What's your Local Guide secret?

[HollyF]

Imagine if we could visit all the cities that are represented by this online community? It might not happen immediately, or at all, but what if we could? What is the one piece of advice you would give from Local Guide to Local Guide? Tag your city! 

I will go first. I have twin city homes in my heart - Paris and Vancouver. 

Paris: With a patience and a good sense of humour you can peak between the tourist facade and see the day-to-day joys that transpire in this city full of contrasts - built beauty and dirty streets; decadent food experiences and not enough days to eat your way through everything; well curated vistas and cramped metro trips; crazy traffic that waits for no one, but actually does. Oh yeah, and make reservations for dinner from 20:00 onwards (restaurants that you want to eat at don't open before this).  

Vancouver: September is the best month to enjoy the sun, sea, beach, and mountains because it has the least chance of rain. So get out and get active and then satisfy your hunger on Vancouver's incredible food scene and quench your thirst in this booming craft beer town. 

[MartinSolari]

This topic is almost philosophycal, but I'll try!

Montevideo: very far in the south of the world, capital of a small country that has its secrets in the details. If you are looking for turistics landmarks this is not the place. It is a very calm city, my favourite place is La Rambla: beatiful 20 km of coastline with a pink granite sidewalk. All the locals go there to dring Mate (typical herb infusion). The Old City (Ciudad Vieja) is almost empty in the weekends and you can take time to see the architecture with lots of art deco and art noveau details. The food is very good if you like meat 🙂

[iyudhi]

Fun topic @HollyF thanks for starting 🙂

I mainly represent two LG Communities at the moment, Jakarta and San Francisco. I'll do Jakarta for now and save San Francisco for later.

Jakarta

• The best food are found in the street and hawkers
• For taxi, always use Blue Bird. Or Uber. Do not take rides from taxis that refuse to use meter.
• Get ready to spend most of your trip time sitting in the traffic. It gets a lot worse during work traffic hours and when it rains. 
• Always bring cash. The best food are found in places that don't take credit cards
• Sidewalks are pretty much non-existent. If you insist on walking to your destinations, be prepared to share most of your walk with cars and motorcycles
• There are no best time to visit - The weather is pretty much the same during the year. Maybe more rains during the end/beginning of the year, but the country generally gets rain sporadically, so it's always good to bring umbrellas no matter what time
• People go to the malls for recreation, so they usually get overly crowded during weekend. Avoid unless you need to go for a specific reason.
• There are houses that actually serves as restaurants or food shops. I found some of the best food in Jakarta are hosted in these kind of places. 

That's all I can think for now. I might add items to the list if I can think of anything else.

With that said, here's the link to the G+Community 🙂

Jakarta Local Guides

[Anonymous]

I will gladly to tell you about several cities in Indonesia that I often visit. For many reasons, if you want to go to several major town in Indonesia, you may use online transportation (such as Grab, Uber, and Gojek) by download the apps at Google Play Store. If you want to use taxi, you can use Blue Bird. Many taxi drivers don't want to use meter. Bring cash is recommended. Jalan is the Indonesian term of Street. For intercity modes, use train if available (nowadays, the quality of the train in Indonesia is increased).

Bandung

• Bandung is a town in the mountain of West Java. The weather is cool as like as Europe.
• If you have much time, don't go on weekend. Many well known tourist destinations are crowded with many people. The traffic jam is get worse especially on Jalan Setiabudi (Lembang and Tangkuban Perahu) and Jalan Kopo (Ciwidey, White Craters, Tea Plantations).
• Even Bandung is a big city, the distance of the well known places are not too far (because the rest of area is just for housings).
• The well known streets in Bandung are Jalan Braga and Jalan Asia Afrika. The streets are not too long and the sidewalks are comfortable for the tourists. 
• The Chinatown of Bandung is located near Jalan Cibadak, while you can find non-halal foods here.
• The traffic jam exists everyday at the rush hour (6-8 AM, 11 AM-1 PM, and 16-19 PM).

Semarang

• Not too many attractions in Semarang. The beach is not recommended. You can visit Semawis Market or some China temples. Chinese culture influence many places at Semarang.
• Many non-halal food you can find at Chinatown.
• For food, I think that Bakmi (noodle) at Gang Lombok is recommended. For the other food, you can try Lumpia.
• Trans Semarang, the Bus Rapid Transit, always full at the rush hour (6-8 AM or 16-19 PM). Even the main corridor, Mangkang-Penggaron, is almostly full along the day.
• This town is not too far from Surakarta and Jogjakarta, the well known tourist destination of Indonesia. For the cheapest way, use trains to go to Surakarta (Kalijaga Train) and if you want to go to Jogjakarta, you can transit at Surakarta and use Prambanan Express train. They are much cheaper than using buses. But, the trains are limited in capacity.
• Not too much sidewalks that has good conditions. People here are rarely to go on foot.
• This weather is hot. If you want to cool places, you can go to some convenience stores that full air-conditioned such as Indomaret and Alfamart, or you can go to malls.

Later I will tell you about another town in Indonesia.