Welcome to the Western Europe branch!

Welcome to the Thorn Tree's Western Europe branch.

We hope you find plenty of useful information about travelling to Western Europe here. It is highly recommended that new users check out the Western Europe FAQ thread before posting a new thread as you may find many of the answers you seek there. It also contains helpful information about how to search the forum, advice for how to post your questions, and obsolete information was deleted as recently as June 2008! If you are a returning user or a Europe guru, please help us keep the FAQ thread up-to-date by adding important information which is absent, or pointing out information which is no longer being represented accurately.

Choosing a country to post to:

When you make a post and choose a country from the drop down menu, your post will be added to that... more »

Migrating to a new server

Hi all,

The whole of lonelyplanet.com, including Thorn Tree, is changing hosting providers in the following days. While this change takes place, Thorn Tree and the Lonely Planet website will be unavailable for a short period of time. We will communicate the exact time nearer the date. This migration will hopefully be a matter of hours but we have a lot of Thorntree content to move! We will do everything we can to cause minimal disruption to users. You will be able to chart the progress of the work while the site is down through our Twitter account.

Thanks,

Zabba

pool temperature in may/june

Hello!

We are going to southern Portugal when May turns to June. Are the pools usually warm enough for the kids to swim in that time of year? We have not yet booked a hotel from Albufeira, so I was thinking if we should try to find at least one place with a heated (preferably outdoor) pool, in case the water is otherwise too cold? Are there any places that heat the outdoor pool in the beginning of June?

5 days between Hamburg and Berlin

Hello everyone,

My partner and I will be traveling from Hamburg to Berlin between July 28 and August 2, with my parents. We will already have spent some time in Hamburg visiting family, and we will be in Berlin for all of August, so the time in between is to see other interesting places in the general region. We lived in Germany many years ago but are not very familiar with this part of the country, and I was a bit too young to enjoy it properly!

My parents are not much for big cities, so we would like to see some interesting parts of the countryside. But they have expressed some interest in visiting Dresden.

Our general interests: the outdoors, i.e. hiking or biking, food & drink, and some history. We speak passable-to-good German, for whatever that is worth.

I hope this is not too inadequately researched, and I look forward to any recommendations. more »

The truth about speeding tickets in Italy..

Hello everyone,

We have long been renting cars for our Italian holidays, and every time wondered at how the speed limits seem to not really be followed by anyone.

I have, countless times, been in areas with a posted speed limit of, say, 50 kph, and I was literally the only one driving at that speed, while all other cars were overtaking us (often also honks/light-flashes/gestures). Many times, those 50kph areas were straight portions of clearly out-of-town and non-residential roads, and I would have felt it 100% safe&reasonable to accelerate to at least 70kph. However, I have already received a speeding ticket from one of those holidays, and would rather not take my chances.

I am just wondering which one of these scenarios most likely explains the fact that almost no-one else on the road has the same "fear" as me:
1) Italian drivers have speed camera detectors and thus only... more »

Two days visit to Venice - where to park the car?

Hi, we are planning to visit Venice during our weeklong visit to Italy, will drive a rental car. When booking hotels for the overnight stay, I see that some would not have pariking at all. My question is - where to park the car during the visit? are there some bulk parking lots where one can leave the car for the whole two days and walk around the city or use vaporettos? So is there any way to leave the car with main luggage and forget about it for the two days of searching the Venice?

My Paris Itinerary including 4 days using the Museum Pass

I know the experts will think i'm mad and will hold me in contempt for trying this but i am keen to give this busy itinerary a try. Consider this itinerary the before and i will post on my return about the afters for comparison.

I've bought a four day museum pass for 54euros. And plan to use it to the hilt. I will be in paris for 9 days though and below is my intinerary. The main reason for buying the museum pass is to save time in queues. I will probably break even cost wise if i see two places a day and anymore would be a bonus. I figure i can spend 2-3 hours in most of the bigger museums before exhaustion and for the lourvre i can take the whole day with a decent lunch break in a park somewhere outside.

If you were looking at a map you could see that im going to try to see things that are close together to reduce travelling time between sites. And i am intending to use my b... more »

Advice Needed for North Spain

Hi All!

In August this year, after a historical field trip of South Spain, my friend and I are planning to travel to North Spain. We intend to stay 6 nights in four cities.

Here's our itinerary.

i) Madrid - A Coruna (Leave Madrid at night)
Night in the train

ii) A Coruna
Night @ A Coruna

iii) A Coruna to Llanes
Night @ LLanes

iv) Llanes to Picos de Europa
Night @ Picos

v) Picos
Night @ Picos

vi) Picos to Santillana del Mar
Night @Santillana del Mar

vii) Santillana del Mar to Barcelona

viii) Barcelona to Home

Some Questions:

1) What do you guys think of it?

2) Any recommended guides for Picos? We haven't hike for a very long time, so our stamina isn't that great. A beginner level hike would be much appreciated.

3)Our search online for transport from A Coruna to Llanes comes to a naught. Anyone took this route before... more »

Total Posts?

Here is what is listed my forum activity:

Total Posts: 783
Europe - Western Europe (1,723), Americas - United States of America (516), Americas - Canada (3), Asia - Thailand (3), Travel Bloggers: Don't Forget To Write! (2), Community FAQs (1), Archived (-1,465)

According to my calculator the total posts is 2248 and not 783.

Would look like Thorntree's calculator is not working properly.

Roman Villa

Hi

Im heading to Italy in October. Does anyone know if theres any accommodation in an actual roman villa/castle? We're pretty flexible about locations but prefer the northern half of Italy

We're a family of 6 adults travelling.

Thanks