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Post by The Sensational She-Hulk on Mar 23, 2016 9:34:37 GMT -5
I had the best fucking time in Chicago, y'all. I'm so sorry I missed the meet-up by just a few days, but the good news is that I loved the city so much I'm already trying to figure out when I can come back again. Chicago has architecture like nowhere else I've ever seen on the East Coast. My mind was blown just on the taxi ride from O'Hare (which isn't that awful, good lord, I thought it was like the Bermuda Triangle of airports and it turns out that it's just a damn airport) to my friend Suz's apartment in Ravenswood - no rowhouses to be seen at all. Just like. Actual houses! Many of which I was informed were likely split into apartments, as they're also much larger than I'm used to seeing inside city limits, but still. And the design of the houses themselves is completely different from what I'm used to. And it's so flat. I know the Midwest is renowned for its flatness, but I wasn't prepared. It certainly made the city more walkable than I anticipated! I was really struck by how nice people were. I don't mean like, fake southern nice, but it was shocking to hear things like "excuse me" and "sorry" by people passing by on the El or on the McCormick Place show floor. I ride WMATA almost every day and I've lived in NYC (and been to NYCC at Javits Center), so the culture shock from that alone was pretty huge. But it was also really refreshing in a way. I'm also pretty mad that CTA has its shit together so much that it puts WMATA to absolute shame, but oh well, it was nice to ride while I was there and see what a working transit system actually looks like. I did love getting to see the city from the perspective of the El, too. But everyone I dealt with, from the convenience stores to TSA, was at least polite, if not necessarily overly friendly. And the food! We went to a little indie coffee shop around the corner near the El station in the mornings for coffee and breakfast before heading to the convention, and just mostly ate snacks that I'd brought while we were at the con, saving mealtime for dinner. We went out for Thai food at a little place near her apartment on Thursday night and I had panang noodles with shrimp that were supposed to be spicy but which were actually white-person spicy. But it tasted so good I didn't mind, and brought half back with me because I couldn't eat it all. I mentioned in the Regional Specialties thread that on Friday night I had deep-dish pizza from Giordano's that exceeded my expectations, and it really did, as someone who is more used to thin-crust NYC-style pizza. We just did cheese pizza, but I loved it. Saturday night I had my leftover panang noodles and Suz had some leftover pasta she'd made earlier in the week; Sunday I took her to a nearby Irish pub, where we split loaded potato skins and she had a corned beef panini and I got a giant burger on a pretzel bun which was delicious. I sadly didn't make it to Rick Bayless's place in O'Hare, but there's always next time. I can't say enough good things about the way C2E2 was organized, from the layout of the convention to the check-in/security (which unlike NYCC doesn't make you feel like a criminal for carrying around obviously fake weapons). It was very spacious, and even on Saturday, the most crowded day it wasn't overwhelming at all. I liked that they had a quiet room set up on the first floor, even though we didn't use it, and that there were family- and kid-friendly activities going on all weekend. It was cute to see so many kids who were just so excited to be at the convention, and there were a lot more older folks - some in cosplay, some not - than I normally see, which tickled me because it's not like you stop being a fan once you hit a certain age. Also, the show floor didn't smell like dudebro! I loved the diversity of the panels - it wasn't just Marvel or DC with their heads up their own asses - and that there weren't quite as many "big" names, because it meant I got exposure to a lot more indie and smaller artists/creators I never would have met or seen at NYCC/SDCC. The overall vibe was just very welcoming and friendly, and it was about as stress-free as I've ever felt at a comic con, even when I was cosplaying. Speaking of cosplay, here are a few pictures! Not all of them because there are a lot and I don't want to fuck with your bandwidths, but I wanted to share some of my favorites. Matt the Radar Technician (the first one we saw, but not the only one by far): My friend Suz with Sith Lord Jar-Jar Binks: Our friend Ellis (who made the signs) with the Luke we finally found on our way out of the con that day: Suz, Ellis, and me (I am not wearing the Han Solo belt because there was a mishap and I gave up trying and said "fuck it" so I was already in character before we even left the apartment):
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Mar 24, 2016 9:17:30 GMT -5
The Sensational She-Hulk yay I am so glad you had a good time! And yeah, O'Hare is big and a little confusing sometimes but anyone who told you it was awful is lying and has never been to Atlanta or LaGuardia, which is hell. Yes, while there are a decent amount of single-family homes, a lot of them are three-flats, which is to say, a three story building with one apartment per floor. (Two-flats also exist.) OK done nerding now.
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Post by The Sensational She-Hulk on Mar 24, 2016 10:15:31 GMT -5
The Sensational She-Hulk yay I am so glad you had a good time! And yeah, O'Hare is big and a little confusing sometimes but anyone who told you it was awful is lying and has never been to Atlanta or LaGuardia, which is hell. Yes, while there are a decent amount of single-family homes, a lot of them are three-flats, which is to say, a three story building with one apartment per floor. (Two-flats also exist.) OK done nerding now. I did seriously consider going to Bayless's restaurant, but it was on the opposite side of the airport from my gate and I was too hungry/undercaffeinated to want to walk that far, haha. It really isn't that bad an airport - the signage was clear, which meant that I didn't get lost or turned around. And for me that's an achievement, because I've been known to get lost in my own hometown! I thought they were really neat, those three-flats. We don't have architecture like that on the East Coast; it's mostly regular apartment buildings, single-family homes, duplexes, and rowhouses in cities here. I have to confess I spent some time at the airport looking up rent in Chicago and doing a lot of wishful thinking.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Mar 24, 2016 10:21:57 GMT -5
The Sensational She-Hulk yay I am so glad you had a good time! And yeah, O'Hare is big and a little confusing sometimes but anyone who told you it was awful is lying and has never been to Atlanta or LaGuardia, which is hell. Yes, while there are a decent amount of single-family homes, a lot of them are three-flats, which is to say, a three story building with one apartment per floor. (Two-flats also exist.) OK done nerding now. I did seriously consider going to Bayless's restaurant, but it was on the opposite side of the airport from my gate and I was too hungry/undercaffeinated to want to walk that far, haha. It really isn't that bad an airport - the signage was clear, which meant that I didn't get lost or turned around. And for me that's an achievement, because I've been known to get lost in my own hometown! I thought they were really neat, those three-flats. We don't have architecture like that on the East Coast; it's mostly regular apartment buildings, single-family homes, duplexes, and rowhouses in cities here. I have to confess I spent some time at the airport looking up rent in Chicago and doing a lot of wishful thinking. I do like Chicago's architecture. If you ever come back in nice weather, there's a really cool boat tour the Chicago Architecture Foundation does. The three-flats and older apartment buildings are neat to be inside, especially when well taken care of, with big bay windows and hardwood floors. And yeah, I am familiar with East Coast architecture; Philadelphia has some neat older buildings (the trinity style, the boathouses on the Schuylkill, Old City) but a loooot of rowhouses, which can seem pretty repetitive after awhile.
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Gumbercules
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Post by Gumbercules on Mar 25, 2016 9:45:44 GMT -5
So I just booked my work flight. Generally, I fly non-stop from Boston through Lufthansa, though the prices have been going up for the past 6 years. This year, it's $1900, plus another $200 for seat reservations. Well, out of Providence (which is 10 minutes from my girlfriend & parents houses (they don't live together or are the same people, just in the same area)) there's a budget airline, Condor, that just started doing direct to Frankfurt. The tickets were $700. The only "issue" is that they only fly on Thursdays and Tuesdays Mondays. So now I have to leave 3 days before, and come back 3 days after. And since these are the only days I can fly, I can fully expense those extra days, whereas before I was going to have to pay out of pocket if I wanted to stay before and after the trip. So, I think I'm going to France for a few days before (Nancy or Strasbourg), or maybe Cologne, and afterwards I'll spend time in Bamberg. Huzzah!
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Baron von Costume
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Post by Baron von Costume on Mar 29, 2016 11:54:18 GMT -5
The Sensational She-Hulk yay I am so glad you had a good time! And yeah, O'Hare is big and a little confusing sometimes but anyone who told you it was awful is lying and has never been to Atlanta or LaGuardia, which is hell. Wrong! It will always be hell because any flight I take through it will inevitably be delayed coming/going/transferring. Also if the delay was because we were circling forever waiting for a landing spot then my departure will be leaving exactly on time from a gate at the complete opposite end of the airport. I hate Atlanta too but ORD is the worst. I actually have nothing against the physical airport itself, I don't find it hard to navigate it at all and the food options are so much better than elsewhere. I imagine it's just dandy if it's your airport of origin/arrival.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Mar 29, 2016 11:56:38 GMT -5
The Sensational She-Hulk yay I am so glad you had a good time! And yeah, O'Hare is big and a little confusing sometimes but anyone who told you it was awful is lying and has never been to Atlanta or LaGuardia, which is hell. Wrong! It will always be hell because any flight I take through it will inevitably be delayed coming/going/transferring. Also if the delay was because we were circling forever waiting for a landing spot then my departure will be leaving exactly on time from a gate at the complete opposite end of the airport. I hate Atlanta too but ORD is the worst. I actually have nothing against the physical airport itself, I don't find it hard to navigate it at all and the food options are so much better than elsewhere. I imagine it's just dandy if it's your airport of origin/arrival. Do you know why there are so many delays at ORD? Because of New York. Seriously. So many flights connect through the east coast that it screws Chicago up in turn. Midway doesn't have that problem.
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Post by The Sensational She-Hulk on Mar 29, 2016 12:03:08 GMT -5
Wrong! It will always be hell because any flight I take through it will inevitably be delayed coming/going/transferring. Also if the delay was because we were circling forever waiting for a landing spot then my departure will be leaving exactly on time from a gate at the complete opposite end of the airport. I hate Atlanta too but ORD is the worst. I actually have nothing against the physical airport itself, I don't find it hard to navigate it at all and the food options are so much better than elsewhere. I imagine it's just dandy if it's your airport of origin/arrival. Do you know why there are so many delays at ORD? Because of New York. Seriously. So many flights connect through the east coast that it screws Chicago up in turn. Midway doesn't have that problem. Yeah, I flew out of BWI and made sure I took a nonstop flight. I almost missed my flight to Ireland connecting at the Philadelphia airport, and I'd rather pay $100 extra to avoid having to do such a thing.
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Baron von Costume
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Post by Baron von Costume on Mar 29, 2016 13:51:15 GMT -5
Yeah, sadly my last trip through it was either ORD or a ridiculous path of Winnipeg->Detroit->La Guardia->Nashville
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Post by Desert Dweller on Mar 30, 2016 23:02:16 GMT -5
Less than four weeks till Arizona. Should start to re-dealve into planning, and book the things I'd need to do in advance (Kartchner Caverns tour, Taliesan West tour, D-backs game). Wooo! Hope you have a wonderful time! It is definitely starting to heat up. Supposed to be in the 90s starting early next week. So, make sure you pack for that and organize your outdoor activities accordingly. (Hey, I said I would be obnoxious about this. Don't like seeing tourists dehydrate in the heat.) Also, thanks for reminding me about Taliesan West. It is not far from where I'm house sitting right now. I've never been up there. I'm putting it on my list.
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Baron von Costume
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Post by Baron von Costume on Mar 31, 2016 14:00:28 GMT -5
Somewhat hilariously the terrible vacation company/airline I travelled with last year (and wrote a diatribe about) and had to travel with this year due to lack of options has now blocked me on twitter due to me asking them when they'd honour the voucher I got last year.
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on Mar 31, 2016 14:25:30 GMT -5
Can't remember if there's a general travel advice thread? Anyway, there are $510 round-trip airfares from Dallas to Taipei. Anybody been to Taiwan? Any favorite recs? Would it be easy to manage for a solo English speaker?
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on May 11, 2016 9:34:31 GMT -5
Three weeks till vacation!
I am excite!
We have plans for all of our cruise ports! In Tortola, we're all trekking to the Baths on Virgin Gorda together. In St Thomas the husband and I are doing a nanobrewery tour. And on the private island we'll beach it up. Wahoo!
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Post by Desert Dweller on May 15, 2016 1:57:41 GMT -5
Looks like my choir is touring to Austria in June 2017. Wooo! Gotta save up enough money. Hoping I can save enough to plan a short before-or-after tour trip to one of the neighboring countries. Anyone have any suggestions for a cool, short side trip I can make that would last between 2-4 days? Think the choir is going to be in Vienna and Salzburg.
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Baron von Costume
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Post by Baron von Costume on May 16, 2016 11:57:17 GMT -5
Looks like my choir is touring to Austria in June 2017. Wooo! Gotta save up enough money. Hoping I can save enough to plan a short before-or-after tour trip to one of the neighboring countries. Anyone have any suggestions for a cool, short side trip I can make that would last between 2-4 days? Think the choir is going to be in Vienna and Salzburg. There's a lot of cool options a short train ride away depending on what floats your boat/how many days you have (keep in mind hopping an overnight train is an option too.) Prague is a lot of fun as is the rest of the czech republic. You're also a super short ride from Budapest. If you're more in the mood for beach the Croatian coast is pretty fantastic. Northern Italy, Venice, Switzerland, Southern Germany (Munich and Neuschwanstein would be a fun short trip) IF you're on the higher end of that 2-4 days keep in mind that budget flights are pretty cheap once you're over there too so almost anywhere in Europe is probably accessible for not much $.
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Gumbercules
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Post by Gumbercules on May 16, 2016 12:07:17 GMT -5
Looks like my choir is touring to Austria in June 2017. Wooo! Gotta save up enough money. Hoping I can save enough to plan a short before-or-after tour trip to one of the neighboring countries. Anyone have any suggestions for a cool, short side trip I can make that would last between 2-4 days? Think the choir is going to be in Vienna and Salzburg. Sounds awesome! First off, both places are great. Especially Salzburg. From Salzburg, you can take an hour train ride to Herren-Chiemsee, to see the German attempt at the palace of versailles. King Ludwig liked the hall of mirrors so much, he recreated it (or tried, until running out of money). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HerrenchiemseeYou would take the train there, then catch a ferry. It's gorgeous, and you can hang out at the lake for a while. You can also go to the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's compound in the alps. It's in Obersalzburg. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kehlsteinhaus If you want to travel farther, there's Munich or Neuschwanstein castle (the castle that Disney is modeled after).
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on May 16, 2016 13:08:12 GMT -5
Every day there's a new story about how horrible the lines at TSA security checkpoints are. We leave in 17 days.
I'm reasonably sure that we'll make our 7:25 flight if we get to O'Hare at 4:30 a.m., and I really hope we have enough time for Tortas Fronteras. But at this point I'll settle for making the flight.
But ugh, it's making me anxious every time I read another story, and from what I hear, Orlando is even worse, and we have less control over when we get to the airport for our return flight. (Taking a shuttle back from Port Canaveral.) I guess the good news is getting back home is slightly less urgent. But UGH stupid TSA.
And I didn't even mention my husband who is already prone to anxiety!
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on May 17, 2016 15:22:38 GMT -5
Looks like my choir is touring to Austria in June 2017. Wooo! Gotta save up enough money. Hoping I can save enough to plan a short before-or-after tour trip to one of the neighboring countries. Anyone have any suggestions for a cool, short side trip I can make that would last between 2-4 days? Think the choir is going to be in Vienna and Salzburg. Sounds awesome! First off, both places are great. Especially Salzburg. From Salzburg, you can take an hour train ride to Herren-Chiemsee, to see the German attempt at the palace of versailles. King Ludwig liked the hall of mirrors so much, he recreated it (or tried, until running out of money). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HerrenchiemseeYou would take the train there, then catch a ferry. It's gorgeous, and you can hang out at the lake for a while. You can also go to the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's compound in the alps. It's in Obersalzburg. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kehlsteinhaus If you want to travel farther, there's Munich or Neuschwanstein castle (the castle that Disney is modeled after). Just to pile on to this awesome-sounding trip, Gmunden is the adorable little Alpside/lakeside Austrian resort town where Schubert much of his Ninth Symphony (and apparently premiered his "Ave Maria"). Just an hour from Salzburg by train, maybe only enough to occupy you for a couple hours and a lunch, so not a real side trip. I've heard really enchanting things about the Danube between the two cities, like the monastery at Melk.
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on May 18, 2016 8:11:48 GMT -5
Two more days of work and then I'm off for 12 straight days and going nowhere. The greatest vacation of all. Video games. Beer. Beer. Video games. It's going to be goddamn glorious.
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Post by The Sensational She-Hulk on May 18, 2016 9:27:16 GMT -5
I took this Friday off. I'm going to spend the weekend at my favorite married couple's house, but we're not getting together until the evening. I took the day off mostly so I can sleep in and do laundry and generally just dick around the house. I can't wait.
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Gumbercules
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Post by Gumbercules on May 20, 2016 12:25:09 GMT -5
My girlfriend does a yearly trip to Seattle in October. We decided we'd make it a vacation trip this year and were ready to buy tickets, but in the day we were discussing it, tickets went up by almost $100. I'm glad I told her to wait, as I'm finding out I might be in Germany that same week. So, I'll be taking a 6 hour flight in October; I'm just not sure if I'll be going East or West.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on May 20, 2016 12:51:38 GMT -5
After a few really ridiculous days, the TSA situation is looking a bit better. My fingers are crossed that it's reasonable (in this case, my threshold for reasonable is an hour or less plus a not-ridiculous baggage check line).
And I'm generally pretty jazzed about the trip in general, minus TSA lines.
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Post by Deleted on May 25, 2016 20:23:06 GMT -5
I had a pretty intense string of travels over the last week. The weekend before last, the rock band went to Los Angeles for a couple of shows, and we flew out (I used to love flying as a kid, but developed a strong fear in the last 10-12 years, and haven't flown at all since 2009, so getting through it was a pretty big deal for me) and saw a lot of the sights. Then, we flew back last Monday. I spent Tuesday at home, and then Mrs. Tomorrowville and I drove out into the West Texas desert for a week's vacation in and around Marfa, Alpine, and the Big Bend region.
I'm about done traveling for the time being, I think.
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Baron von Costume
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Post by Baron von Costume on May 26, 2016 10:18:57 GMT -5
I really have no idea what to do with extra holidays this year and no extra money to do anything really fun. Guessing there might be some fridays off/summer porch drinkin' in my near future.
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Post by Powerthirteen on May 26, 2016 10:56:56 GMT -5
I really have no idea what to do with extra holidays this year and no extra money to do anything really fun. Guessing there might be some fridays off/summer porch drinkin' in my near future. Same here. We're taking one week-long vacation, but I've got a total of a month of vacation time this year, and I''m mostly going to use that not coming to work on Fridays.
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Post by Albert Fish Taco on Jun 30, 2016 12:55:32 GMT -5
Since my plan to go to the Baltics in Early September won't be feasible, I'm looking a shorter one week trips and seriously considering Glasgow/Scotland. With the Little Englanders gloriously shooting themselves in the feet last week, it'll be cheaper to go to the UK than it's been in my adult (or even pre-teen) lifetime, especially if I do an Air BNB.
Alternately, toying with going to Nicaragua, but feel that might be something I should plan out with more than two months to go.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jun 30, 2016 15:00:27 GMT -5
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Post by nowimnothing on Jul 3, 2016 17:20:41 GMT -5
Just got back from Disney World, super tired, but thanks for all the advice on the old Disney thread. We did 6 days/5 nights at Art of Animation. One park per day except for Magic Kingdom which we hit 3 times. We ranged from 4-8 hours a day in the parks. I found that if we got the kids over that initial hump of it being too hot and too much walking at about hour 2, then we could make it much longer. I think we rode about everything we wanted to except 7 dwarves mine train which broke down twice. I am glad we upgraded from All Star to Art of Animation. The rooms were still small but there was really a lot going on including drawing classes every day. The park I was most surprised by was Hollywood Studios. Everyone was saying it was only a half day park, but we ended up spending the longest day there just because it was the easiest to get around and the crowds were not as crazy so we were all less stressed.
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Post by Albert Fish Taco on Jul 6, 2016 11:55:55 GMT -5
So booked almost everything for Glasgow/Scotland yesterday. Between scouring the web for a good flight deal (finding it on MoMondo through a flight from Toronto, will require a decent sized drive on my part, but doable and the park/fly/sleep deals there are really cheap), going the AirBNB route in Glasgow, lots of stuff in Glasgow itself being free, using points accumulated over close to five years, oh and of course the Brexit crowd tanking the Pound two weeks ago, this will be surprisingly easy on the wallet.
Glasgow's a good base for side daytrips while I'll be there as well. Definitely want to go to an island (either Aran or Bute (the Shoutboxer promised land)); either Sterling or Edinburgh; and either whichever of the latter two I didn't do, Loch Lomond or some distillery (though I think most of them are further afield than I can do).
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Gumbercules
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Post by Gumbercules on Jul 18, 2016 4:42:19 GMT -5
Back from Spain! This trip made me realize how much I missed on the previous trip. We had a great time in Barcelona, San Sebastian, and Madrid. Each had their best defining trait; Barcelona - architecture, San Sebastian - Food, Madrid - Museums. Aside from lodging and train tickets, we averages around $120 a day, so the trip was well within our budget.
If anyone is thinking of going in the future, I have a list of stuff I can recommend doing/seeing/eating/avoiding.
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