Best city to visit as a tourist
Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
The most suspect names are things like 'Rome of the East' or 'Venice of the North'. Usually used to describe shitholes such as Bucharest or Miskolc.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
I just love cities.
Like London a lot, love Edinburgh and Glasgow, think Liverpool and Newcastle are ace (natch)...and that's just in Britain.
I've not been out of Europe, I'm afraid, so my city visiting is relatively limited.
However.....
Barcelona I absolutely love. We've been there three times and only scratched the surface, so we'll be going a few more times. Of course, it helps to have a canny Geordie as a sometime guide (even if he doesn't like shandy drinkers!).
Prague is where we spent our honeymoon, and it's a gorgeous place. Buildings, history, food.....mwah!
I've been to Paris a couple of times and liked it a lot. Ditto Amsterdam.
Now, Krakow.....what a glorious place! Stunning architecture, great food, a strong sense of it's own history.....I'd recommend it to anyone.
Like London a lot, love Edinburgh and Glasgow, think Liverpool and Newcastle are ace (natch)...and that's just in Britain.
I've not been out of Europe, I'm afraid, so my city visiting is relatively limited.
However.....
Barcelona I absolutely love. We've been there three times and only scratched the surface, so we'll be going a few more times. Of course, it helps to have a canny Geordie as a sometime guide (even if he doesn't like shandy drinkers!).
Prague is where we spent our honeymoon, and it's a gorgeous place. Buildings, history, food.....mwah!
I've been to Paris a couple of times and liked it a lot. Ditto Amsterdam.
Now, Krakow.....what a glorious place! Stunning architecture, great food, a strong sense of it's own history.....I'd recommend it to anyone.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
Sir John Coan wrote:The most suspect names are things like 'Rome of the East' or 'Venice of the North'. Usually used to describe shitholes such as Bucharest or Miskolc.
Actually, it's Stockholm that gets the "Venice of the North" thing. It is a misnomer, as Venice has an intricate manmade canal system while Stockholm is just built on a load of islands:
Note giant shadow in bottom right, possibly of invading alien mothership.
It's also "The Capital of Scandinavia", which basically just means it's bigger and makes more money than Copenhagen.
The weirdest one is Norrköping, which is understandably known as Sweden's Manchester (old industrial town sprucing itself up with museums and so on), but also commonly referred to as "Peking". No, me neither.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
GoogaMooga wrote:Paris - The City of Lights
Rome - The Eternal City
New York - The Big Apple
New Orleans - The Big Easy
Tokyo - The Big Mikan
London - The Big Smoke
Chicago - The Windy City
any other nicknames?
San Francisco's been called Paris of the West and columnist, Herb Caen, called it Baghdad by the Bay.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
I believe Barnsley is known as "The Gaza Strip of Yorkshire".
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
penk wrote:I believe Barnsley is known as "The Gaza Strip of Yorkshire".
Catchy.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
Stockholm is not bigger than Copenhagen.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
GoogaMooga wrote:Stockholm is not bigger than Copenhagen.
Depends whether you're talking about "city" or "metropolitan" area. Most people who live in Stockholm live outside the "city", which is actually a pretty small area. So in that sense Copenhagen's maybe bigger.
Edit: it appears Stockholm "city" is bigger too.
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fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
penk wrote:GoogaMooga wrote:Stockholm is not bigger than Copenhagen.
Depends whether you're talking about "city" or "metropolitan" area. Most people who live in Stockholm live outside the "city", which is actually a pretty small area. So in that sense Copenhagen's maybe bigger.
Edit: it appears Stockholm "city" is bigger too.
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Stockholm city may be bigger, but if you count metropolitan area, Copenhagen is bigger with 1.5 million.
"When the desert comes, people will be sad; just as Cannery Row was sad when all the pilchards were caught and canned and eaten." - John Steinbeck
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
GoogaMooga wrote:Stockholm city may be bigger, but if you count metropolitan area, Copenhagen is bigger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_Europe_by_population#List
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
GoogaMooga wrote:Paris - The City of Lights
Rome - The Eternal City
New York - The Big Apple
New Orleans - The Big Easy
Tokyo - The Big Mikan
London - The Big Smoke
Chicago - The Windy City
any other nicknames?
Hong Kong - Pearl of the Orient although I don't think there is any 'official' nickname.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
sloopjohnc wrote:penk wrote:I believe Barnsley is known as "The Gaza Strip of Yorkshire".
Catchy.
Or "Gaza - Barnsley of the East", even.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
GoogaMooga wrote:Paris - The City of Lights
Rome - The Eternal City
New York - The Big Apple
New Orleans - The Big Easy
Tokyo - The Big Mikan
London - The Big Smoke
Chicago - The Windy City
any other nicknames?
Bangor - Athen y gogledd
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
Wow, having just spent 3 days in Prague, with room for 3 hours of touristing, I have to agree about its rep - I want to go back, and soon. I went into "hyper tourism" mode yesterday morning - beautiful weather - and managed to tick the big sites (castle, old town, new town, lennon wall etc), although of course i had no time to actually go into any of the places or museums. I want to go back.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
penk wrote:The weirdest one is Norrköping, which is understandably known as Sweden's Manchester (old industrial town sprucing itself up with museums and so on), but also commonly referred to as "Peking". No, me neither.
Sweden likes nicknames for pretty much everything - people, places, things. My grandparents specifically named their son, my uncle, the most "serious" name they could think of that would be almost impossible to have a nickname for. Of course, come 3rd grade, he still ended up with a nickname, "Burken", despite having nothing to do with his name.
And there is (sort of) a rationale for Peking - Norrkoping ("the north market") got the name from Sven Hedin, a (relatively) famous Swedish traveller (and pseudo-Nazi) who went around Asia, and came back at one point and held a lecture in Norrkoping...he mentioned that Peking actually means "the northern commercial centre" in Chinese, and it didn't take too long before Norrkoping claimed that for its own. The supporters for the football team (where Thomas Brolin, for example, came from) are called Peking Fans.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
G-Z wrote:penk wrote:The weirdest one is Norrköping, which is understandably known as Sweden's Manchester (old industrial town sprucing itself up with museums and so on), but also commonly referred to as "Peking". No, me neither.
Sweden likes nicknames for pretty much everything - people, places, things. My grandparents specifically named their son, my uncle, the most "serious" name they could think of that would be almost impossible to have a nickname for. Of course, come 3rd grade, he still ended up with a nickname, "Burken", despite having nothing to do with his name.
And there is (sort of) a rationale for Peking - Norrkoping ("the north market") got the name from Sven Hedin, a (relatively) famous Swedish traveller (and pseudo-Nazi) who went around Asia, and came back at one point and held a lecture in Norrkoping...he mentioned that Peking actually means "the northern commercial centre" in Chinese, and it didn't take too long before Norrkoping claimed that for its own. The supporters for the football team (where Thomas Brolin, for example, came from) are called Peking Fans.
Do you think the english word 'shopping' comes from the norse/swedish 'koping'?
(K is pronounced 'sh' in Swedish)
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
Deebank wrote:Do you think the english word 'shopping' comes from the norse/swedish 'koping'?
(K is pronounced 'sh' in Swedish)
My dictionary says that shop comes from Middle English shoppe, which comes from Old English sceoppa "booth", akin to Old High German scopf "shed". (I do not know if this is related to the Swedish in some way. In modern German, "shed" is Schuppen.)
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
Admiral G wrote:Quix wrote:florence...
beautiful architecture, lovely food, great shops and markets, wonderful museums and art galleries... small enough to walk everywhere...
maybe not "the" best... but very high up on my list as at least one of the best...
A bit too small for me.
i'll tell them to make it bigger.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
Havana is pretty much amazing, I'd say.
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Re: Best city to visit as a tourist
bhoywonder wrote:Havana is pretty much amazing, I'd say.
Is it now?