My friend and I are hoping to go on a short trip to Greece for a week or two next year, but we're having trouble narrowing it down to decide exactly where to go so I'm hoping some people on here might be able to offer some advice. My ultimate nightmare would be a holiday in a place with English bars, sunburnt people lying by a pool all day, drunk Brits and hotel entertainment (I imagine most people on here will feel the same!), and I know some parts of Greece are like this so I want to know where to avoid! I've done some research online and in books, but they mostly want to make the places sound good so it can be difficult to tell what it's really going to be like.
I'm the sort of person who buys a cheap flight, stays in a youth hostel or very cheap self catering place and wants to avoid other tourists as much as possible when I go on holiday, and have done a few long backpacking trips in the past, while my friend has never done anything other than package holidays to hotels (although she's happy for me to organise it all separately if that's the best option). We don't want to be too far off the beaten track as we won't have the money to hire a car and we don't speak more than the very minimal basics of Greek, and we're on a strict budget so we need to be able to get a cheapish flight and accommodation/ a cheap package (if such things exist to non-hideous tourist destinations!), so ideally we could do with finding somewhere that has things to do within easy reach and has a few places to eat out etc, but isn't built up and full of tourists. Can anyone help??

I am going to Paris in late March, early April for a week and was wondering if anyone would could recommend a centrally located hostel. I am hoping to stay around the Louvre or the Seine.

Thanks.

renaissance2010
Turning to photography as a creative outlet during a valiant fight with breast cancer at age 34, renaissance10 survived and set up a photo contest to help raise funds for the Lavender Trust, a nonprofit that provides information and support to younger women with breast cancer. In the first two years, the competition brought in over £65,000 (that's $107,260.73 U.S.!), with entries from 130 countries last year. Renaissance10 recently joined LiveJournal to meet other passionate photographers and find supportive friends.

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Just wanted to share some pictures from my trip to Great Britain =)

Hi everyone,
I've looked around a bit but haven't been able to find the answer to my question so I'm hoping someone here can help me out.
My fiance is going to be working in Germany for a year while he completes his PhD and will have a work permit to do so. We are getting married at the end of June and planning on moving to Germany about a week after. Does anyone know if I will also be allowed to stay because we will be married then? Do I also need to apply for a visa? We are both Canadian citizens and are resident in Canada. I won't need to be working while I am there because I do research for a Canadian institution that can be done from anywhere.
Thanks in advance!

Hi all

I'm leaving in a week (eek) for a study abroad program in Italy. I'm working on packing for my trip and I want to minimize the amount of things I bring. So here are my questions.
1) Are skirts/dresses needed to enter a church and or museums in Italy for women? I've researched that they have signs outside of most churches saying what the dress code. I only have one dress that goes below the knee (the rest are right above the knee). It's very impractical for travelling though and I don't want to ruin the dress. Would I be further off to bring a long scarf to wrap around me as a mock skirt? I always wear long pants and long sleeved shirts anyway but I'm just worried about being denied entry because I'm wearing pants.
2) Contact lens solution. It looks like they sell the same type of contact lens solution I use but under a different brand name. I can't find an ingredient list to make sure it's the exact same though. Should I suck it up and buy 4 months worth of contact lens solution here or hope my gut instinct is right and buy it there?
3) Outerwear. I'll be in Italy from January to mid-March. We're staying close to Florence. Should I bring a raincoat and a jacket? It looks like it rains an awful lot. I mean, temperatures around 0C/32F aren't necessarily cold to me, in fact I'd probably be commenting that it's a lot like summer after suffering through -40C, but I'd like to be prepared.

Thanks in advance!

[Sorry if this is off-topic; I couldn't find a tag for Greece, but as it's in the EU I figured it's European in the broadest sense at least. Also, for whatever reason this post is not letting me tag it, so apologies in advance!]

I'm an American college student studying abroad in London. My host university calendar works out so that we have a one month "spring break" encompassing the entire moth of April. During this time, the one place that my friends and I all really want to go is Greece. We are planning on seeing other destinations during this time, so we are planning on spending a max of ten days throughout Greece, a lot of it in the islands.

The thing is, we will probably be a fairly large group (8+ college students aged 20-26 -- let the drama ensue!) and we rarely all agree upon what to do. Many of my friends only want to go to Greece for the beaches and to work on their tans. I love a good beach day, but I'm also pretty athletic and looking forward to going on at least one good hike or doing something more actively outdoorsy than just sitting around on the sand/pebbles/volcanic lava that makes up the shoreline. Our group also has some people who are really interested in culture, history, art, etc. while others would be fine partying every night and sleeping through a good part of the day. I'm closer to the former than the latter, though I am looking forward to exploring the local nightlife scene -- I'll just set an alarm to make sure I'm up in the morning!

With this in mind, I'm wondering if anyone has advice on the cities/islands to visit in Greece that will cater to the widest variety of traveler types? Where should we go if we're looking for beaches AND museums, great nightlife AND gorgeous nature hikes? (I would even be up for stuff more long the lines of 'adventure tourism' but I think that makes me the odd woman out among this group.) Athens is a must for me, and is most likely where we will begin and end our journey, but I also would really love to see some out-of-the-way (or just breathtakingly beautiful) islands, in particular Santorini. Also, any advice on how long to stay in a given place would be great. The plan is for this to be the more relaxing leg of the trip, for those who want it to be, so I'm figuring no less than two nights in any single destination to minimize the feeling of being too hurried.

Any other recommendations -- restaurants, hostels, local dishes to try, sights to see etc. -- are more than welcome!

Eu preciso comprar um SIM card para meu telefone. Eu nao quero fazer um plano e queria saber qual eh a melhor compania para recargar meus minutos quando eu precisar. Quero algo barato e seria bom se eu pudesse recargar pela internet!

Hi there, I'm planning on visiting Sweden at the start of June. I am a 26 year old african-american female and I will be traveling alone. I've chatted with people who live in Stockholm, and I've researched a bit about blacks in Sweden and everything seems to be positive (for females anyway). I've heard that Swedes are extremely polite to foreigners, especially in the major cites of Goteborg and Stockholm. I was just wondering if anyone in this comm has anything to add to this topic, or if you've visited Sweden, Stockholm specifically to share your experience. Thanks a lot :)

Me and a friend want to go to London and Munich (from the US) early next summer and stay with some friends. She'll be 18 at the time, and i'll be 17 (turning 18 within a month), but she'll have just turned 18 the week or two before. My parents are throwing up a fight, and what they're saying now is that i can't travel to Europe alone on a minor's passport (i got mine when i was 13). Is this true? I'm a little skeptical because i've gone to Germany twice already on this passport, one time at age 15 (turning 16 within a month) with just a school group and a few teachers/adults and had no trouble, but i'd like to hear what you guys know/think/have experienced.

Hello all! I posted here earlier this year, and now I come back for more advice.

So, around early October I decided that I'd like to go to the U.K. Originally it was going to be next year around September but I decided that it wouldn't be enough time for me to save money (I barely had AUS$2,200.00 at the time and discovered I'd have only saved about an extra $2,600 by the time I went). I decided not to go and now I'm saving for summer 2011, as I didn't want to be caught out of pocket with no where to go.

My original plan was to go on a tour with someone like TopDeck, but now it's the tour, work for a few weeks in London and then backpack to Paris and Amsterdam before flying home to Australia. The tour I was looking at covers a majority of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland and is AUS$2,500. I did a bar drinks and coffee making course recently, as I'd learned from various travel agencies that bar work is the easiest to get while you're overseas.

I'm looking to travel with STA Travel (going to book before my 25th birthday next year so I'll get a youth discount) and I worked out my expenses and what I'll need.

I guess what I'm basically asking is what are some cheap hostels in the U.K/Europe; approximately how much will I need to save (I'm planning on getting a job between now and next November, I'll be able to save more than the AUS$6,000 I'll have this time next year); what places hire on the spot and what type of Visa would I need to do the above?

Aceitam os russos morando no Brasil ? :-)

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Это была самая необычная свадьба в моей практике... Весь день лил проливной дождь, дул сильный ветер... Не было торжественной регистрации и банкета... Была лишь прогулка - в поле, в яхт-клубе...