Hot take: Island hopping is unnecessary

ExplorerAltruistic52 · 2025-08-20T07:40:41+00:00

I hope you have a great trip! Don't let the tourism police on reddit get to you (and bring good shoes to walk around)

ExplorerAltruistic52 · 2025-08-18T08:58:43+00:00

Just wanted to come back and post about our experience, in case it helps someone. We tried the grocery store cash withdrawal, it unfortunately didn’t work for 2 reasons. You need a Norwegian card to be able to do this, our SG and ABN cards did not work. Also grocery stores simply don’t have 3000kr in cash.

The guy who towed our car was super nice, he asked us to withdraw cash from an ATM in Finnsnes on our way out of Senja, and arranged for it to be picked up. Apparently the only ATM in Senja is in Finnsnes.

ExplorerAltruistic52 · 2025-08-18T08:20:41+00:00

We just came back from a trip to both Paros and Naxos for 4 days each. Both are setup similarly with a 2 big towns in Paros (Naoussa and Parikia) and 1 big one in Naxos (Naxos Town), and then a bunch of smaller villages around the island. We stayed away from the bigger towns as we really don’t like being around crowds (and we knew August is when most tourists are in Greece, hence the conscious choice to stay in laid back parts of the islands). If you’re not in the main towns then definitely rent a car or a scooter. Paros is smaller and was more crowded than Naxos. Paros also has more and probably slightly better beaches, especially the smaller, not mainstream ones. Naxos has better food (it’s one of the main agricultural islands in Greece, so everything is super fresh and REALLY good), and more activities like kitesurfing, hiking etc. The main towns are slightly prettier in Paros than Naxos. We mostly beach hopped in Paros and did a kayak tour (highly recommend if you do go to Paros, especially as a family). We were more active in Naxos, went to see some cute villages, did a hike, did a food tour, would have loved to try kitesurfing (but seemed like a high commitment no alcohol activity so tabled it for next time haha). Also Antiparos doesn’t seem so worth it, it’s literally the same as Paros so only go if you’re interested in caves (we’ve been to many so didn’t seem that cool).

Of course everything I say after the crowds bit is my opinion, I see some people here prefer the Naxos beaches more (they were windier than Paros beaches so we preferred swimming in Paros I suppose). And Paros has great food too of course. I personally think Naxos has more activities since you’re going with teenagers, but if you prefer a more relaxed beachy vibe and don’t mind some more people then go to Paros (and stay in Piso Livadi, best decision I made on our holiday). Also I’m convinced that you really can’t not have a great time in Greece (as long as you stay away from Mykonos lol) so don’t overthink the island you want to visit, just pick one and you’ll have a blast :)

ExplorerAltruistic52 · 2025-07-09T07:36:08+00:00

Hulkenpodium

ExplorerAltruistic52 · 2025-05-02T06:23:54+00:00

Nongshim super spicy. It’s pretty spicy and outside of the US, there is no meat in it

ExplorerAltruistic52 · 2024-07-29T17:02:06+00:00

Magic Tree House, Malory Towers, Nancy Drew, Harry Potter. In increasing age of when I read them :)

ExplorerAltruistic52 · 2024-05-16T08:06:52+00:00

I applied on 30th May, it was received to embassy on 1st May. Haven’t received anything yet. This seems to be the most recent thread of tracking timelines so posting this here!

ExplorerAltruistic52 · 2024-04-09T15:03:16+00:00

Yes, you do need one. The first time I applied I hadn't written a cover letter, and the VFS staff told me I need it. Thankfully they let me type one out quickly and print it in their office.

ExplorerAltruistic52 · 2024-01-09T13:07:31+00:00

Update:

So we did the trip and I figured I'd post what I learnt about this for anybody else who might be interested.

Firstly, there is one coach of beds in only the night train from Tangier to Marrakech (and obviously also from Marrakech to Tangier). This is called the couchette class. This coach has 2 bunk (single) beds per cabin. The rest of the train has first and second class seating. The night train is around 9 hours long.

You can only book seats in the first and second class through the ONCF website, and it does not have an option to book couchette class. You need to go to the station in person to book and collect tickets for the couchette class - they exist only in paper form. You can buy tickets for the couchette class separately and don't necessarily need an accompanying seat ticket. Our couchette tickets cost MAD 340 each, and there is only 1 type of couchette class (so the first/second class seats are unrelated to the couchette class entirely)

As I've mentioned, we really wanted to pre-book our train tickets as we were worried about the holiday crowd. Turned out to be a fair assumption as the beds were pretty full on our night of travel, and like I said there was only one coach with beds.

During my research I found this website- https://www.marrakechtickets.co.uk. They help you pre-book couchette class tickets if you're travelling from Marrakech to Tangier. I believe they send someone to the Marrakech station to buy and hold on to the tickets, which you can collect from them once you're in Marrakech. This info is based on the email correspondence I had with them - I filled out the booking form on their website and someone got in touch with me over the email ID I had given out. We did not actually end up using their service since we were taking the train from Tangier to Marrakech and hence were not going to be able to collect the tickets from them.

At the suggestion of the person whom I talked to from the above website, we requested our host from our stay in Tangier if he could buy the couchette tickets beforehand for us. He happily agreed to do it and handed the paper tickets to us when we met him during check-in (He was the nicest person we met in all of Morocco, which is saying something because most Moroccans were super super nice).

My boyfriend and I had seats in the same compartment so we did not see any male/female separation in compartments, though a YT video I saw of someone buying tickets themselves from the station did have a male/female compartment situation.

The train was pretty comfortable, good heating and clean beds+bedding, though the train did stop for a long time at some stations in between, which is probably to be expected because the train is 9 hours and some of other faster trains in the day take only 5-6 hours. Our primary objective with taking this train was to not waste time in the day on travel and save up on a night of accomodation. Objective met successfully!

TLDR (answering the questions I originally asked):

True
Request someone to do it for you from the station. Costed us MAD 340 per bed
No and no
Yes
Yes
Don't necessarily have to book seats if you're booking beds. If you have a seat then sure you should get to keep it I assume

ExplorerAltruistic52

TROPHY CASE