"It took the Americans 3 hours to fly home from Jamaica but us Brits had to fly 9h. Seems unfair"

Well, a friend of mine born and tertiary educated in Hawaii was asked by a mainland school for his TOEFL results.

Interesting "logic" :D

Not on Tripadvisor, but on a cruise board:

"We are so glad to be leaving Rome and getting on the ship. The only decent meals we had in Rome were at the Hard Rock Cafe and McDonald's."

This one just makes me sad.

My cruise roommate and I just shook our head when saw that. We wondered if they were the couple we saw gobbling down something from Burger King while standing in front of the fantastic charcuterie where we'd just eaten lunch for 10 euros for the both of us.

The posts that always make me roll my eyes are the ones complaining that they don't get a full, sit down, freshly prepared breakfast at fairly budget priced hotels.

"All they had was coffee/tea, juice, pastries, fruit, yogurt, and cereal!"

Whaddaya expect for $55?

;)

A Scottish friend with a PhD from Cambridge was required to take the TOEFL prior to getting a student visa to the US. :D


They must have heard him talking.

To be fair, we have had really bad pizza in Italy. It is possible to eat badly. Also, at the end of a long trip most places were closed (August) and we had a hankering for Chinese, and a well respected guidbook sent us to the worst Chinese I've ever had, including canned chop suey.

Guidebooks seem to curse any restaurant they mention, especially in the big European cities. Some of the worst food I've ever had has been thanks to Lonely Planet.

Italy isn't the place where I would go to eat Pizza. Especially in Tuscany, I haven't yet seen a restaurant serving good looking pizzas. There are however lots and lots of good regional dishes. I have yet to eat badly in Italy.

So far, I've always been lucky with the selections I made. The Michelin guide (given that they have a selection of inexpensive, but great restaurants) usually make a pretty decent selection. It is useful as well if you are speaking Italian or at the very least French (I encountered lots of restaurants, where the waiter would speak French. Reading the menu is a lot less trickier too).

Lonely Planet has been hit and miss in Asia for me. Some restaurants were great (which was backed by reviews in other guidebooks and on websites), while others were terrible. When I'm somewhere new, I usually read across two to three guidebooks and check the restaurant online as well.

Travel tipps in newspapers and travel magazines can be off too. A friend of mine proposed to go to a Chinese restaurant in London, that was recommended in a relatively recent travel magazine. When we arrived, the restaurant had been closed down by food safety inspection.

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Back to topic:

My all time favourite is

followed by

I live in a US regional tourista area and tend to view the magazine & newspaper restaurant recs as generally in the advertorial/product placement realm, even when it's not stated as such. They push far too many places where the locals know it's not worth the bother or price. I've had far better luck with Yelp in areas where it gets at least a fair amount of chatter.

Many (did i say many) years ago I had the utmost pleasure of staying at the equivalent in Bombay (Yes that is what it was called in the old days). What a friggin dump !! Only as bad as a train from Calcutta to Faraka which was a nightmare I never want to experience ever again.

I usually don't read local magazine. And I don't see the point why a Chinese restaurant in London would pay to get advertise in a small overseas magazine. In that case, AFAIK it was simply someone would had been there just before the place got shut down (or that visited their second location just two blocks away).

I went back to one of my usuals, none of which have ever been closed down in the last 20 years (or more). But their recommendation showed, that you can't always trust them, which is way I usually stick to a proper guidebook+tripadvisor or to the Michelin guide (a bib gourmand is usually a perfect solution for good food at reasonable prices).

We had one one new hire person attend an event in Berlin. HIis complaint was the taxi driver refused to take American dollars! :eek: