Serpent wrote:I haven't been outside Europe either.
I haven't gone very far, but two weeks ago I flew to Toulouse with a stop in Istanbul. It was under 24h but that doesn't matter to me. I went where most tourists don't bother going until they've visited a few times. I took the metro under Bosphorus and went to the Asian part of the city
I also did visit the Sultanahmet square. (and I left Istanbul a few hours before the terrorist attack
)
I went to Bordeaux during the same trip, making it my first visit to the Western hemisphere
I was supposed to fly home via Barcelona but the flight was cancelled due to strikes and I left on a different day via Prague.
I also went to Paris in May and took day trips to see several Euro-2016 host cities: Lens, Lille, Lyon and Saint-Étienne.
(pics here)I flew home via Amsterdam and spent 5 hours there as I missed my connection. IDK, aviation enables you to see some
amazing views of the transit location.
Turkish Airlines even offer free excursions and meals to the passengers who fly via Istanbul (and if there's no way to book a shorter connection, you get free accomodation at the airport hotel).
My personal definition of visiting a city (that's easier to track than a country) certainly depends on what I did there. Eating, using the public transport, seeing anything cultural generally pushes it in the direction of "this counts". And nowadays even airports have some interesting stuff like exhibitions, churches/prayer areas and whatnot.