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The Kilt

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    Poll

    in Gibraltar v Scotland

    Posted · Edited by The Kilt

    Blame the Georgian FA if you think the tickets weren't in sale early enough.

    If you think I was blaming the SFA I wasn't.

    In this case I blame the Georgia FA ( obviously without knowing the facts).

    In general I blame Fifa and UEFA as the there should a fans far better understanding of what the fans go through getting tickets and arranging travelling.

    Poll

    in Gibraltar v Scotland

    Posted

    Not sure the recent polls have actually helped anybody.

    We never got enough tickets for Ireland and we didnt get enough tickets for Georgia.

    the Ireland game we were never going to get enough.

    Georgia the tickets should have been on Sale ages ago and therefore everybody should have got one.

    the stadium will not be full.

    I really wish fans were put first and tickets put on sale alot earlier.

    Gibraltar is going to be huge Scotland Support specially if we beat Georgia or Germany.

    Cuba

    in General Travel

    Posted

    Absolutely agree with the above. We popped in to the 2 most famous Hemingway places - El Bodeguito Del Medio and La Floridita ('My mojito in La Bodeguita, My daiquiri in El Floridita' - as he said) and it's just a tourist revolving door and even those signature drinks were crap compared to getting them in normal bars.

    Also experienced the baby milk powder scam and as others have said - there's a lot of hustlers in the streets, particularly in Old Havana. Everyone wants to chat so it can be difficult to adjust and start dismissing people from the off but there's a lot of people trying to punt cigars, or get a few quid one way or another. They'll often try and just engage in chat or ask where you're from and it leads on from there but you'll quickly learn how to deal with it or else just completely ignore it if you wish. Worth saying that I didn't at any point feel in danger.

    Also, you'll have taxis and bicitaxis, tuk tuks all touting for your business as you walk anywhere near Old Havana.

    With the crap bits above out of the way now - the vast majority of the place is great and people are lovely. We stayed in Vedado on the west of the city which was nice colonial houses, close to the university and the big hotels of The Nacional (worth checking out for a drink) and the Habana Libre (former Havana Hilton which was taken over as an initial residence of Castro et al at the revolution). There were a few nice restaurants and bars/clubs dotted around that area. We walked each day from Vedado through the much poorer areas of Central Havana where you just see people living day to day life and crammed into tiny homes.

    The dividing line between Central Havana and Old Havana is at El Capitolio / Gran Teatro (Theatre) and Parque Central and here you'll get your classic cars all lined up and gleaming waiting for hire to do city tours. We didn't get much from the car tour other than the photo opps as we had pretty much walked all over the place. If you were to consider getting the open-top, hop-on hop-off bus tour - I wouldn't recommend it. It doesn't have commentary in the way that the equivalent tours would normally have whether it be in Edinburgh, Madrid or Berlin - so it's only really worthwhile for getting from point to point, but even then, it's better to just walk or get taxis. There are state taxis (normally yellow & black) and then there are 'Taxi Particulars' which are communal taxis. If you can get using them then you'll save a fortune by sharing.

    We went to a cigar factory for a tour (which we had apparently missed the time or needed tickets from a hotel which we didn't have but the security got some guy to take us round and I imagine everyone got a bung from that). As mentioned previously - lots of people will try to sell you cigars. A lot of what you read will say these will be fake and not to touch them. I think the reality is that some are real (ones which make it out of factories one way or another) and others will be fake. The street sellers also have elaborate stories to draw you in - the factory staff are apparently allowed 2 cigars a day or something like that which they can accumulate to sell. They'll also say that it happens to be the 1 or 2 days a month that they're allowed to sell this stock that they've accumulated for themselves and use the term Cooperativa (Cooperative) to say that this is permitted - when in all reality there is no such thing and it's effectively stolen or fake. They'll be selling box loads rather than singles. My friend spent about £300 from one of the Cooperativa people and spent the rest of the trip stressing as to whether they were real or not. The boxes, labels, holograms and everything look legit but no way of knowing for sure - but it is over 50% cheaper. We didn't get checked at customs at all (Cuba or EU).

    Other things we did were to pop into one of the boxing gyms (Rafael something or other I think it was called) but they were just training and I had the impression that it was more looking to appeal to tourists rather than being more genuine. They were also looking for donations for taking photos and stuff like that.

    We get the ferry across to Casablanca and went up the hill to their equivalent of Rio's Cristo Redentor statue but it's not much in comparison. There's a Che residence there as well which isn't really worth the few dollars that it costs as you'll be in and out in less than 5 minutes. From Casablanca we got the electric train to Hershey (which was the halfway point on the way to Matanzas but we just came back). Everyone seemed to know each other on the train and we got chatting to the engineer and ended up front with the driver for the majority of it.

    There's a wee Havana Club tour in Old Havana which isn't a distillery but worth 30 mins of your day I would say.

    Parque Central Hotel has a nice roof terrace for food/drinks if you're into that sort of thing at somewhere a bit swankier. A lot of the bigger hotels have nice lobbies and bars and probably a lot of the tourists don't venture out of there at night as Old Havana does seem quieter as the night goes on. La Terraza was another roof-terrace restaurant in that vicinity which was good.

    Lots of salsa clubs around the city and Casa de la Musica is the main name that pops up. They have early evening shows and a later one as well. We went somewhere different and was cool to see them all going for it. A fair amount of hookers in these places as well so you might get pestered a wee bit unless you're there with a missus.

    A lot of the cooler bars and clubs, as well as some nice eateries are over in Miramar which is further west and maybe about 20 mins drive from Old Havana. It's the embassy district and we went to a few nice places there.

    One last thing - go to to the Colon Cemetery if you would appreciate that sort of thing. It's huge and the memorials there are quite spectacular.

    Alfiemoon

    Thanks for spending time on your post mate. Great info. We head off next week. I will piss myself laughing if we come across the baby food scam.

    cheers

    The Kilt

    Frank Skinner...

    in Anything Goes - Other topics not covered elsewhere

    Posted

    I am not a fan.

    Saw him live at fringe a few years back and also saw his BBC show last night......didnt laugh once.

    Also I was at a big awards bash in london a few years back which was cringe worthy.....its was full of Publicans and Drink brands. He did nothing but slag of the industry and Carlsberg. He is an ex alkie. If i had worked for Carlsberg i would have walked out.

    However i think he is very quick and clever and some of his chat show stuff can be entertaining.

    The Nation's Cup

    in TA specific

    Posted

    Yes that is correct if we are in a 4 team group.

    Wow 14 in 1 year is alot.

    recently the most we have played is 10.

    During the Berti we played 12 times.

    Wonder how they are going to work that one out. I thought they were trying to cut back on International games?

    Big Scrap

    in TA specific

    Posted · Edited by The Kilt

    It was about 10 seats along from us. Kicked off about 10 mins before half time but got broken up then went off again at half time even worse. 2 lads got chucked out eventually, 1's nose looked like it may have been a different shape from at kick off! He was being held back and some other bloke steamed in over the top and smashed him with a few pretty solid sounding punches!

    Don't know what it was about, a couple of the lads had partial fancy dress on, another bloke had a green and white scarf on. Apologies for the hazy all-over-the-place details! :-)

    I was right beside and your not far off. A comment was made about an Irish player and a guy took offence.

    I saw worse at park head in the first game so nothing to get the headlines.

    Boycott The Qatar Game

    in Scotland Home Games

    Posted

    I will be going to support Scotland but so much with this game is wrong.

    I thought somebody would have suggested a show of disgust at the number of workers dying.

    Trying to get 1000 folk to wear red tops to represent the poor folk dying.

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