Edinburgh, Scotland
- A bunch of us got tickets to the Hogmanay street party. We bought flasks from a souvenir shop in order to drink during it. When we got to the party, everyone had giant bottles of booze right out in the open. Oops, all uptight Americans!
- My first haggis dish (from Roseleaf Bar Cafe) was fan-freaking-tastic. The way people talk about haggis in the US you’d think it was made of rotting bat feces (okay, maybe the real ingredients are only barely a step above), but one taste and I was totally hooked. It’s delicious. On my last day, I had haggis from a different cafe, and then I kind of understood the negative press (still not that bad).
- Nothing is phonetic and I pronounced everything wrong. Speak English, dammit!
- Edinburgh is really, really, really pretty.
Milano, Italia
- Attended the Inter v. Parma game at San Siro Stadium. It’s like a street fair outside the stadium. You must show ID to buy a ticket (they even print your name on it) so the “queue” takes awhile. Flares, firecrackers, and hugs following every goal; it was more fun watching the fan section than the game, to be honest (especially since my husband Sneijder wasn’t playing). Riot police were on hand at exit, though it was a smallish crowd.
- I had no idea how to order things anywhere. From Peck (gourmet deli type place) to gelato spots, I did everything “wrong” and felt stupid. Admittedly my own fault as I did very little prior research. But you also never expect to have to research that kind stuff. That’s why you travel and not just watch it on TV!
- We came during major sales time. I’d planned on buying lots of clothes, only everything was still hundreds of euros over my price range even with sales. I admit I was warned, but I take those warnings with a grain of salt because I’m used to Manhattan prices. Sure, there are inexpensive places if you know where to look, but… Milan is expensive. (I ended up buying no clothes.)
- Everyone is wearing shiny puffy coats. We even saw a puffy men’s blazer in a store window. Not a fan.
- So much coffee. So much.
Whether you prefer the UK or a place like Milan seems to depend a lot on whether your preferred vice lies in alcohol or caffeine. I prefer the former.
I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff, so I’ll probably surreptitiously edit this entry to add things later.
I’m back from visiting Edinburgh and Milan. A big thanks to Ami, Bree, and Colin (ABC!) for being awesome folks and making the Edinburgh trip extra fun, and an especially big thanks to Ami for allowing Rich and I the use of her room in her flat. I definitely appreciated having a local to guide us to the good (and inexpensive) spots.
I wanted to use this trip to put my JP Morgan Select Visa card to the test (see my previous entry on this). It’s a chip and signature card, but I set up a PIN with a customer service rep when I activated my card, so I wanted to try it out in a variety of settings. At most cashiers the card machine would print out a receipt that I had to sign, which is pretty much like a normal swipe card (and all cashiers who took credit cards accepted swipe cards anyway). The real test was at a metro kiosk in Milan where no swipe option was available (Rich tried his non-chipped card and it didn’t work). I stuck my card in the slow-ass machine and then had to enter the PIN and… Success! Whoo hoo!! All in all, I’m quite satisfied with the card.
Seeing the credit card statement after this trip, however, is another story.
P.S. I cancelled my Amex Gold card after I received the JPM one. For a card that heavily markets itself to travelers, I find it unacceptable that Amex has no plans to introduce a chip and pin version at this time (I asked), especially given the $175 fee. I will say the customer service was pretty good. They did offer me some money off of the annual fee to stay and didn’t hassle me further when I declined. Pretty painless process overall. I definitely wanted them to know I was leaving because of the chip issue though.
One of my favorite shows is House Hunters International on HGTV. I’ve looked up how it works and I know it’s mostly BS (I’ll let you Google it yourself if you like), but it still annoys me to no end when I see typical middle American type suburbanites moving to a major city in another country and demanding lots of space, a big kitchen, and large yard or balcony in the center of the city on some ridiculously tiny budget. It almost makes me want to flip the channel, except that my curiosity in foreign living spaces is higher than my desire not to watch those kinds of people on TV.
Isn’t it great when Americans think the rest of the world can live as large as they do? And isn’t wonderful when suburbanites don’t understand the concept of limited space in cities? (Hint: your real living room is beyond the confines of your front door.) Or even basic economics, supply and demand? And they’re always looking for an extra bedroom for visitors. How bloody often are your friends or family making the 6000 mile trek over that you need bedrooms for them? Just put them up in a hotel for the week. It’s probably cheaper. It wouldn’t kill them to sleep on the couch either. The best (worst) is when they find a kitchen that’s easily twice the size of ours and they call it tiny.
On a positive note, I am absolutely amazed at what you can get in certain parts of Italy. Beautiful 15th century homes in old medieval towns go surprisingly cheap. Maintenance is a whole other story though. But still, it’s nice to dream. If I can stop being an idiot long enough to start saving up real dough, buying foreign property is definitely on the top of the list.
So I’d made a whole entry about how I check up on the status of chip and pin (EMV) cards in the US every few months only to be continually disappointed with how incredibly behind we are, and then I found out we do have chipped cards available for regular folks, not just UN workers and multimillionaires. They’re just chip and signature cards rather than chip and pin. (There is a prepaid Travelex chip and pin card available, but the exchange rates are supposedly terrible. I am looking for a true credit card.)
I opted for the JP Morgan Select Visa Signature Card. There is also the U.S. Bank FlexPerks Travel Rewards Visa Card, but you have to request the chip card because they send you a regular one. There are varying reports on exactly where you can use the chip and sig cards (the main issue is whether they work on automated kiosks at metro and petrol stations when there is no human available), but it looks relatively good so far. Better than staring at the ticket machine wondering how the hell you’re going to top off your transit card because your stone age American mag strip card doesn’t work with the machine.
Hopefully this makes traveling abroad a little more convenient. I hate having to carry boatloads of cash on me when I go to Europe (super first world problem!). I will be in Scotland and Italy in January so we’ll see how it goes.
I am looking forward to the day when we have real chip and pin cards readily available from every bank, but for now, this is a great deal better than the last time I was abroad. 15 years behind the times, but it’s better than nothing.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about or why this matters, you need to relax and take a vacation. You’re working too hard. Why don’t you hit some beaches along southern France?
…So does that mean I can find finally find (good) pho in the Netherlands?
Oddly enough, this article gave me an idea for a slant I could take on traveling. It would be interesting to seek out Vietnamese communities in various parts of the world and see the differences and similarities and examine how they adapted to their surroundings. Maybe it’s already been done in some sociological study or something, but this is something that has been piquing my interest more and more since I moved away from my parents.
I always felt a bit removed from the Viet community, primarily because I never really knew one, and secondarily because I had a complex about my heritage growing up (when people in 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade ask you, “Are you Chinese?” and when you say, “No,” they stretch out the corners of their eyes and ask, “Then why are your eyes like this?” you might internalize some stupid ideas too). I got over the complex, but I still feel uncomfortable around (older) Vietnamese people because I feel like I’m being judged on a tougher metric than when I’m with mixed company. Also, there are things you can say in Vietnamese culture that wouldn’t fly in typical American culture and I’m too Americanized not to be a little bothered by it.
I should note that it was slightly different with Vietnamese people in Vietnam because I believe they largely regarded me as American once they heard how awful my Vietnamese was. I think my problem is Vietnamese people in America expect me to be more Vietnamese than I am. Or maybe it’s just my messed up perception and they really don’t. I dunno. In any case, I’d like to see my American bias in contrast to different subsets of Vietnamese culture all over the world. It could be a fun, potentially eye-opening experiment for me.
Domestic airlines are junk and I have no problem paying extra to take a European carrier to go to Europe (being careful to note when foreign flights are actually operated by a domestic airline). But it’s hard to say no to both a lower price AND direct flights coming and going out of different cities. The price isn’t a dealbreaker. Having a stopover in Heathrow is.
Ugh.
First world problems, 1%, et cetera et cetera I KNOW.
On our first visit to NL, we saw a bunch of people walking around with plastic bags with a picture of a hamster and the word “HAMSTER (something)” on it, which I thought was kind of funky and cute, and was yet another little thing I found charming about Amsterdam. Once we figured out they were from Albert Heijn (grocery chain), we went in search of one so we could get a bag. All we found was a To Go version of the store, which just sold bottled drinks and snacks and had the usual AH bags. It wasn’t until we were long gone that we realized there was a big Albert Heijn one block from the hotel we stayed in, but in the one direction we never walked.
:|
I’ve since been trying to figure out when the hell AH has this goddamn “Hamsterweken” (Hamster Week) sale because I will seriously plan a trip around that. You don’t understand! One of my favorite things to do when traveling is hit up a regular ol’ supermarket. It’s a fun way to look into the daily life of the locals and see what constitutes “normal” in different parts of the world. In this case I also really want a silly shopping bag.
SO WHEN THE HECK IS THE NEXT ONE??
AH: Using hamsters in ads long, long before Kia Soul.
Rich and I decided to go to EGG one of the nights we were in London. It didn’t look far on the map so we took a bus to the King’s Cross St Pancras station and figured we could walk the rest of the way. Once we were on our way, some guy sitting in a van on the other side of the street hollered, “Yougoin’totheEggclub?”
Rich didn’t understand what the heck he said and I hesitated to answer because who the hell is this dude yelling at us out of a dark van and why does he care where we’re going? By the time I decided to shout back “Yes!” he had already rolled up his window, so we just shrugged and carried on.
We walked just under a mile to the stupid place, which took probably 15-20 minutes but felt like forever because we were alone on a deserted road and I was wearing heels. We’re used to Manhattan where pretty much anywhere you go you’re surrounded by buildings and there are people out and about at all hours and stores are open. We really weren’t expecting it to be so desolate in a major city. It was just bizarre to us and since we didn’t know how much farther we had to go it was a little nerve-wracking.
Anyway, when we got there we picked up some flyers or something and then I saw that there is a free shuttle from King’s Cross to EGG. Which must have been what that guy was yelling at us about. COME ON!
That’s the first thing Rich and I noticed when going into Amsterdam for the first time. We were in a cab coming from Schiphol (only one or two hours until New Years, so trains were closed) and once we hit civilization, there it was, a large statue of a giraffe smack dab in the middle of one of those big open Amsterdam windows, looking out upon the world from inside a beautiful Amsterdam home.
Just one of the many little quirky things that made my first visit there so memorable.
I enjoy going on boat parties around Manhattan primarily because it reminds me of my first night ever (New Years) in Amsterdam. Rich and I were at a New Years party at NDSM Werf (Wharf) which is above the IJ, not exactly where you’d normally go as a tourist. It was this industrial boat yard kinda place, and there were different areas for different music. We went to the first building we saw because we didn’t know where else to go and were a little too timid to ask. I mean, we had just landed in the Amsterdam like 3 hours ago and had only been to Dam Square up until then.
