Three maxims for travel: Beware the Square, Mind your Ps and Qs, Count the Reviews.
1. Beware the Square*
Remember: everything sold in the central area of a touristic city will be three times the price and have half the quality. This goes for food, ice-cream, coffee, cocktails, souvenirs, musical performances, you name it.
If you want a chance to soak up the ambiance, do as we do and visit in the late morning to have a cup of coffee, or splurge on your aperativo before dinner.
- * while most plazas, zócalos and piazzi will be square-shaped, the rule still applies for boulevards, downtowns and main streets.
2. Mind your Ps and Qs
‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ in the local language go a long way, as do a variety of other phrases that one can learn when arriving in a new country:
- #1–10, 20, 30, up to 100 (depending on inflation!)
- Good morning
- Good afternoon
- Good day
- Good evening
- Goodnight
- Pardon me, I’m sorry!
- May I please have… [a coffee with milk]
- Thank you very much
- Thank you, that was delicious!
I especially recommend this last phrase.
In Rovinj, Garth and I were served by a waiter who clearly had been in the business for awhile. He spoke Croatian, English, Russian, German, and a handful of other languages. Even though it was March and the tourist season hadn’t begun, he was tired.
After we had paid and he was ready to move us along, I opened up my new notebook, and spelled out: ‘ḫ-vala, jačku je ukus-no.’
He stared at me for a moment, blankly, and then he burst out laughing.
‘Ukusno!’ he parroted, chuckling.
Perhaps I sounded like a small child, rubbing her belly ‘Thanks! That was yummy!’, but it also could have been the element of surprise. So many English speakers fail to learn these simple phrases, and I think smallest bit of effort can make a difference.
3. Count the Reviews
‘Well, there are over a thousand reviews on Google and they say this is the place to get gelato. So you guys must be the best!’
The twenty-something seasonal worker may have grunted out a ‘si’, or maybe she just silently globbed two generous scoops of lurid green pistachio onto the cone.
And really, why shouldn’t this establishment, within spitting distance of the Colosseum, get a good review? Even passable gelato is better than the sugary slurry that we have in the United States.
But one should never settle for passable when one can try something truly sublime.
Food is an integral part of travel and every country has its thing. So find out what a region does best and eat it.
When it comes to where to eat — well, that takes some research, trial and error… and the errors really can be gut-wrenching because being in a food capital of the world sets the bar so high.
Something Garth and I began to realise is that the Trip Advisor Ranked #1 seal of approval was often an indicator of mediocrity. For how can an establishment that pushes out hundreds or thousands of plates, dishes, or gelati maintain its attention to flavour?
Now what we do is we search for places with fewer reviews, off-the-beaten path. Google search ‘Reddit + City + Restaurants’ and find some recommendations from locals. Read the reviews and determine if the less than stellar rating is attributed to poor quality, indifferent service, or lack of ambiance.
The best restaurants will be ore modest restaurants with a table limit for the evening. They prioritise quality over quantity, feeding only as many as can fit in the restaurant for the whole evening.
One memorable example was in Sélestat, France.
Each week, the small restaurant would post its menu on the door, and you would book your place the day before. It was simple food, but exquisite. It had decent reviews, but not nearly as many as its touristic counterparts in Colmar or Strasburg.
I was going to link you to the place, but I don’t want the world to find out about it, write glowing reviews and condemn it to a future of keeping up with the tourist trail.
Sometimes a hidden gem should stay hidden.
