travel.
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- vague
if you had to choose between:
dublin, ireland...
lisbon, portugal...
or wine-country in spain..which would you rather spend time traveling in and exploring.
- van_rijn0
wine-country in spain hands down
- vague0
cool, why?
- Corvo0
what do you mean exactly by "wine-country in Spain"?
- horton0
portugal and spain.. doable as one trip.
both have some beautiful spots to visit and some horrid tourist infested eyesores to avoid.
fly into bilbao.. check the guggenheim and basque culture, then cross inland to portugal.
- mrdobolina0
you sure are a curious dude.
- rafalski0
Speaking of travel.. I just came to Poland for a few days to see the family and so on. Found out on the news later on, just when my plane was landing tonight, some other plane somewhere in Poland crashed, killing 19. Feels weird.
Back to your question: kind of depends where you're flying from and what your travelling and exploring preferences are.
Fun things to do (travelling and exporing related):
Lisbon fun - jumping on random old trams to see where they get you
Dublin - walking around town trying not to step on the barfs
Wine-Country - no idea where that is but I'd go there someday..
- menos0
what Corvo said, fo sho.
- Corvo0
Spain and Portugal are doable in the same trip but it depends on the kind of travel you're making. If you want to land in a place and explore it, i'd say you can get similar thrills in Spain and Portugal. Apart from similarities there are also differences. Spain is more adapted to tourism than Portugal, but it is also more similar in general, whereas north and central/south Portugal are completely different places. Spain has wonderful cities up north imho. Never been to Barcelona, but Madrid is great and broad with lots of stuff to do/see esp. the museums and night-life. Bilbao is an industrial city, and it depends much on the Guggenheim. Fun in Basque-Country is to drive around it, exploring the small villages and mountains; Santander is wonderful; Oviedo is my favourite city in northern Spain and it is close to the Picos de Europa National Park, which is outstanding. Oviedo is busy, very beautiful and still somewhat regional and authentic - similar to Oporto in northern Portugal. Salamanca is definitely worth a visit but it's hard to get there, unless you're driving into central Portugal which is nice but slow-paced. Oporto is a very beautiful city and you can go on board a ship up-river into a serious mountainous "wine region" with outstanding food tradition and boarding tradition. South, you have Coimbra (1 day is enough to visit) and then you have Lisbon. Lisbon and whereabouts towns like Sintra can take you a 3-day visit. Since I was born there, but still from a tourist pov, I think the best thing about Lisbon is to let the city pace take you in and enjoy its surprises. It's a fairly de-organized city but it's very welcoming and the natives are cool :P
- now gimmie the prize for the most boring post ever.Corvo
- Corvo0
From your list, I would do Dublin first. Mainly because the other places you mentioned are more familiar to me - and I have this thing about Ireland. But I'm guessing that for a north-american Dublin won't be so surprising or different as a southern-european town or country will be.