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Glasgow vs Edinburgh: Which city is better?


Bono

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Just a question for those who have been to these cities, which one is better as far as site seeing and touring around goes? Night life, pubs, shops, etc etc. etc.

Edinburgh's nice, you've got the castle and Arthur's Seat, it's not too big so you could walk around it in a day or two.

Glasgow's got more of a nightlife, Anthony Bourdain did a good documentary on its food but it's been taken down from YouTube.

How long have you got to visit? If it's a few days you could probably do both.

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Was only once in both cities and only a couple of days each, but I prefer Edinburgh. Way more interessting when it comes to sightseeing and the Pubs at the evening were also fun. But as I said I was there really brief so I'm sure Glasgow also has its nice places, but I'm not aware of them. ;)

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Outside of Scotland, Edinburgh's got the greater reputation as a place to visit. I found that the first time I moved to England, people spoke in glowing tones about Edinburgh but most hadn't even considered going to Glasgow.

It's understandable why, Edinburgh's the capital, the seat of government and it is absolutely beautiful. When you get off the train, every single building you see seems to be of some sort of historic significance. It's more or less all laid out for you and you, the tourist, can put in as much or as little effort as you would like and still come away feeling rewarded.

I mean, this is not photoshopped:

edinburgh.jpg

However, Glasgow is very much the sun around which the rest of Scotland revolves. It's our biggest city, our most important cultural centre, all our broadcast media originates there, our sports culture (Rugby excluded) and the vast majority of our live music is very heavily based there.As far as shopping goes, it's got the longest "style mile" in Europe. I (and quite a few other people I know) found the ignorance of Glasgow's importance quite baffling when we've gone to other countries... With Glasgow, you have to work a bit harder to find the amazing things, it would be quite possible to be there for several days and not really see very much if you were looking in the wrong places (which is easier because Glasgow's a lot bigger), but I've shown a lot of people who were very taken with Edinburgh around Glasgow and they've almost universally agreed that "Edinburgh's a nice place to visit, but I had no idea how cool Glasgow is! I wanna live here!"

I've shown a few people from the forum around the city, I'll let them testify for themselves...

In Glasgow, you're more likely to get an "authentic" Scottish experience, rather than all the tartan junk that gets sold on just about every street in Edinburgh, and lots of things of the exact same quality are considerably cheaper. Your nightlife options are a lot more extensive, there are bars, pubs and clubs that will cater to just about every taste imaginable. Glasgow's the curry capital of the world outside of India, so if you're interested in Indian food then you're in luck. The live music and arts scene is vibrant and constantly ongoing. Basically, for one month of the year, Edinburgh becomes cultural capital of Scotland when it hosts the largest arts festival in the world. The rest of the year, it couldn't hope to compete with Glasgow. It's also got more green space per head of population than any other city in Europe.

Also, Glaswegians have a (heavily generalised) reputation as being much friendlier than people from Edinburgh. I am neither and in my opinion there's maybe only a grain of truth in there :P.

Here's some Glaswegian views, a few more photographs here because it's not as compact as Edinburgh.

glasgow-at-night.jpg

George-Square-Glasgow-Scotland.jpg

432912577_b0e06b9321_z.jpg

UK_Scotland_Glasgow_Kelvingrove_park_Uni

parkCircus.jpg

Edited by Graeme
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Glasgow was one of the best days out I've had. I'm going to return as I have even more friends there than I did before.

Here's the dream team on top a city-centre mountain.

Edit: that picture makes me look far fatter than I am.

Edit 2: and taller.

2drc22c.jpg

Edited by Gracii Guns
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Glasgow was one of the best days out I've had. I'm going to return as I have even more friends there than I did before.

Here's the dream team on top a city-centre mountain.

Edit: that picture makes me look far fatter than I am.

Edit 2: and taller.

2drc22c.jpg

That was an "interesting" haircut I had then...

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I've only ever heard good things about Edinburgh; I've only heard bad things about Glasgow!

:P

I moved to Edinburgh permanently 10 days ago and i can tell you it is incredibly gorgeous. As for fun, nightlife and stuff like that I'm really not the person to ask. I haven't been to Glasgow yet.

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I lived in Glasgow for 35 years and visited Edinburgh a few times. I found Edinburgh very snobbish and filled with tourist shops. Glasgow is more gritty but 99.9% of the people are awesome - It's more of a proper feeling of Scotland, just without a shitty castle

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I've only ever heard good things about Edinburgh; I've only heard bad things about Glasgow!

:P

I moved to Edinburgh permanently 10 days ago and i can tell you it is incredibly gorgeous. As for fun, nightlife and stuff like that I'm really not the person to ask. I haven't been to Glasgow yet.

Really? Only bad things? I mean, I understand Edinburgh getting more attention as I've said above, but you've only heard bad things about Glasgow? What kind of bad things?

The good news is it's only going to very pleasantly surprise you... I'm not even from there and I love it with all my heart. There's so much good in Glasgow! You need to get yourself over to the West (best) Coast ASAP!

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Thanks for the feedback guys. Graeme your post was mor einformative and in depth than I could have hoped for so thank you. I'll have between October 23rd - 30th so I've been trying to figure out how to split my time. I'm going to Edinburgh first for sure and arrive late on the 23rd. I need to be in London on the 30th so basically I only have 7 days. I'm wondering if with only 7 days if I'm better off doing both those cities or if there's some other place that's kind of a "must see" instead. I thought about going to Loch Ness as it would be kinda neat just to say I was there. I know it's just a lake though and it's pretty far north so....

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Edinburgh is a great city. If you visit Edinburgh Castle there is a regimental museum which contains a French Eagle as captured on the field of Waterloo by a certain Sergeant Ewart.

800px-Scots_Greys_Eagle.JPG

A (glorified) account of its capture,

800px-Richard_Ansdell_%E2%80%94_The_Figh

It may just be one of the greatest single artifacts of British military history (there were only two Eagles captured at Waterloo). I stood in the museum staring at this thing for about 30 minutes! Also make sure you see the Scottish royal regalia.

Edited by DieselDaisy
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Forgive me because I'm American, so my knowledge on this matter is very limited, so I mean not to offend. I had a college class with a Welsh young man once, and he explained to me how many folks from the UK very rarely travel around the island. He did say they do, but not to the degree Americans take road trips.

What for me thinking about this is because the OP asked which city is better, and after reading the comments, I couldn't understand why you more people just don't visit both? I ask this because are the cities not fairly close in proximity?

To put this in perspective for you all, my home state of Michigan is 96,000 sq miles, while the entire UK is 93,000 sq miles. Which Michigan is a fairly big state, but it's no where near the size of California or Texas.

I guess my question is, how often do you all get in the car and say "I'm gonna go to London today" or any of the major cities? I say this because except for a few cities that are very far up north, if I choose to, I can drive to most major cities in my state and still sleep in my own bed at night. Like Detroit for example is about an hour and a half drive from my house, and I go there quite often and never stay the night down there, we always drive home. It just when I talked to the man from my class, he made it seem like that is not something his fellow country men really do.

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Forgive me because I'm American, so my knowledge on this matter is very limited, so I mean not to offend. I had a college class with a Welsh young man once, and he explained to me how many folks from the UK very rarely travel around the island. He did say they do, but not to the degree Americans take road trips.

What for me thinking about this is because the OP asked which city is better, and after reading the comments, I couldn't understand why you more people just don't visit both? I ask this because are the cities not fairly close in proximity?

To put this in perspective for you all, my home state of Michigan is 96,000 sq miles, while the entire UK is 93,000 sq miles. Which Michigan is a fairly big state, but it's no where near the size of California or Texas.

I guess my question is, how often do you all get in the car and say "I'm gonna go to London today" or any of the major cities? I say this because except for a few cities that are very far up north, if I choose to, I can drive to most major cities in my state and still sleep in my own bed at night. Like Detroit for example is about an hour and a half drive from my house, and I go there quite often and never stay the night down there, we always drive home. It just when I talked to the man from my class, he made it seem like that is not something his fellow country men really do.

It's true that road trips aren't anywhere near as common in frequency or length, but it wouldn't be uncommon to visit both Edinburgh and Glasgow on a single trip as a tourist since they're only an hour or two train distance apart. I don't drive but even friends who do will nearly always take trains from England to Scotland, even if they're relatively far north in England. I think petrol and parking cost more here so that may be a factor.

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Forgive me because I'm American, so my knowledge on this matter is very limited, so I mean not to offend. I had a college class with a Welsh young man once, and he explained to me how many folks from the UK very rarely travel around the island. He did say they do, but not to the degree Americans take road trips.

What for me thinking about this is because the OP asked which city is better, and after reading the comments, I couldn't understand why you more people just don't visit both? I ask this because are the cities not fairly close in proximity?

To put this in perspective for you all, my home state of Michigan is 96,000 sq miles, while the entire UK is 93,000 sq miles. Which Michigan is a fairly big state, but it's no where near the size of California or Texas.

I guess my question is, how often do you all get in the car and say "I'm gonna go to London today" or any of the major cities? I say this because except for a few cities that are very far up north, if I choose to, I can drive to most major cities in my state and still sleep in my own bed at night. Like Detroit for example is about an hour and a half drive from my house, and I go there quite often and never stay the night down there, we always drive home. It just when I talked to the man from my class, he made it seem like that is not something his fellow country men really do.

To be honest when I travelled through Europe in 2010 I was very surprised to see how many people I met in each country who had never reall been anywhere. For example a really good friend of mine live sin Koln, Germany. She grew up there her entire life yet had never been to Amsterdamn or Bruges among others. Those two stood out to me as theye were places I wanted to go. In my European trip I went to Bruges twice while she has still never been.

I think as North Americans maybe we are confused by this because our countries are so much larger in space that we tend to HAVE to drive long distances to get places. I dont know. But when I lived in Alberta I would drive to Calgary sometimes 3 times a week. A 2 hour drive to me for a concert was nothing. I would never think anything of it. We'd make weekend trips to Vancouver(11 hour drive) so road trips are normal. Where I live now though the closest town is 2 hours away and it only has about 500 people. After that it's about 6 hours to a town of about 1000 and to get to the closest major city it's about a 28 hour drive haha. To put all this inot persepctive, I live in a Territory that is twice the size of the United Kingdom but is home to only 32 thousand people TOTAL. I posted a picture below for comparison. The dark outline is the Yukon Territory.

Reason I asked which city between Glasgow and Edinburgh is better is because I want to divide my time accordingly. I've decided 4 nights, 3 full days in Edinbugh and 3 full days, 3 nights in Glasgow. Based on comments here both cities seem well worth it. An example of overbooking a stay was in 2010 I stayed in Athens, Greece for 5 days. That was 3 days too long in my opinion as I saw pretty much everything I wanted to in the first day. The second day was spent wandering around stopping in numerous places for a beer. After that I was ready t move on haha.

UK-compared-to-the-Yukon.png

Edited by Bono
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So I decided to do some research to try and answer my own questions, and I think I have discovered some answers. For one it appears many of the larger cities are quite far a part, so that would make them difficult to just visit for the day. I'm my post I compared my travles to detroit. Well upon doing some research, it appears my house to detroit is probably only 15 or 20 miles further than traveling between ediburgh and Glasgow. So that puts it in some perspective their. Also to travel from london up to edinburgh, that for me, would be like traveling from my house to way up north, and when I do that, it's defiantly an over night or longer trip.

Even though our areas are similiar in sq miles, the layouts are very different. For one, the three biggest cities in the state; flint, detroit, and grand rapids are all within 100 miles from each other. The whole brother portion of my state, does have some cities, but nothing near the scale of Glasgow I'm sure. Its more towns and villiages up north, no metropolis' for sure.

Also, another thing that probably makes travel much more difficult over there, is the population. I think I read 64 million people. Here, in my state, it's like 9 million people. So a lot more empty land for sure. Plus a lot less traffic on the roads.

Sorry to detail your thread, just trying to do as close to an apples to apples comparison that I could. Just to try an understand what it's like over there better. Which btw, if I ever visit europe, the UK and Ireland are my top priorities. I'm very curious if your countries ?

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Forgive me because I'm American, so my knowledge on this matter is very limited, so I mean not to offend. I had a college class with a Welsh young man once, and he explained to me how many folks from the UK very rarely travel around the island. He did say they do, but not to the degree Americans take road trips.

What for me thinking about this is because the OP asked which city is better, and after reading the comments, I couldn't understand why you more people just don't visit both? I ask this because are the cities not fairly close in proximity?

To put this in perspective for you all, my home state of Michigan is 96,000 sq miles, while the entire UK is 93,000 sq miles. Which Michigan is a fairly big state, but it's no where near the size of California or Texas.

I guess my question is, how often do you all get in the car and say "I'm gonna go to London today" or any of the major cities? I say this because except for a few cities that are very far up north, if I choose to, I can drive to most major cities in my state and still sleep in my own bed at night. Like Detroit for example is about an hour and a half drive from my house, and I go there quite often and never stay the night down there, we always drive home. It just when I talked to the man from my class, he made it seem like that is not something his fellow country men really do.

To be honest when I travelled through Europe in 2010 I was very surprised to see how many people I met in each country who had never reall been anywhere. For example a really good friend of mine live sin Koln, Germany. She grew up there her entire life yet had never been to Amsterdamn or Bruges among others. Those two stood out to me as theye were places I wanted to go. In my European trip I went to Bruges twice while she has still never been.

I think as North Americans maybe we are confused by this because our countries are so much larger in space that we tend to HAVE to drive long distances to get places. I dont know. But when I lived in Alberta I would drive to Calgary sometimes 3 times a week. A 2 hour drive to me for a concert was nothing. I would never think anything of it. We'd make weekend trips to Vancouver(11 hour drive) so road trips are normal. Where I live now though the closest town is 2 hours away and it only has about 500 people. After that it's about 6 hours to a town of about 1000 and to get to the closest major city it's about a 28 hour drive haha. To put all this inot persepctive, I live in a Territory that is twice the size of the United Kingdom but is home to only 32 thousand people TOTAL. I posted a picture below for comparison. The dark outline is the Yukon Territory.

Reason I asked which city between Glasgow and Edinburgh is better is because I want to divide my time accordingly. I've decided 4 nights, 3 full days in Edinbugh and 3 full days, 3 nights in Glasgow. Based on comments here both cities seem well worth it. An example of overbooking a stay was in 2010 I stayed in Athens, Greece for 5 days. That was 3 days too long in my opinion as I saw pretty much everything I wanted to in the first day. The second day was spent wandering around stopping in numerous places for a beer. After that I was ready t move on haha.

UK-compared-to-the-Yukon.png

Yes yes, this is what I'm talking about. Again I'm not trying to offend anyone, but if you live anywhere in the UK how can you not visit all of these places at least once. I guess that's part of what confuses me, even though it is a decent sized journey from Scotland to London, it's really not that bad. I've driven from Michigan almost to Florida before, I did have to stop in southern Georgia because I was dead tired, but that was over 20 hours of driving. I've also driven from Houston Texas back to Michigan. I couldn't do that without stopping either, but I made it all the way to Illinois. If you look on a map. Michigan is one of the northern US states, while Florida and Texas are the most southern, so that's some major driving. I guess my point is, if I had a hankering, I would visit everywhere in the UK with relative ease, if I lived there. A 7 or 8 hour car ride is not really that big of a thing.

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Are you saying there is not much domestic British tourism? This is simply not true. Many people in Britain take holidays to other parts of Britain. In fact at one time domestic tourism was all there was - have you never seen Hi-de-Hi! haha? But more specific to your point, city breaks are quite popular; I had a city break to Edinburgh about five years ago for instance.

A lot of people travel by train on Britain. Obviously many drive but you do not have these big gigantic road journeys that Americans seem to embark on. The obvious explanation is the smallness of the place; even the more outlaying places are usually just a few hours on the train.

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Forgive me because I'm American, so my knowledge on this matter is very limited, so I mean not to offend. I had a college class with a Welsh young man once, and he explained to me how many folks from the UK very rarely travel around the island. He did say they do, but not to the degree Americans take road trips.

What for me thinking about this is because the OP asked which city is better, and after reading the comments, I couldn't understand why you more people just don't visit both? I ask this because are the cities not fairly close in proximity?

To put this in perspective for you all, my home state of Michigan is 96,000 sq miles, while the entire UK is 93,000 sq miles. Which Michigan is a fairly big state, but it's no where near the size of California or Texas.

I guess my question is, how often do you all get in the car and say "I'm gonna go to London today" or any of the major cities? I say this because except for a few cities that are very far up north, if I choose to, I can drive to most major cities in my state and still sleep in my own bed at night. Like Detroit for example is about an hour and a half drive from my house, and I go there quite often and never stay the night down there, we always drive home. It just when I talked to the man from my class, he made it seem like that is not something his fellow country men really do.

Cuz to you guys a 3 hours drive is a trip to the shop, if i were to drive for three hours I'd be halfway across the country, plus driving over there is easier, massive fuckin' roads and everything in a straight line, here its twists and turns and narrow roads and tight turns, you gotta be fuckin awake driving over here.

Plus, road trip over here, to see what, the fuckin' Penines? :lol: Someones gonna jump in here and go H-actually Len, you ignorant cunt, there are many places of scenic beauty around here', yeah there probably are but it aint the same as the huge sprawling never ending landscapes of America, there aint mojave desert around here, where am i gonna go on a road trip round, the north circular? :lol:

Have a drive round London town one day if you're ever around here, central London, you'll get my point, its horrible.

The great English touring places...Bognor :lol: The Lake District, fuckin' Bournemouth, Southend :lol: Horrible freezing cold pebble beaches littered with heroin needles :lol: Dirty postcards and some knackered old bags boarding house who wont let you take a tart up to your room :lol:

I heard people come from America to take tours of Liverpool, who the fuck wants to see Liverpool?!? :lol: 'and here we have the docks...over there to your right is an old fishing trawler!' :lol:

Edited by Len B'stard
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Forgive me because I'm American, so my knowledge on this matter is very limited, so I mean not to offend. I had a college class with a Welsh young man once, and he explained to me how many folks from the UK very rarely travel around the island. He did say they do, but not to the degree Americans take road trips.

What for me thinking about this is because the OP asked which city is better, and after reading the comments, I couldn't understand why you more people just don't visit both? I ask this because are the cities not fairly close in proximity?

To put this in perspective for you all, my home state of Michigan is 96,000 sq miles, while the entire UK is 93,000 sq miles. Which Michigan is a fairly big state, but it's no where near the size of California or Texas.

I guess my question is, how often do you all get in the car and say "I'm gonna go to London today" or any of the major cities? I say this because except for a few cities that are very far up north, if I choose to, I can drive to most major cities in my state and still sleep in my own bed at night. Like Detroit for example is about an hour and a half drive from my house, and I go there quite often and never stay the night down there, we always drive home. It just when I talked to the man from my class, he made it seem like that is not something his fellow country men really do.

Cuz to you guys a 3 hours drive is a trip to the shop, if i were to drive for three hours I'd be halfway across the country, plus driving over there is easier, massive fuckin' roads and everything in a straight line, here its twists and turns and narrow roads and tight turns, you gotta be fuckin awake driving over here.

Plus, road trip over here, to see what, the fuckin' Penines? :lol: Someones gonna jump in here and go H-actually Len, you ignorant cunt, there are many places of scenic beauty around here', yeah there probably are but it aint the same as the huge sprawling never ending landscapes of America, there aint mojave desert around here, where am i gonna go on a road trip round, the north circular? :lol:

Have a drive round London town one day if you're ever around here, central London, you'll get my point, its horrible.

The great English touring places...Bognor :lol: The Lake District, fuckin' Bournemouth, Southend :lol: Horrible freezing cold pebble beaches littered with heroin needles :lol: Dirty postcards and some knackered old bags boarding house who wont let you take a tart up to your room :lol:

I heard people come from America to take tours of Liverpool, who the fuck wants to see Liverpool?!? :lol: 'and here we have the docks...over there to your right is an old fishing trawler!' :lol:

Just to clarify, you mean baked goods or sluts?
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Forgive me because I'm American, so my knowledge on this matter is very limited, so I mean not to offend. I had a college class with a Welsh young man once, and he explained to me how many folks from the UK very rarely travel around the island. He did say they do, but not to the degree Americans take road trips.

What for me thinking about this is because the OP asked which city is better, and after reading the comments, I couldn't understand why you more people just don't visit both? I ask this because are the cities not fairly close in proximity?

To put this in perspective for you all, my home state of Michigan is 96,000 sq miles, while the entire UK is 93,000 sq miles. Which Michigan is a fairly big state, but it's no where near the size of California or Texas.

I guess my question is, how often do you all get in the car and say "I'm gonna go to London today" or any of the major cities? I say this because except for a few cities that are very far up north, if I choose to, I can drive to most major cities in my state and still sleep in my own bed at night. Like Detroit for example is about an hour and a half drive from my house, and I go there quite often and never stay the night down there, we always drive home. It just when I talked to the man from my class, he made it seem like that is not something his fellow country men really do.

Cuz to you guys a 3 hours drive is a trip to the shop, if i were to drive for three hours I'd be halfway across the country, plus driving over there is easier, massive fuckin' roads and everything in a straight line, here its twists and turns and narrow roads and tight turns, you gotta be fuckin awake driving over here.

Plus, road trip over here, to see what, the fuckin' Penines? :lol: Someones gonna jump in here and go H-actually Len, you ignorant cunt, there are many places of scenic beauty around here', yeah there probably are but it aint the same as the huge sprawling never ending landscapes of America, there aint mojave desert around here, where am i gonna go on a road trip round, the north circular? :lol:

Have a drive round London town one day if you're ever around here, central London, you'll get my point, its horrible.

The great English touring places...Bognor :lol: The Lake District, fuckin' Bournemouth, Southend :lol: Horrible freezing cold pebble beaches littered with heroin needles :lol: Dirty postcards and some knackered old bags boarding house who wont let you take a tart up to your room :lol:

I heard people come from America to take tours of Liverpool, who the fuck wants to see Liverpool?!? :lol: 'and here we have the docks...over there to your right is an old fishing trawler!' :lol:

Just to clarify, you mean baked goods or sluts?
Lady folk Johnathan, lady folk, why would i be sneaking baked goods into a boarding house in the middle of the night, I aint McLeod :lol: Edited by Len B'stard
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Most British cities leave a lot to be desired. There are some stunning parts of Britain but our cities are generally shitholes. Most British people escape the cities and visit the rural areas, e.g. 'The Broads' or 'Lakes'. Even in your exceptions such as Edinburgh or York, you can go down the wrong street and be confronted by a sight thoroughly offensive to the eyes and ears, generic high streets, squalid estates inhabited by gangs of louts, street-upon-street of uniformly drab and cramped terraced housing - it is only really certain 'historic' sections which can be considered 'pleasant' in those cities. Additionally, the British travel differently from Americans. Britons tend to like to go to one place and stay put, from anything from two-three days (short city break) to two-three weeks (full on holiday). Americans plan these huge itineraries with which ''they will see the whole of Europe'' in two months or less: ''London, 3 days; Paris, 4 days; Rome, 3 days etc etc''.

Edited by DieselDaisy
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