist Francisco Tárrega
Almost exactly 30yrs since we were last there and not much changed - Swifts everywhere until nightfall when in minutes they surrender to the bats.
The campsite Mr B and I stayed on at La Zubia seems to be still going:
campingreinaisabel.com/
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Well done guv, nice piece of music too, one of my faves.
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In our first years in Andalusia we did lots of touristy things!
We had the advantage of my daughter's, then, Spanish fiancé to guide us and advise us.
We also had the benefit of our daughter's idiomatic and Andalus accented Spanish when she could accompany us, work permitting.
Spain is a beautiful country, which I do still miss from time to time. (Love Europe - hate the E.U.!)
We "did" the Alhambra twice, Sevilla, the Mezquita in Cordova, (my personal favourite) The Palacio Real in Madrid, El Valle de los Caidos, El Escorial (burial place of Spanish royalty - impressive, the caves at Nerja (twice) , Jerez de la Frontera, (Sandeman's Bodega - YUM!) and numerous trips to the inner campo and real country ventas.
Last edited by: Roger. on Thu 25 Jun 15 at 10:42
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Manitas de Plata - now there was a gitano guitarist!
Last edited by: Roger. on Thu 25 Jun 15 at 10:45
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Venta el Tunel - try it if you are in or around Malaga!
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>>Love Europe - hate the E.U.!<<
+1
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>> Manitas de Plata - now there was a gitano guitarist!
French as it happens, His offspring went on to form half the gypsy kings. his uncles offspring formed the other half.
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I sent your video of Alhambra to my gf who lives in Malaga, and she said:
"I loved the video of Alhambra. What an artist! Thank you!"
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Great video and music. Thanks.
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Brits abroad. - No FM2R
