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Restaurants

Food, it is one of the things I really enjoy when going on vacation as I most often don't cook a thing and dine out with every meal.  But when traveling abroad how do I find places to eat I might like.


This is one of the age old questions asked by travelers everywhere when traveling inside or outside their country, so what do I do. Should I read reviews of every restaurant in a city where I am going to stay.


For me my answer is never and here is why. I went to a friend's favorite pizza restaurant where she thought the pizza was the greatest tasting pizza in the world and I thought the pizza tasted like a cracker with some catsup and a piece of pepperoni put on it.

 

I thought how is it possible that two people can have such different tastes in food. Now magnify that by hundreds if not thousands of restaurant reviews posted and try to figure out where to eat. This is not the only time I thought  a restaurant recommended to me was not to my liking and this is why I don't read reviews.


I say don't waste your time reading reviews unless you are only looking at how the service was as I will show you how to find the best restaurants for you. Of course you might not want to plan out every meal you go to while on vacation but I will still show you where to find restaurants wherever you may be during the day so you won't be aimlessly wondering the streets looking for a place to eat.


I will describe the best place to find great restaurants in one word Google maps, well that is really 2 words but Google maps is the best way to find great restaurants wherever you are going.


Here is the quick and easy way to find a restaurant, open Google maps and I will show you a couple ways to find what you are looking for. Let's say I want a restaurant near the hotel I am staying at in Rome. I will take the address to my hotel and type into Google maps saying restaurants near then the address.


What will happen is I will get a map where I see little red restaurants icons all over the place and as I zoom in more will appear. There will also be a list of restaurants show up on the left side of the screen that matches the restaurants on the map and  as I hover over the restaurant's name Google will show me which restaurant on the map is the restaurant I am looking at on the side of the page.


If I click on any of the restaurants on the map Google will list it on the left side of the screen by itself and if it has a website I will see it listed next to the little icon that looks like a globe. Most of the time it won't have a .com it will have a .it for Italy.


Most often the site will be in Italian so I will have to guess at what the menu says or I could copy and paste it into Google translate to see what foods are on the menu. Sometimes a site will have everything listed in different languages and if that is the case it is even better. The point here is to get prices and to see if the food at any restaurant listed is the kind I like.


I can do the same thing using a landmark as my point of reference, again I go to Google maps and type in restaurants near and my land mark, In my video example I am choosing the roman coliseum.


Once the map shows up it will populate the map with restaurant icons and I can look over the list as I see fit.  I can do the same by just putting in a street or landmark and not saying restaurants near as Google maps will still put in the restaurants but there isn't a big red icon for you to easily see.


What I like to do when sightseeing is to at least print a map of the area I am going to visit so I have some idea of where the restaurants are. I sure don't like wondering around for block not knowing if there is anywhere to eat nearby. I don't have to pick a place to eat before I go out for the day but I at least like to know where they are. I may also look at the restaurant websites in areas I may want to have lunch just to rule out the higher priced places even before I get to that area of town.


Now that I have described to you how easy it is to find restaurants before you go on vacation it is all up to you. Of course you can still read reviews if you want and if you have friends who have similar tastes in food and have been somewhere they liked you can also do that as well. As I said I don't because I don't seem to have the same taste in food as any of my friends. I hope you found this article helpful and  have a great trip.