rmalloy

This is one of the world’s greatest travel destinations. It has it all. Beautiful hotels. Great food, both Western and Lao. Gorgeous, peaceful natural setting. Interesting culture. Good temple sightseeing. Lots of opportunity for adventure. (Take a boat just across the Mekong and visit the four temples there, and a huge cave with lots of Buddhas. Kids will run up to you and be your tour guides. Trust me, you need them!) Beautiful waterfalls just a short ride out. (You HAVE to go to Guangxi and you should go to Tad Sae.) Fabulous bars. A shockingly high quality museum. (Though small, the Royal Palace has some of the most impressive Asian art I’ve ever seen, in the royal gift room. It was also fascinating to see what different countries gave as gifts. The USA gave, among other things, a momento of the Apollo moon landing with moon rocks and a Lao flag taken to the moon.) Wonderful clean massages. Oh, and all of this at extremely low prices. Luang Prabang probably won’t remain like this for much longer.

I really enjoyed my trip to Prague. Think of it as a peaceful, slow-moving big city with a huge park and an old castle a short walk across the river. The food, beer, and wine were ridiculously yummy for the prices. A super-clean hostel room cost $30. There are multiple classical music concerts every day—I saw a good orchestra play Mozart’s Requiem for about $40. One of my favorite cities in Europe so far.

Travel rating: 8/10

Berlin is a nice city. Seems like a great place to live. As a travel destination, it’s not the greatest though. Things are very spread out. Despite all the history, there’s no one very exciting thing to see. And it’s expensive. Go for a day or two to visit the historic city center and see the great architecture. Otherwise I wouldn’t hang around—I like Prague much better.

Travel rating: 5/10

I like Rotterdam better than the Hague, and would go either to Rotterdam or Utrecht for a second Holland stop. There isn’t any must-see thing in Rotterdam. The Boijmans van Beuningen Museum is worth visiting if you have an open mind regarding modern art; we found it entertaining. My favorite things about Rotterdam were the great Surinamese food and the peaceful, clean atmosphere.

Travel rating: 4/10

Den Haag is not a terribly interesting place. If you’ve walked extensively through the least exciting parts of Amsterdam, you will pretty much have the feel of the Hague. The Mauritshuis, with a strong collection of Vermeers and Rembrandts, is not quite enough to push the city into the “worth visiting” category.

Travel rating: 3/10

Utrecht felt to me like a college-town extension of Amsterdam. It’s a lovely little town of canals, bridges, old churches, eclectic (though not necessarily great) restaurants, and coffee shops (in the Amsterdam sense). It’s also nice to take a bike and ride out into the green pastures, which are just out of town. However, it’s more a place to go to school than a place to see.

Travel rating: 4/10

Numerous people have told me Barcelona is their favorite destination in Europe. I was disappointed. The highlight for me was Parc Guell, which is one of the best urban parks I have seen, containing interesting Gaudi architecture and a neat overall design. Otherwise I found the Gaudi architecture grating and overrated. La Sagrada Familia was a major disappointment for the money—the interior was a shambles. The food tended to be lackluster and overpriced, though we did find a very cool, ridiculously cheap cava bar (perhaps called La Champagneria) with delicious sandwiches, and nearby a cool shot bar called La Chupeteria. Not a bad city, but not all it’s cracked up to be.

Travel rating: 6/10

Perhaps the #1 place to visit in Europe, but I would put Venice ahead. Paris is a great entry point for travelers from the States. My favorite sights: Musee D’Orsay, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Pompidou Center, Luxembourg Gardens.

Travel rating: 10/10

I say Dresden is not worth visiting not because it is actually not worth visiting-I think every place is worth visiting-but because it probably isn’t worth visiting given the time constraints of one’s trip. Dresden was spread out and had few noteworthy attractions. I remember a wonderful Raphael painting in an otherwise dull art museum, a pretty river, a fantastic outdoor food market, and little else. Dresden seemed like a good place to live-visually nice, very peaceful-but not so much to visit. If you have lots of time though, it’s not a bad stop on the train between Berlin and Prague.

Travel rating: 3/10

I love Amsterdam because it is a break from the norm: a place for adventures, enlightenment, relaxation, craziness, debauchery, whatever your heart desires. It’s a place to live a little, to try something new. As a tidy, professional-looking couple replied wondrously when I queried them about the “magic mushrooms” they were looking at in a store display, “It’s a whole new world.”

If you have no desire for such adventure, or to lose yourself in a haze, Amsterdam is not as great. Still there are great attractions, the best of which are the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum, particularly the former. The food and drink is typically mediocre, catering to types who don’t care, though great food-Indonesian especially-can be found. It’s a great place to relax if and only if you like to smoke.

One should keep in mind that Amsterdam is exceedingly seedy and touristy.

Subjective travel rating: 9/10
Objective travel rating: 7/10