Routes through Europe/Trip Ideas

[Hondaracer]

we're stayin at the top of old town in prague by where the river bends, seems to be a good location choice and apparently close to local popular beer gardens?

[CivicBlues]

That's pretty much where we stayed the last time we visited. Right across the river is Letna Park, where there is a beer garden on a hill with an awesome view of the city. You will have to hoof it up first though or take a taxi. Worth it though.

[Hondaracer]

Any recommendations on areas to stay in in Berlin and Amsterdam?

[CivicBlues]

Definitely in former East Berlin if you wanna be where the action is

The first time I visited I stayed at the Circus Hostel near Rosenthaler Platz. Most recently with the Mrs. we stayed at the Arcotel John F near Museum Island. Would recommend both for entirely different reasons

Both are in the Mitte area. Other "hipster" areas would be Kreuzberg or Prenzlauer Berg

It's been ages since I stayed in Amsterdam but it was a hostel. Kind of a dump from what I remember though so can't recommend it.

[Hondaracer]

Fuck Amsterdam is expense af.. shitty Airbnb’s are like 200+

We ended up with a decent hotel by the Heineken brewery for about 230 a night but Jesus, figured we were gonna get a deal on a decent place there but it’s by far the most expensive destination we’re going accommodation wise.

In relation we are staying at a very cool hotel right near museum island in Berlin for only $120 a night! Ffs..

[Hondaracer]

So our trip turned out amazing, final itinerary was Budapest - Vienna - Bratislava - Prague - Berlin Amsterdam

All cities neither of us had been to before. Budapest was the hands down winner, a beautiful buzzing city that doesnt feel touristy. We hugely enjoyed our stay there. #2 was Amsterdam, after a couple days there loved it.

We did basically all the typical tour stuff in every city plus a lot more from watching youtube videos of travel bloggers, rick steves, etc. so if anyone has any questions i could probably lend a hand

i'll write out more on each place if people are interested once the post is made

in 3 weeks we walked 280kms. Typically we dont like to use public transit if we dont have to but in Berlin and Budapest we did a bit. Berlin was the only place we did a "Big Bus tour" as it was helpful in getting to the areas we wanted to be in.

[Hondaracer]

Vienna was pretty boring for us as i'm pretty museumed/churched out, for probably the rest of my life.. however it had some high points

the Klimts at the belvedere gardens and the other museum i forget the name of were absolutely amazing

we saw a mozart/bach show at the Kalsalon which was pretty good but kinda seemingly geared towards tour groups etc. As luck would have it there was a massive food and drink festival in the park on the second to last day so we spent most of the mid morining into the afternoon drinking wine from every booth and eating all the delicious food lol.. that one may have been a little early night day drunk























Bratislava:



the ugly "ooohh efff ohhh"

[twitchyzero]

dafuq 280km on foot?! i probably do less than that on trekking trips

[6793026]

Hondaracer: you gotta tell us more. Funny thing is that without knowing what cities are which, all those pics seems like it came from all the same place. (just shows youhow much I know hahaha)

[CivicBlues]

280km in 21 days is 13km/day. A fair bit of walking but not impossible. My Fitbit routinely hits 15,000-20,000 steps per day when on I'm vacation. According to google that's 10-16km. But then I suppose that varies depending on your gait, height & walking speed. How did you track your distance btw?

Nice pics too...I felt the same way about Vienna, too "frou frou" for me. Liked Berlin and Prague the best. Did you check out an opera in Budapest? I swear it's probably the cheapest place in the world to do so. I saw Don Giovanni at the State Opera House for the equivalent of CAD$2 back in 2010.

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by CivicBlues

280km in 21 days is 13km/day. A fair bit of walking but not impossible. My Fitbit routinely hits 15,000-20,000 steps per day when on I'm vacation. According to google that's 10-16km. But then I suppose that varies depending on your gait, height & walking speed. How did you track your distance btw?

Nice pics too...I felt the same way about Vienna, too "frou frou" for me. Liked Berlin and Prague the best. Did you check out an opera in Budapest? I swear it's probably the cheapest place in the world to do so. I saw Don Giovanni at the State Opera House for the equivalent of CAD$2 back in 2010.

We didn't see an opera unfortunately as by the time we came across the opera house and the schedule we had just missed a performance

Onto Prague then, we liked prague a lot but most places we visited, and inevitably, we had to walk around or through the main square where the astronimical clock is located, on weekends this area is almost soul suckingly busy but other than that it's easy enough to find quiet streets and good restaurants, we stayed at the top of the old town near a bridge that runs north-south, The prague castle is probably a 45 minute walk from here which was fine, we took an uber to streets up behind the castle the second time we went up and walked back down and it was only like 9 euros

It only rained once on the whole trip and it was the second morning we went to the castle, but it let up and was fine.

The fresh Pilsner Urquel i had at "Lokal" a kind of traditional beer house with prague food that has 2 locations was insane, definately one of the tastiest beers ive ever had. We had orignally considered going to Pils (sp) where they brew it, but our airbnb host who was very well informed said it could be ok but he had never known anyone to go.













The Mucha museum is really cool, I love art nouveau and they have a great display, ended up buying a beautiful print we are going to have framed



view from the observation tower looking back at Prague Castle



prague cone or "trtlenek" sounds like Turtle neck lol



Where we stayed we were literally like 15 steps out our door and there is one of the 2 Michelin starred restaurants in prague right there. "Field" is kind of a farm to table fresh food type resty with a focus on wine pairings, We had a 5 course lunch menu with 4 wine pairings for about $125 each with tip, was a fantastic meal

[Hondaracer]

Berlin was really cool, there seems like there is more construction there than here, literally every block is under construction I think i heard somone like Rick steves etc say its hard to keep an up to date guide book there because things are changing so frequently.

This was the only place we did a hop on hop off tour, as the one we went with, Yellow Bus tours, had 2 seperate large loops, one hits the main sites like Reichstag, museum island, etc. the second loop is mostly residential and ends near the east side gallery which is a cool spot.

Berlin is BIG obviously, but it's manageable and Tiergarten is a cool park to just relax and have a picnic or somthing, feels like youre actually out of the city





Checkpoint charlie was an even bigger joke than i expected it to be, gotta go there i guess and it's very close to the Topography of Terror so you might as well, but The black guy on the bike pulled up blasting like regae and rap and was handing out beers to people as the "soldiers" were dancing around and grinding on peeps for pics? lol













We were lucky to catch the Berlin Philharmonik performance as tickets were still available i purchased prior to going when almost every other show was sold out. The building for the philharmonik is purpose built and as such has amazing acoustics.

I've seen tonnes of plays, VSO shows, etc. and i've gotta say, this was probably one of, if not the best musical performance i've ever seen ,it was -insane!-



We were going to use Car2Go and rent a car for a few hours and drive to Sacsenhausen concentration camp but the app wasnt working for me so we took an uber to an outer train station and took the S1 all the way to the town where it's located. In hindsight you can take this train straight from Posterdamplatz takes about 50 minutes. Then it's a 20 minute walk to the camp.

I consider myself a fairly big war buff especially WW2 but it was definately a trip going here. This camp is relatively unknown but was one of the first of its kind and one Himmler had designed to be a model for others (Turned out the triangle design sucks for expansion so it wasnt widely adopted)

This camp was mainly for political prisoners and direct threats to the regime as well as Jews and other minorities, i think they said it was about 50,000ppl murdered here. The HQ controlling all concentration camps was also located here.

This is a plaque in the town on the way to the camp, it seems to be outlining the "death march" prisoners were forced to walk while the allies were approaching in order to clear the camp.



Soviet monument honoring the liberation of the camp, a bit of controversy as the orange stars used on the monument were only worn by political prisoners and POW's not jews, minorities, etc.















"Work sets you free"

[Hondaracer]

btw, all pictures were taken with an Iphone 7+ i brought a little point and shoot with me but never used it. And i'm done lugging a DSLR around on a trip like this. I'm super happy with the pictures for the most part and it makes it so much easier.

Last but not least Amsterdam, I didnt know what to expect with amsterdam and it takes a couple days to feel it out, but it's super cool, we loved it. Of all the places we went i think we could probably live in Amsterdam the easiest.

Just an overall cool vibe and pace, it's touristy but kinda not, The food in Amsterdam is probably the most diverse of any of our locations. Honestly the food suck in Europe for the most part coming from somewhere like Vancouver. There's just no diversity, especially in the central/eastern parts. Here in Vancouver i could walk out my door and go to 10-15 completely different types of food and all of them good, quality, restaurants. In Europe even though it can be good quality, i find i never get that feeling of eating super fresh food as i do here. Also Salads and greens are always a bit tricky and hard to come by lol.

Amsterdam as a whole from the exterior may have a perception of like a dirty, dingy, city cause of it's liberal views on things and the RLD etc. but it's very clean and cool for how busy it is.

The weed scene is honestly a joke there and it's more like a novelty for tourists than anything. The major "cafes" you see in the touristy areas are gross and are filled with British Brochacos etc. I found a little boutique one on the outside of the old town and even it was super meh, compared to Vancouver it felt a few steps down.

The Red light district was actually pretty cool, we went around 1130 on saturday night after the champions league final and it was PACKED it was crazy like Granville at it's busiest night but trapped on one side with the canal lol. Chicks in the windows were hit and miss and the "blue lights" in the windows signified Tranny's, the one tranny had the biggest tits i would see there lol

















But yea turned out amazing, if anyone has any questions etc feel free to message me, i also have the custom google maps ive highlighted a bunch of different things and places i can share if you use the app

[CivicBlues]

I've been to Amsterdam twice now but never hit up the Heineken brewery, is it worth it?

[Zedbra]

Those pics are great - you can leave the DSLR at home. Sounds like an amazing trip and you certianly did check out the culture of the countries, which is the best part about traveling.

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by CivicBlues

I've been to Amsterdam twice now but never hit up the Heineken brewery, is it worth it?

I would do it again if I was with people who had not been, and If there was no lineup.

The whole thing is pretty cheesey but you can get through it quickly if you wanted to. There’s a bunch of different features and interactive things between bits of history and education but you just walk through at whatever pace you decide. They give you two free beers at the end but you drink 2 more throughout the tour and it feels like you could basically get as many as u wanted in the tasting room lol.

I feel like where we stayed is also potentially the best location. We stayed south of the main core like 5 minutes walk directly south from the Van Gogh museum. It’s approx 45 minute walk to the heart of the RLD and maybe 50 to central station. If I didn’t stay in this area I think I would look at east of the RLD

[TOS'd]

Free tiny Heineken branded beer glass too if you take your admission receipt to the gift store in the city. At least back in 2015.

[twitchyzero]

Originally Posted by CivicBlues

280km in 21 days is 13km/day. A fair bit of walking but not impossible. My Fitbit routinely hits 15,000-20,000 steps per day when on I'm vacation. According to google that's 10-16km. But then I suppose that varies depending on your gait, height & walking speed. How did you track your distance btw?

I only hit those numbers when I stretch the day...say 6am to midnight
and certainly not sustained for 3 weeks

and OP I know what you mean when you get fatigued by seeing/doing the same things on a single trip...museums after museums, canyon after canyons, schnitzel after schnitzel etc. but that's what they're known for and if you're the average person you won't be returning shortly again

if it helps you can appreciate it by comparing the local stuff here and see how much it pales to what you saw/ate with real history/significance...suddenly that bowl of pho here tastes half as good for 8x the price

[CivicBlues]

Dude you need to walk more! I get like 7000 steps just going into the office 8-6 and walking around during lunch.

[6793026]

^ fuck i work from home and see clients once few times a week and i only crack 4000 steps a day.