I've worked on 4 continents.
Whether Consulting internationally or visiting for a holiday, here are some useful tips from my travels.
- Flights
- Hotels vs Airbnb
- Mobile Internet Access
- Dining Out
- Translation
- Driving
- Countries
Book ahead of time for better price comparisons.
Same goes for ferries if driving.
Hotels and Airbnb vary as to which one is cheaper by location.
Check both.
The earlier you book the better deals you'll get.
It's annoying to be booking at the last minute because you'll get the least good places for the most expensive prices.
If driving, make sure to double check parking at hotels or Airbnbs.
If Expedia shows Parking Available include of Parking Included, that means there will be parking charges,
which can be quite high.
You have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the hotel listing to found out what the charges are in the small print.
I often prefer booking places a bit away from the centers to get easier parking as many central accomodations, both hotels and airbnbs lack good parking.
Also, if you're only going into the centres in the evenings, often you can get cheap or even free parking.
I've used my UK sim from Smarty across all the EU countries I visited as it permits use of your plan's bundled service within EU countries at no extra charge, and the monthly contract is cheap as chips.
Now that is progress!
- included calls
- included texts
- up to 12GB of your data plan
- I actually increased my data plan because I used it for GPS everywhere, and didn't want to risk running out
There is a tweak you need to make to your phone to enable it for roaming:
https://smarty.co.uk/roaming-setup
which basically comes down to changing your Mobile Service data MMS APN to mob.asm.net in your phone settings.
You can buy data plans for a certain number of days.
Google travel e-sims and add the country you are travelling to for more options.
- https://www.airalo.com/ - follow the installation instructions and make sure to enable
Data Roamingunder the e-sim settings otherwise the internet won't connect - https://esim.holafly.com/
Use Google Maps - filter by:
Top Ratedon phone or4.5+Star rating on desktop- Distance
- Price eg.
£, ££or£££if it's date night
Places just outside the centres are often better value for money and top quality food, but some central places are great too.
I leave a couple recommendations in each location listed below.
Some places don't have English menus - these are often the best places that aren't so spoilt by foreign money and tourist trap churn allowing them to lower their standards.
You will need to use a translation app ...
If travelling to a non-English speaking country, I recommend downloading the Google Translate app:
- Translates typed words
- Translates spoken words into typed words and immediately translates them
- Translates pictures replacing words into another language
- uses Google Lens AI
- Large list of supported languages
- Optional: download language support when on wifi
- didn't notice this making much impact on my data plan either way
Ferries are surprisingly expensive, similar in price to an air fair.
This probably works out a little more economical if having more than one person in the car.
You should book ahead of time due to limited slots, and for better pricing.
EU countries have town symbols along routes which automatically drop the speed limit to 50kmph whether they declare it explicitly or not.
This is a local knowledge that will get you done and your license revoked if you hit 100kmph. See Latvia.
Police may refuse you entry or blackmail you out of money if you don't have all of the following documents:
- Passport
- UK driver's license
- International driver's permit (get this from the Post Office it's only around £5 but requires a passport photo)
- Insurance certificate
- Vehicle Registration V5C paper proof of ownership
- Serbian police refused to accept digital proof of ownership via insurance certificate
- they insisted on physical original paper copy
- they said it was the equivalent to "Passport for the car"
Driving in the EU additionally requires:
- breakdown kit (AA does one), including:
- high viz jacket (which must be available in the passenger compartment
- breakdown triangle
- headlamp converters
Headlamp converters are basically headlamp stickers that change the glare direction of your headlamps to shine the other way because you drive on the right in Europe instead of the left like in the UK.
Apparently the French police are likely to pull you over and fine you if you don't have these.
Do not speed, you only need to go a meagre 50kmh above the speed limit and the Latvian police will revoke your license.
This is easy to do in towns which are set to only 50kmph speed limits whether they explicitly declare it or not.
If you see a car pushing into the back of you, do not speed up.
It may be a police car that will only put on its siren after you've increased speed to breach the +50kmph maximum penalty of €360 euros and a revoked license.
The extended time pulled over by the police not knowing if they are going to arrest you and impound your vehicle on top of revoking your license will set you back a lot more time than any speed up would give you.
It's quite possible they do this on purpose 15 minutes from the Estonia border to catch unsuspecting foreigners driving between the countries.
Let cars overtake you than fall for this unmarked police car entrapment.
My UK phone number worked across all European countries I travelled through, including:
- France
- Germany
- Poland
- Lithuania
- Latvia
- Estonia
- Sweden
- Slovakia
- Hungary
It stopped working when I got to Serbia which is not in the EU.
Going from EU to non-EU was a bit of a jarring experience.
There may be something to the EU integration project after all.
Some more specific tips for different countries.
A good destination for a long weekend. This capital feels sparse to a Londoner.
The taxi driver said young people leave because there isn't enough to do, but it's good for a weekend city break with the girlfriend, especially if you like central european architecture, and just for this next recommendation.
Casino Wien is probably the best restaurant in Vienna. It is above the casino, which was surprisingly not fancy at all, smokey and low grade. But the restaurant above was a different story.
Try the Chateaubriand for two with your girlfriend - only top restaurants do it.
Nice small country, easy to drive from the UK, perhaps 2-3 hours after a ferry from Dover to Calais.
Port city, not much there from what I recall, been to a good restaurant there but can't remember its name.
A bit of a western capital dump with high immigration, graffiti etc.
West Belgium is nicer, with Bruges having a historic town catering to tourists with restaurants, ice creams and coffee shops.
Marco Polo Noodles is recommended on the main strip.
City with a mix of old and new, not quite as nice as Bruges, but better than Brussels.
Seli's Noodle Bar and Soup Lounge are both recommended here, and both are very affordable.
Liege is worse than Brussels, with high incidence of homelessness and street begging.
Gentrified town just south of Brussels where Napoleon lost the famous battle.
Le Bar À Soupe, Savage Burger and Thai Cafe are recommended here, with the latter being more expensive. You will need your Google Translate camera app to translate the menu as they don't speak English.
It's been most of a lifetime since I've been.
Similar to the US, but with cheaper healthcare.
Just outside Vancouver, the basements of their houses are bigger than UK houses. They often have gyms, cinema rooms, and pool tables there, as well as spare bedrooms.
Coming back to the UK from there was quite a downgrade.
Sorry but I can't call it Czechia.
It's too close in naming to the war torn Chechnia. They didn't think about about the negative branding on this rename.
A brilliant historic capital, famed for cheap beer and English stag parties. There are literally signs on the front of venues that say "No English stag parties". Such is the bad reputation of the English lads on holiday!
Prague has many good restaurants and excellent architecture in the old town.
Excellent holiday destination, but be warned, it is too hot in August.
The best of the three Baltic countries IMO, with prettier women and just generally feels slightly more developed.
Tallinn, the capital, can be done in 2 days. There are plenty of good restaurants to visit.
Olde Hansa medievil restaurant is highly recommended. It's expensive but worth it. It has live medieval music, the staff are tunics, and the food is fit for royalty. You can even get bear on the menu.
A surprising number of people in France do not speak English at all.
If you've been travelling to other countries where they often accommodate English speakers this might come as a surprise for a country close to England.
Good for a stopover on your way to Beligum from the UK ferrying to Calais.
"A less good version of London" as my colleague described it.
The capital is heavily immigrated from Africa, with lots of graffiti and not very nice metro.
I have literally been told off for not speaking French as a visitor. Much less welcoming than other parts of the world.
The many Chateaux outside of Paris in the French countryside are nice though (I used to go every year with a company for retreats).
The autobahn - the german highway - is long.
If you have a need for speed, Germany is probably one of the best places to drive your car.
Germany is a much bigger country which you feel after driving through Belgium and then hitting the much more vast driving distances in Germany.
You can expect to drive for 8 hours to go from West to East Germany.
TODO
Berlin is a relatively affordable capital with good restaurants and what feels like much lower population density than London.
It is not as popping as London at 9pm on a Saturday night as a result though.
A small town to the West of Berlin with some old gothic buildings, a good place to walk around with an ice cream.
Large cathedral city with a selection of restaurants.
Fräulein Herborths is recommended here.
A city with a great selection of restaurants.
"Shawarma city" takeaway is recommended here, good food and good prices. There is often a queue around the corner for it across the hours of the evening.
Surprisingly mass immigrated with a lot of graffiti, with homeless people along the high street.
Limited dining options, middle eastern probably being among the best options.
Large metropolitan multicultural city with many restaurants.
MA'LOA Poké Bowl is recommended, and BKK Thai Street Food is also popular.
A city with a lot of middle eastern restaurants.
Zambezi Springs is recommended here - rare access to good African cuisine.
Lovely small germanic town. This is what I imagined German paradise to look like.
Gasthaus Lichtenberg is recommended here.
City just outside the west of Berlin.
KOI Sushi, Grill & Soup is highly recommended here. They don't speak English but it's worth the translation effort, excellent food and good prices. The Thai tom yum soup and the sushi are recommended.
The sour cabbage soup in a bread bowl is the local speciality.
See the Do Not Speed section.
Riga, the capital, is nice for a visit for perhaps 2 days.
You will run out of things to do.
Rozengrāls medieval restaurant is recommended. They do a suckling piglet spit roast only on Friday and Saturdays.
Check out the view from St Peter's Church, they will charge €9 for entry to the tower. Capitalism applies even to the church it seems.
Lithuania is noticeably poorer than Poland.
There is a common Georgian restaurant chain which is well worth a visit for their traditional soup.
Vilnius, the capital, is worth a visit but you don't really need more than a couple days as it's not that big.
Chačapuri is a recommended restaurant. It's a Georgian chain with an excellent traditional Georgian soup with beef and vegetables with a bit of spice. Another traditional dish Khachapuri is basically a similar to a pizza but with more dough around the edges. A bit bready for my liking but something you may want to try once.
Nice to visit for a couple days, but everything was closed and quiet at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon when I arrive, very different to the hustle and bustle of London.
One of my favourite countries.
I was very surprised how nice Poland was upon arriving, not just in one or two places either, but across the country's major towns and cities.
- Low immigration
- Feels safer than the UK (supported by crime stats)
- Food is good and reasonably priced
- Airbnbs are expensive though
- Poland is not a cheap country any more
- Large country tht takens 6-8 hours to drive across
- Parking is often cheap or free after 8pm, which is great for going out to get dinner in the centres.
- Good and cheap Metro
Historic town with lovely centre and plenty of good restaurants.
An excellent stopover choice when driving across Poland.
Apteka Restauracja & Koktajlbar is a recommended stop here for dinner and drinks.
Not much there, dead if you're trying to use it for a late night stopover.
A large port city in the north of Poland.
Good restaurants and old town.
Not cheap. My Airbnb cost me more than in Dubai.
One of my colleagues is a contractor in Gdansk so gave me the local tour.
Taxis may rip you off if they hear you speak English. He said you can get away without paying them if they don't put the meter on. I don't know if this is true as I was driving so didn't try it.
He compared Uber like taxis apps when we went out.
Gdansk has ferry connections to Sweden. There was zero border control coming off the ferry from Sweden to Gdansk, which surprised me.
Slaska 19 is a good restaurant away from the centre with an affordable weekday lunch menu and good wifi.
Surprisingly busy city with large central communal areas and nightlife.
Tatiana restaurant is recommended here.
Alahamora - magiczna kawiarnia is a cafe treat for Harry Potter fans. Unfortunately they have no wifi.
Tourist hotspot.
"F*ck Warsaw, go to Krakow!", one of my Polish colleagues told me. He was right.
Medium sized city, mall and restaurants, but lacks the historical centre attraction of other Polish cities.
Nice small centre, good for a coffee stopover.
Sofi Len Cafe is recommended here.
Historic town with lovely centre and plenty of good restaurants.
My first stopover in Poland when driving from Germany. I was pleasantly surprised how nice it was.
An excellent stopover choice when driving across Poland.
The most expensive area in Poland, near Gdansk.
Good beaches, restaurants, and walkways.
Decent low pressure capital.
One of my colleagues moved back to Warsaw as a contractor.
Do not drive through the north Hungarian counties, there are serious ghettos that feel very unsafe:
Story here:
https://medium.com/@harisekhon/the-revelation-of-why-hungary-is-so-anti-immigration-059259e51cf2
An excellent holiday destination for a long weekend with the girlfriend.
Caviar & Bull is an amazing dining experience to take the girlfriend if you're in the mood to drop £300 on a fancy night out. The food is easily among the best I've ever haad around the world.
A modest town with a small centre to the east of the country.
A useful stopover point but there is not much to do there, don't spend more than a couple days there.
You will struggle to get fed once it hits 9pm as the kichens close much earlier than their, so make sure you dine earlier.
Bajnok Étterem is the best place I ate at here, followed by New York café & bistro. OneBistro is a late night cheap eat open until 10pm.
Guri Sörbisztró is best late night drinking spot open until midnight when everything else is dead. Try the pink tonic if you're non alcoholic.
Korzó Kávéház is another drinks only place open until midnight.
TiszapArt Café is open until 11pm, with good lemonades.
Despite it's 4.5 rating on Google, I was not impressed with the food, either starter or main, at Evezős Csárda and would give it a miss.
A very hot, mosquito-ridden country with overpopulated streets and wealth inequality, which means a foreigner can live well with Western money.
Famed for its more traditional women, many men known as "Passport Bros" go to find something more resembling wives than even married men in the West have.
There are a lot of missing signs, apparently because locals take them down and melt them for money.
In the capital, the malls were relatively sparse since a lot of the poorer locals were kept out by security.
Kidnappings and random of the children of the rich are also a problem, with gated communities having their own security forces.
I used the https://www.airalo.com/ e-sim data only for $14 for 5GB valid for 30 days.
It is still legal to smoke indoors in Serbia.
This really isn't the EU.
Unfortunately people seem to smoke a lot in Serbia. I've changed tables while dinning outdoors at al fresco restaurants, only to have someone else then start smoking next to me at another table.
I've moved indoor tables to escape from smokers, and even cut short a coffee evening in frustration with people chain-smoking nearby due to getting fed up with all the smoke inside the coffee shop.
You have to feel sorry for the Serbian wait staff subjected to second-hand smoke all day every day at work.
Quite shocking that Serbia permits this.
I've asked the locals about this and they said there are a couple non-smoking venues "but nobody goes there".
Car Go - like Uber.
Pink Taxi is another although with mixed reviews.
Lux Taxi app couldn't even register using my UK mobile number - I got this error 🤪
Expect a 3 hour queues at the Serbian border.
I asked a guy in the queue of cars in front of me and he said 3-4 hours was common.
IMPORTANT - Make sure you have every document possible including your vehicle registration otherwise the Serbian police will either refuse to let you in or blackmail you out money. Don't ask me how I know this.
See the Driving Checklist above.
I also saw several people pulled over by Serbian police.
Be wary of Serbian police. "You are not in the EU now" as they said to me.
Overall, a horrible experience driving to Serbia and I would not do it again.
You immediately feel like you've gone from Europe to some dangerous 3rd world country where you are more worried about the police themselves.
The capital is reasonable in the center. Overall it is slightly cheaper to dine than other European cities.
The top end of the range is typically comparable to other european cities.
The lower end is typically about half that.
Street Pasta Bar - Sremska - is my top pick here - cheap, fresh juices, good wifi and young crowd (probably due to it being cheap). I've spent many hours on their wifi with regular top ups of juices and smoothies because they're so affordable, on top of lunch and dinner. Closes earlier than other restaurants at 9pm so it's better as a daytime place. Non-smoking, a rare find in Belgrade.
Elephant's Food House - another good cheap lunch type place. Closes early at 6pm.
Kafeterija Magazin 1907 - good coffee shop with 2 levels right in the centre, often busy and open late until 11pm.
Fit Bar - small healthy eat place - one of the rare no smoking places in Belgrade
Burger House Bros Centar - very good burger restaurant
Boutique #2 - prime location restaurant for drinks or food on the main parade, very popular and good
Trattoria Pepe - excellent Italian 5 minutes walk from the centre - worth the walk
Casa Nova - has both outdoor and a non-smoking section on the upper level rear section (quiet section, everybody in Belgrade seems to smoke)
Velika Skadarlija - good restaurant with great outdoor seating area, with the odd plug if you need it
Good central district of restaurants.
Cheaper Airbnbs as 1.5 hour drive from Belgrade.
Petrus Caffe - excellent restaurant, very popular with large outdoor seating area and excellent drinks menus, good for dining or drinks, open until midnight
Kombinat - cool late night cafe open until 11pm
Loft Downtown - very popular cafe & restaurant with outdoor seating
Bistro " Pastai" - a local cheap eat pasta place with good juices
Small city with a nice historic centre, but none of the venues I tried impressed me.
Would try Slavia if I were to visit gain.
A dangerous high crime country due to high inequality (the Gini coefficient of inequality correlates to crime).
You will need a car in South Africa as its road infrastructure and distancing is similar to the US.
Make sure to lock your doors immediately to reduce risk of carjacking.
Johannesburg, the capital, is where the biz is, where people cite Cape Town by the beach for leisure.
Houses have bars on their windows, barred gates with 2 dogs, and guns for good reason. Violent home invasions are a common problem - one of my colleauges in the UK emigrated from South Africa after a home invasion where they pulled the gate off and invaded a mere 30 minutes after his family had left. You may only get one close call like that in life.
Stick to the foreigner areas of Sandton and Rosebank. Seriously.
Has a good mall, restaurants and hotels. The Da Vinci hotel is nice for example.
Nelson Mandela square should be relatively safe thanks to being surrounded by restaurants and mall with security.
Also has a mall and good restaurants.
Restaurants on the street outside the mall are patrolled by street security to ensure you make it back to your car.
Ferry from Tallinn in Estonia to Sweden and then another ferry down to Gdanks, Poland, is a way out if your license gets suspended for speeding in Latvia.
Police pulled me over coming off the ferry from Tallinn, Estonia, and did a very invasive search of my car and all luggage, they opened everything, down to my toiletries and car bonnet.
Story here:
The centre of Stockholm is ok for a day or two, probably not more. It's weirdly broken up into small island-like lands, and lacks the impressive design and architecture of the central european capitals. The girls are pretty of course.
The roads are not well designed and it's easy to take a wrong turn, and parking in a problem in the centre, unlike Warsaw for example.
Do not stay in Kista. Mass immigrated and not one of the safest feeling places. The Memory Hotel in Kista was cheap for a reason - it was absolutely dead in August like I have never seen before, no staff most of the time or seeing other guests.
Restaurang Kryp In is good in the centre.
The United Arab Emirates is one of the most civilized and safe societies I have ever seen.
They have zero tolerance for criminals or welfares spongers. They would literally deport half of the UK, which is why it's a nicer place.
Dubai is more of a city-state than a city as Europeans would understand it.
It would be extremely difficult to walk due to the large distances and high heat.
"I don't walk anywhere in Dubai" one of my Brit connections told me. I saw why after I arrived. Even a 15 minute walk to lunch will leave you a sweaty mess by the time you get there. People drive with air conditioning and dive into malls, offices and restaurants with air conditioning.
I used Virgin Mobile on a prepaid contract for around £200 for the year which was the cheapest deal I could find.
You will need a car or taxi everywhere.
Careem is the everything app, including Taxis.
It does everything from Uber-style taxis, to food delivery, to rental bicycles.
You are required to get a medical blood screening, chest x-ray, biometrics like fingerprinting to get a visa here.
Once you have residence you are no longer allowed to use your UK driver's license and will get a shock as your car rental company refuses to release the car to you.
You will then need to Careem around the city to get your Emirates ID and then your Drivers License which will require local bank or cash payment.
The weather is so hot even by May some people use sun umbrellas - so hot that it broke my car phone holder. Rich people usually leave Dubai and go to Europe for the summer. Copying them was how a lot of the European countries on this list were covered!
- Mashreq is the easiest to use, app-only like Starling or Monzo
- ADCB is the next best, but the premium account is a big hassle and has a minimum balance requirement
- Emirates NBD has a bad reputation among my peers for being a lot of hassle
- they were a hassle to open, wanting salary certificate
- even closing the account is difficult apparently
- HSBC was a similar hassle to NBD above wanting salary certificate addressed specifically to them
- much more hassle, not like HSBC back in the UK, most UK banks just open accounts easily
- even already having an HSBC UK account doesn't help
You will get finger printed entering the country.
California, the once golden place is not what it used to be after doubling its population from mass immigration.
Weather is great though, restaurants are decent (London's restaurants are better though).
Many of these places are only places to go on company expense as the hotels will set you back quite a lot per night.
Americans are now fleeing the failing Democrat state for Texas, which will then become the next domino to fall.
A nicer more suburban manufactured city than LA, with decent shops and restaurants.
A giant square grid of blocks. From the plane it looks like The Matrix.
Hollywood boullivard is nothing fancy in the grand scheme of things. It's just a tourist strip of a few restaurants and shops.
Rodeo Drive is the upmarket shopping road of expensive designer brands.
Beverley Hills are not as fancy as one would believe from Beverley Hills Cop movies. More like a $1M+ middle class area.
Lucille's Smokehouse BBQ is the best BBQ I've had in the entire world. I've been searching for a BBQ place to match it across countries for over a decade now and nothing has come close. The warm apple-cinnamon bun starters are amazing as are the giant beef ribs with the best BBQ glaze I've ever had. My colleagues and I drove half way across LA to go to this because everybody knows it is the best. If you're in LA or one of their expanded locations, do not miss it. Looks like they now have a couple branches in Vegas and one in Phoenix, Arizona too.
Crustacean in Beverley Hills is a good upmarket seafood restaurant with fish in the see-through floor as you enter. Impressive. Recommended if you want something a bit more upmarket.
A tech hub town with serious tech millionaire money, as evidenced by things like the McLaren showroom.
It was the first place I ever recall seeing a Tesla in 2013. When the traffic lights turned green, for a moment I thought our car wasn't even moving relative to seeing it take off and leaving us behind in our Infinity Q37.
Quite nice area, if you can afford it.
A somewhat more chill city than Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Restaurants were not that cheap though.
Too expensive for even most of my engineer colleagues at Cloudera to live in.
There were homeless people on every block in 2013 when I was there. It's apparently much worse now.
Beware if you walk just one block west of the central shopping district you'll end up on the road of Tenderloin which is full of drug addicts in broad daylight. Walking through a group of 4 drug addicts on the pavement is not a pleasant experience even if you think you could take them. Not recommended for women.
Boudin is a local chain famous for its sour dough bread and soup in bread bowls.