I grew up all over Southern CA - Orange and LA Counties specifically, and I live in Ventura County now. So if you want any info on those areas, I can help. The tourist traps get a lot of attention, but we have some great local things too. (Like most people dont realize that Ojai, CA is a artists' colony and has a lot of celebrity/famous residents.)
Any information on LA and Ventura sounds great! Anything you'd like to share about either county would be wonderful. =D I'd particularly love to hear about any little shops/pubs/etc that might not show up on the tourist sites, but which has a local reputation as the best place to get a particular food/beer/etc. Just those little out-of-the-way places, if you know what I mean!
Ventura County is not well known outside CA, it seems, despite the fact that a song of songs reference it. We used to be a small surfing community and it's one of the few coastal counties that still has a strong agricultural presence. If you're eating California strawberries, there's a good chance that they were grown here. We also have a lot of lemon and orange orchards, which is why Sunkist has a big packing house here
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IN LA, I tend to stay closer to Hollywood and I know a few clubs in WeHo that are small, hard to find, and have great live music. It's fun because you never know who you'll run into in there. One night, it was Katherine Heigl, another Timothy Hutton. My favorite is the Hotel Cafe, which, if you have never been there before, is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to find, because the street is actually the back door... and the main door with the doorman is down a narrow alley and sandwiched between the building and a parking structure
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Within the UK, he might well look to Youth Hostels for low cost accommodation :- http://www.yha.org.uk/ has details on where the hostels are and how much it costs to stay there.
One unusual tourist attraction I can think of for him to visit is the Falkirk Wheel which is a very clever boat lift which replaced a whole flight of locks.
Thank you! I've definitely been exploring hostels as his standard choice of accomodation; that site looks like it'll be very useful indeed. The Falkirk Wheel also looks fascinating and I've got that bookmarked as a possible place for my character to go to. I figure he'll enjoy the boat trips! =D
I'm definitely looking towards hostels as my character's standard choice of accomodation, wherever possible. I hadn't thought of couchsurfer or any similar homestay sites, though, so thanks for that suggestion!
Of the places you listed, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Philippines are likely to make the list. Also maybe parts of North India, depending on where you're familiar with? I've got South India pretty much covered already, so I won't have to pick your brain too much about that. Any information you'd care to share about these places would be brilliant - especially those little, out-of-the-way places that just don't make it to tourist sites and must-see lists. Thank you! =D
Okay, well, most of my time in India was in South India. I went to Mumbai for a few days but didn't have time to do anything. (It was for work.) So I can't really help there.
I was in the Philippines for a research project, so that trip was not really like how I usually travel (ie, much nicer). I was mostly in Manila, where I didn't do a lot of tourism stuff because that wasn't why I was there. But we did take a couple days to go to Donsol, which is south of Manila, where we swam with whale sharks and also went on a firefly cruise on the river, a hilariously weird experience because it turned out that the cruise was operating illegally, a police boat stopped us, the cruise operators bribed the police, and then abandoned our boat on the side of the river. The fireflies were AMAZING, though.
Bulgaria is definitely the place I can say the most about because I lived there for a little over two years. I'm trying to think of off the beaten path things, but really, I think Bulgaria in general is off the beaten path, ha! Rila Monastery is
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How about following the canals? They all have towpaths he could cycle along, with pubs at regular intervals for food and drink. Between towns they go through some beautiful scenery, enter towns and cities through run down areas but the city centres have often made a feature of the canals, see the Gas Street Basin in Birmingham for instance.
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I was thinking the same thing. Some of my family members went on a two week long canal trip and loved it. (They claimed that going out into rural England was like visiting hobbitown.)
It's also worth considering transportation. I lived in London for a bit, but found it somewhat difficult to get into rural England as I didn't have a car. Buses, though, are fairly nice and often inexpensive if they're along regularly frequented routes. (Cambridge to London was around 10 pounds, I think? And it was a nice bus, with wifi!) But they only go to certain places, and only at certain times. Trains are also an option, but they seemed to be both more expensive and less convenient than the bus routes.
In many ways, it was actually easier to get to other major cities in Europe than to rural England, based on how there were lots of cheap Ryan air flights out of London.
Trains are overcrowded and expensive, buses are infrequent and expensive. By car my journey to work was 20K and too half an hour, by bus the first bus ran every 20mins and cost £3, I then had to change to another bus that ran half hourly and cost £3-50, the last bus only cost £2-50 and the journey took 2 hours. And the same coming home. Transport in London is different from the rest of the country. :~(
Transport in London is different from the rest of the country. :~(
This is very true, and a very important point for those writing UK-set stories. Write about Birmingham, or even more so Bristol as though it were London, and locals will simply boggle at you. (I know Bristol very well: it's a nice city, but public transport is appalling for a place of its size.)
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One unusual tourist attraction I can think of for him to visit is the Falkirk Wheel which is a very clever boat lift which replaced a whole flight of locks.
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Of the places you listed, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Philippines are likely to make the list. Also maybe parts of North India, depending on where you're familiar with? I've got South India pretty much covered already, so I won't have to pick your brain too much about that. Any information you'd care to share about these places would be brilliant - especially those little, out-of-the-way places that just don't make it to tourist sites and must-see lists. Thank you! =D
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I was in the Philippines for a research project, so that trip was not really like how I usually travel (ie, much nicer). I was mostly in Manila, where I didn't do a lot of tourism stuff because that wasn't why I was there. But we did take a couple days to go to Donsol, which is south of Manila, where we swam with whale sharks and also went on a firefly cruise on the river, a hilariously weird experience because it turned out that the cruise was operating illegally, a police boat stopped us, the cruise operators bribed the police, and then abandoned our boat on the side of the river. The fireflies were AMAZING, though.
Bulgaria is definitely the place I can say the most about because I lived there for a little over two years. I'm trying to think of off the beaten path things, but really, I think Bulgaria in general is off the beaten path, ha! Rila Monastery is ( ... )
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It's also worth considering transportation. I lived in London for a bit, but found it somewhat difficult to get into rural England as I didn't have a car. Buses, though, are fairly nice and often inexpensive if they're along regularly frequented routes. (Cambridge to London was around 10 pounds, I think? And it was a nice bus, with wifi!) But they only go to certain places, and only at certain times. Trains are also an option, but they seemed to be both more expensive and less convenient than the bus routes.
In many ways, it was actually easier to get to other major cities in Europe than to rural England, based on how there were lots of cheap Ryan air flights out of London.
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This is very true, and a very important point for those writing UK-set stories. Write about Birmingham, or even more so Bristol as though it were London, and locals will simply boggle at you. (I know Bristol very well: it's a nice city, but public transport is appalling for a place of its size.)
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