Best Place You've Ever Traveled?

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My family was in the military so all I did was travel when I was a kid and teenager. I just wanted to live one and be at one place for a couple of years. Now that I have some distance from military life I plan on traveling again.

Best place I have ever been though is Hawaii. Lived there for three years. Got really exposed to a lot of japanese culture over there. Now I want to visit japan because of it.
 


Damn.. if you really are inexperienced in travel... just TRAVEL!

Traveling the world is the greatest thing you can do.

Remember to not act like a prick and try to mingle with the locals and you will be fine almost everywhere.
In the time of the beginning of this Iraq war, my wife and I went to Tunisia.
Arab country, but pretty open to the west.
A few words of french (official language) and deciding to drink a local soda were a good idea.
As for the later - Of course, the US is still a "bad" topic. The people would gladly serve you coca cola, but when I actually DECLINED the offer and ordered some "boga" - the local seven-up variant, we were treated like old friends.

NEVER (ever) go and eat at the tourist promenade.
Take some time, walk around the back streets and find the places the locals eat. Cheaper food at a much better quality.

- I ate great in Tunisia although the place did not really look great. Place was recommended by a local we got to know in a cafe.
- I got food poisoning - at the fucking HOTEL.
- I got really bad, expensive food - at a touristy restaurant because we were too damn tired to look for another place.

Same for Portugal, Italy (Rome), Greece ....

Talk to people
You will meet a lot of interesting people if you are a not too shy. Coming from another country makes you interesting anyway, so take advantage and talk a bit.

::emp::
 
San Fran, probably, I keep going back. (Food's great).

I spent a year in Cairo learning Arabic and living the expat life... which was really effing cool. I highly recommend anyone who is still in college, or just untethered to where they are at, go and study abroad. Do something, but be a foreigner in a foreign land. It will irrevocably change the way you think about immigrants here, and how you act around them.
 
I love NYC, or at least pre-9/11-Bloomberg NYC. Only been twice since late '01 and it seems a little weird there now. Up to then it was probably my favourite place in the world.

I found Thailand and Costa Rica had a lot of offer to unmarried white guys with a little money in their pockets and some stamina. Ah, the past ...

I was in Dubai before it went crazy like it has this decade. A phenomenal place even back then; can't wait to go again.

I love the roads in the US, specifically I10 and I20, two great places to get on your bike and open it up for a few days.

I took an extended tour of Africa in '96 -- flew into Cairo, flew out of Johannesburg -- that offered some of the most astonishing natural beauty I've ever seen.

That's the best the world has shown me in various categories of interest. Not sure I could nail any one place down.


Frank
 
maximus said:
hermosa beach over prague? something seems wrong there.

hermosa is nice but it's not even the best city in it's vicinity.
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yeah man, i suppose you're biased because you live there. but we travelled the states last summer, boston, new york, vegas and hermosa was definitely the best. great weather and decent, chilled nightlife
 
Iceland is amazing in the summer - wouldn't want to be there in the winter however.

Some other favorites are Vancouver, Nice, Rome, Lisbon, Porto, and California Central Coast (the part from San Francisco to Santa Barbara) .
 
harrymouni said:
huntington and hermosa beach, unreal women, class weather and no minorities!

prague then for cheap food and beer and unreal women.
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That's so weird...I just bought a Hermosa Beach and a Huntington Beach T-shirt at Old Navy...hahaha. I definitely prefer Hermosa though. Feels more like home and less like Orange County.
 
Waking up on a bench along the Thames in London… finding ex-pat brick-oven-cooked pizza… and playing the know-it-all american to recently retired Israeli soldiers on the top of a red double-decker. I got smarter with age.

Mountain Village… hokey lil’ hotel in Stanley Idaho with a private keyed hot-tub setup that’s cool if you don’t break an ankle on prairie dog holes getting there…. overlooks the Snake River & phenomenal Sawtooth mountains. The center of my world when I can manage to get there every coupla years or so. Centering is a keyword.

San Blas, Mexico. Coolest ever seashells, large wildcats and parrots screaming in the jungle all night. Dos Equis. Drawing bodies with bellybuttons in the sand. Watching belly buttons disappear in the tide.

Atlanta Botanical Gardens but only if humidity is below 110. Times Square at midnight… ANY midnight. Better before Cuomo. San Diego on Veterans Day immediately following 9/11. Crystal Grove Campground , upstate NY, digging Herkimer Diamonds which is less sexy than Tiffany’s, but equally rewarding if’n’ya know what I mean.

[FONT=&quot]Indoma-D[/FONT]
 
posted by Fuzzo:
Cannot believe none of you have mentioned Africa!
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Um ... five posts up ...

"I took an extended tour of Africa in '96 -- flew into Cairo, flew out of Johannesburg -- that offered some of the most astonishing natural beauty I've ever seen."

Best six weeks of my life.


Frank
 
Rob_TID said:
Damn - never read so many fucking boring travel destaination.

Koh Samui is for pedophiles. Vegas is for white haired grandmas. Australia I will do when I can't move cos of arthritis. Europe is like watching a fish tank while mainlining Valium.

They're "vacation" spots. Great to catch up on some sleep and nail a 20 year old backpacker or two, but when I want to travel, I look a little beyond what I can get at home.
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Excellent alternative suggestions. +5, Insightful


Personally I haven't been to many places but I agree with emp's tips. The fun of travel is mingling with the locals, seeing how life is in different parts of the world. Not so much seeing the westernized tourist locations.

Couple of my recent locations:
Edinburgh - went for my cousins wedding. This city is great... I think it's one of (if not THE) oldest cities that hasn't been destroyed by a huge war yet. Drunken stumbling around the streets at night finding shady bars was great times. Odd observance: 90% of the people we ran into that worked there (bartenders, cashiers, etc) were a) not from there b) couldn't give directions c) most likely Polish.

Michigan - avoid at all costs. NOTHING there. Definitely not worth the drive to whitecastle, according to my bowels afterwards.
 
San Antonio, TX River Walk in February. T-shirt weather, beautiful flowers, water, birds, buildings, the nicest people in Texas. First BDay ever where I didn't have to wear a coat and break a hole in the ice to get water for a whiskey chaser. Not the most exotic but damn good for the US.

Oh and Arches Ntl Park in Utah. Hot, desolate, beautiful.
 
Croatia is also one of my favorites (Istria & Dalmatia are awesome - beautiful scenery, beautiful people, really cheap, great food, etc). I just got back from another Mediterranean trip and really enjoyed Malta (stayed on the smaller island of Gozo).

As far as tourist traps go, it's hard to argue with Egypt. It's exhausting & annoying at times, but still fucking amazing.

My favorite big western European cities are Amsterdam & Rome. Paris sucks ass - everyone there is a fucking bitch. Hardly anyone speaks your language well, because it isn't relevant anymore - get over it.

As for Asia, I've only done China & Japan. Japan is what you'd expect and worth doing at least once - Tokyo is a blast, Osaka is where the cool kids are, and Kyoto & Kobe were really pretty. As for China, maybe the trip was both too long (6 weeks) and too long ago, but I wouldn't go back. A good experience and a major eye-opener, still.

My cousin just moved to Singapore, so I'm thinking of heading there next year, along with Malaysia, Thailand, and maybe Cambodia.
 
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