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Post 05 Oct 2016, 4:47 am

My sister just left for the UK with her fiance. Any of you from the UK have any tourist-related advice, or things to see/avoid that I can tell her when she calls?
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Post 05 Oct 2016, 2:09 pm

Edinburgh is far and away the best city in the UK. I'd definitely recommend going there if she gets the chance, although it's going to get colder and colder up there from now on. York is awesome too. Both are really old cities with loads of the whole "this building is older than my country" stuff that Americans always love, but they also have a really cool vibe to them and great nightlife. If she's looking for more countryside sort of stuff then Cornwall and Pembrokeshire are both great, and obviously the Scottish Highlands are amazing. How long is she here for ?
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Post 06 Oct 2016, 1:18 am

A week or so, maybe more (I don't remember). I think they're doing a while in London, then a few days with a "racing friend" (she met him through a F1 racing forum online and they got to talking) in....shit I forget where. So she can't go to Scotland or York I don't think. Mostly they're in London. I'll try to find out where Richard (this friend of hers) and his family lives but I can't remember off the top of my head. They're taking the train to his place.

Sorry I should've been more specific, I meant mostly London area stuff.
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Post 08 Oct 2016, 3:57 pm

F1 stuff near Silverstone by any chance?
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Post 12 Oct 2016, 12:04 pm

I can't give any advise but it reminds me of what I like to do (when I have the time) when in new places.
First I do all the "touristy" stuff. If in London I would see Buckingham Palace, changing of the guard, Tower of London, Big Ben, Picadilly Circus, Tower Bridge, Maybe ride the Eye, etc (and boy does London have a LOT). I like to at least SEE places I may have seen on TV/Movies l(ike Wimbledon for an od example) that are not exactly tourist places but something I can say I have seen in person. But when time permits, I like to wander off and see the "real" London (insert city name here?). Maybe ask locals for a nice place to eat, local shops, etc. Sadly, I seldom have time for that sort of thing and end up doing tourist crap only.
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Post 12 Oct 2016, 12:29 pm

I'm the complete opposite. I can't be doing with the touristy stuff at all. I like to get out into the 'real' place as soon as I can. Or more accurately, I like to just drift around with no particular plan and see where I end up. Sometimes that will take me to the tourist sites, but more often it won't. I just drove the entire length of India, had an absolute blast along the way and I don't think we visited a single tourist attraction the whole time. It was awesome. By contrast, I know from previous experience of India that when you do go to the main tourist sites it's non-stop hassle all day and you wind up feeling a little disappointed that it never lived up to expectations.
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Post 14 Oct 2016, 10:43 am

I tend to agree with this but only so far. The tourist destinations are there because they are generally worth seeing. I can't imagine going to London and not seeing Big Ben or Westminster Abby or what have you. If I went to India I would want to see the Taj Mahal, I would want to be part of that festival where you get covered in paint, etc.

Though I fully agree many times these are a big hassle and sometimes very disappointing. What I like to do in fact is sometimes just SEE the damned place, I don't care about being part of some tour group or waiting in some line. (The first time I went to New York I was happy to see the Statue of Liberty out in the river far from me, I saw it, I was happy and to this day I have still never gone to it nor do I really care)

I think Sass and i would travel just fine together!
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Post 14 Oct 2016, 11:47 am

If I went to India I would want to see the Taj Mahal, I would want to be part of that festival where you get covered in paint, etc.


Well if you want to take part in the Holi festival (the thing with the paint) it happens once a year some time in March, so you'll have to time your trip pretty well. Religious festivals happen year round in India though. One of my more memorable experiences from the first trip I made there was pitching up in some random village in the middle of nowhere one evening where they were holding some kind of mini festival. There was only about 30 people there but we just dived right in and got involved and then later got chatting in broken English to the locals. It was great. Way better than going to the big festivals where you're surrounded by pushy people trying to sell you things. As for the Taj Mahal, I've been to India twice and this year drove the whole length from the Himalayan foothills to the Kerela coast in a rickshaw and I've still never been within a thousand miles of the place. It'snot that it doesn't interest me per se, just that I don't see the need to get stuck into the hell of full-on tourism when there's so much crazy shit to experience in the rest of India. Your anecdotes are never going to be about the buildings you looked at, they're always about the people you met. The people you meet at places like the Taj are India at its worst.