International Nesties
ILikePineapples
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
I don't understand...
the concept of going to as many cities as possible when visiting a country (or "Euope") in order to get an 'overview' (as stated in a Travel post). What do you get out of it if you spend one day in a city and then move on? I'm definitely a spend time in a city and wander kinda girl, so if anyone can explain this viewpoint, I'd appreciate it. I'm not being mean or sarcastic as I really do want to know.
I like pineapples...they make life just so much more interesting.
Re: I don't understand...
And I don't want to post that on the Travel post cause I know it'd come across as sarcastic or mean or something.
I think a lot of people are trying to get the most "bang for their buck," you know? I mean...a lot of people can't afford to come back to Europe several times, so they think it's better to see a bunch of things and only spend a little time in each, than spend their whole vacation in one town/city.
I know we do this a lot here...but it's mainly just scoping things out to see if we want to return. That's why we love cruises so much...we get short bursts in a lot of ports, and lets us figure out if we want to go back. But...we live here...we have that opportunity to "go back" should we want to. Most people don't, so I think they just try to maximize their viewing potential (if that makes sense).
But yeah...I totally get what you're saying. It almost seems a disservice to the city, somehow, but I can understand it.
Like Onesly said, I think it's mostly that a lot of people will only go once and they want to explore as much as they can in that time frame.
It bugs me a lot more when people say "I'm going to Europe" when in reality they are going to France and Spain, or whatever. Why not just name the countries? I always think it makes people sound like they think "Europe" is a country. And that drives me nuts. Like that girl who said she was moving to "Africa" and when we asked what country she said "Africa."
As I understand it, Americans get far less holidays per year (10 days?? Madness I tell you!!) than us Europeans so I can understand wanting to at least go past as many things as possible even if you don't have time to explore. Plus, it's the distance as well - I can pop over to Denmark for the weekend, but it's a much bigger deal and expense to do it from the US.
Just guessing, but I think it's those reasons. Or at least that's some of them.
I stumbled onto this board in my afternoon refusal to do any more work
, and I think it's my Travel post you are wondering about. So I figured I'd offer my POV, not taking your question as mean or sarcastic.
I want to see the entire freaking world. I try to be smart about where and how we spend our travel time/money. What do you get out of 2 days in a city (which is what I may spend)? Besides exhausted, you get to eat local food, wander through a new city, meet interesting people, and see a few sights. Just what you'd do with a longer period of time. I think getting an "overview" of, say, Italy by visiting 2-3 cities is fair. Will I experience the life of a local? Probably not. Will I gauge which places I'd like to return to? Yes. Will I enjoy it? Most definitely!
It isn't any different from when non-Americans come to the States and visit NYC, NY, a few Nat'l Parks, and Disney World, for example. Are there numerous other worthwhile places? Of course. But if they are going to make the effort to come all the way here, they often want a sample of the country. Sure, they could spend 3 weeks with family in Kansas and have a wonderful time. Depth vs breadth is an ongoing struggle for many people and travel. Sometimes I like to linger, some times I like to sample.
And that's essentially what I was looking for... a sample of, well, that's what I was asking the Nesties. What they think would be a good sample for this particular 8 days in November.
ETA: And my referring to it as Europe is because I will have the opportunity to be on the European continent, not any particular country and was looking for itinerary ideas as such.
I will never understand why people get all worked up over this (and I am not specifically referring to anyone in this post, it happens ALL the time on the Travel board). My opinion is short of moving somewhere you will never fully get to know a city, so if you only have 8 days to spend in Europe, why not tackle as many cities as possible? Some people are totally fine seeing just the overview of a city. I have done a weekend trip to Copenhagen from the US, and I have spent 2 weeks in other individual cities. I don't discount my weekend trip as less of a trip because I was only there for 2 days.
I guess everyone's travel style is so different and I just can't judge. I would never spend my vacation time money on a big trip to Vegas or Disney, but other people love to do that.
Exactly.
I like city hopping. I like a bit of diversity. As my husband says he's has tourists come in from outside Europe who will see all of Switzerland in three days. They try to shove it all in and then they are on to the next country usually.
Truthfully if you don't mind driving or paying for the trains you could see a lot of Switzerland in a week. With my mom we did a day trip to Lugano and if we rented a car for the rest of the days we could of done a few other cities. Tomorrow we are going to Luzern and the to Mt. Titlis. We are packing a lot it.
2012 Reading Challenge
Now Nesting from Chicago, IL My nail blog:
Seriously, dividing 1 week between London and Paris is totally doable, but how would you even know where the heck you were if you took that same week and went to Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, London and Edinburgh? Or Berlin, Prague, Krakow and Budapest?
Wouldn't it be better to take more time to see fewer places, even if it meant it took you much longer to get to see all the places you wanted to see?
I'm really not explaining myself very well.
I can understand it, but I think others have covered my point of view pretty well.
Plus I think it is a good question to ask because there are places that may be amazing but are quite small. London and Paris have been referenced in this post a couple times and those are examples of cities that are not only quite physically large, but chock full of diverse things to do.
But Prague, while an amazing city, is really rather small when you get there. So while I might tell someone to just take the whole week to do London, I think Prague and Venice for example, could be easily split without losing a lot.
2012 Reading Challenge
I think people cram in as much as possible because it might be the only time they are able to do that kind of a trip. Not everyone is as lucky as we all are to be able to travel often throughout Europe.
I'm with Emily523 on this one... and I find it hard to believe that no one understands the concept of "this may be my last time in x place, I want to see as much as possible." Isn't it the same reason why you try to go on as many rides as possible as Disneyland instead of just wandering in the park and sitting on the grass "taking it all in"?
My brother, his wife and disabled daughter are all coming to Italy for our wedding. It will be his first time out of the US, with the exception of driving to Canada or Baja California (Mexico) or a cruise. His daughter (my niece) is 6 years old and severely disabled. She is in a wheelchair, fed through a tube directly into her stomach and still needs her diapers changed. His wife is a SAHM and my mom, who is retired is going with them to help. She hasn't been to Italy in over 30 years, but she has been there before.
Since they are unlikely to ever have the reason (or money) to go to Italy again, they want to go home with as many pictures of all the famous sites as possible. They don't want to linger and just "wander around" checking out random streets where there isn't anything famous to see (dragging around a wheelchair on small, cobblestone streets). They are going to go home with pictures and memories and not be able to do any trip like this for a while. So yes, they will exhaust themselves trying to do Venice in a day so they have time to make a day trip out to Pisa and get that cheesy leaning tower shot. When they go back to California and show friends pictures of their trip, they want to be able to say, "And this is [insert famous thing here], as opposed to saying "and then we just wandered and saw a cute cafe, here is a picture of that random place," which of course, will mean nothing to the other person.
Is this really so hard to understand? I'm not trying to be sarcastic or mean here, but it just seems pretty obvious to me that people don't often get the opportunities we as INs do, but that as Americans (who generally have little vacation time, not to mention the crappy exchange rate) we should be able to understand/remember what it's like to live there and somehow relate.
OMG! No she didn't!!! What an idiot. Did she say what she was going there for? Whenever my husband tells people that he worked in refugee camps near the Kenya/Somali border, random people feel the need to say some random town their daughter/neice/nephew/neighbor/etc did a mission.
"I think it was in Ghana. Is that near where you were?"
It makes me cringe and want to say jerky things, but I at least understand that the geography of Africa has (seemingly to them anyway) little direct impact on their life.
But MOVING to Africa? Man.