- people watching
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Italian owned (and staffed) coffee house and pizza/pasta place halfway along Byers Road in the West End.
Go there for the best pizza and coffee in the city, friendly and efficient service and a great perch to watch some of the weird and wonderful locals amble past.
Great to take a friend or sit with the papers and watch the world go by.
A great place to see the locals - especially the more senior citizens - enjoy themselves at the weekend exercising, dancing, doing taiqi and doing calligraphy with water-filled brushes on the paving stones near the east entrance.
North 3rd Ring Road neat intersection with Chaoyang Bei Lu
A cultural niche within the city of Miami, Little Havana, or Calle Ocho, is THE place to people watch in this fascinating city.
A combination of older gentlemen rolling their (lovely) Cuban cigars and hip youngsters hanging out outside the McDonalds, this is the sort of place that needs to be seen to be believed.
Soak up the culture further by enjoying a specialty Cuban cocktail and a ‘media noche’ sandwich (pork, ham, cheese, pickle and mustard – tastier than it sounds!) at one of the bodegas.
Southwest 8th Street, Miami, FL
These two cafes are open air. They give you a good introduction to the atmosphere of Brighton and Hove. They're inexpensive, the food's certainly not gourmet, but they're good places to meet up with friends, and do what Brighton does best - people watch!
The Pavilion Gardens Cafe is bang in the centre of town next to the Royal Pavilion and performers often stop by - well recommended for a free and impromptu show.
This is where hundreds of Pakistani guys and Indonesian women hang out and flirt on their day off. It all seems very innocent and sweet until you sit and watch for at least an hour and notice some of the darker undertones.
Very, very interesting, quite sad and quite voyeurisitic. We felt like we were watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
Have a chat and make friends, everyone's very friendly.
The whole experience reminded us of the often miserable lives of immigrants, wherever they are.
Plaza del Triunfo is a great square sandwiched between the Giralda and Alcazar Gardens to sit on a warm sunny day with a good book watching the world go by. If you follow the Cathedral wall you come to Plaza Nueva where Seville's elite gather in the evening. The square is surrounded by boutiques and nice eateries and bars and is a good place to get a taxi.
Beware of the restaurants surrounding the Cathederal and Giralda as they are over-priced and will produce a different menu for the tourists!
Try and visit the cobbled winding streets of the Santa Cruz quarter where you will find traditional tapas bars, senors playing the guitar and flamenco dancing.
Seville is all in all a beautiful place to visit.
Fun, fresh and boho. Cool shops, cafes and people. So cute.
George Street, South City parallel to Grafton St - few over.
A former Vermouth factory, Eataly is a huge and beautifully renovated food produce centre. It is dedicated to the Slow Food Movement which is a Turin-based NPO that deals with promoting food of high quality and fair production.
The food hall comprises 10 themed bar-type eateries where you can sample or actually sit down for lunch (meat/cheese/pizza/pasta and ice cream, to name a few). There is also a vast more supermarket-like food hall where you can shop until your heart's content.
Best things are it's reasonably priced, outside and high stool-seating make for great lunch, all the cooking and food prep is done in view of the customers so it's fun to watch and there are loads of people on hand to give you expert advice (all
very knowledgable).
Best place in Italy for buying, seeing, eating and learning about Italian food.
Eataly, Via Nizza, 230 / 14, Turin Lingotto, Italy
+39 011 19 50 68 01
Nearest station is Turin Lingotto train station. Follow the signs for Lingotto Fiere/8 Gallery.
www.eatalytorino.it/eatalytorino/welcome_eng.lasso
Lark Lane is a road next to Sefton Park in south Liverpool, which is worth a visit for an evening or a summer afternoon. There are lots of independent shops, pubs and bars, and restaurants which serve food from Thailand through to Turkey. Have a picnic in the park, then call into Keiths wine bar for a glass of wine and people watching.
Lark Lane
Sefton Park
Liverpool
L17
Rue Vieille du Temple - a classic Marais stomping ground. Kick off with a flinty sancerre in the bar/bookshop/coffeshop La Belle Hortense, before perusing both kitsch and cutting-edge in the boutique shops dotted about.
Congratulate your good fortune with a coupe of Veuve Clicquot from Les Etages, a scruffy, scarlet salon for the tragically hip, before lining the stomach with some classic bistro dishes in Les Philosophes. Take your coffee on a terrasse seat and watch the people parade, parade, parade, all night long.
Then, how about a midnight embrace in nearby Place des Vosges? Pourquoi pas.
The most fantastic beach in Salvador. It is crammed with people. Vendors sell you anything from a cold drink, to clothes to oysters. A must is the roasted cheese with oregano though. This is not a beach to take a book to, there is just too much going on that you have to sit back and watch the world go by and wonder at it all!
Much more real and fun than the Pelourinho.
Barra, a coastal suburb of Salvador
Something like the Dutch answer to Wetherspoons, this Eetcafe on the Spui enjoys a fair variety of Belgian beers and bar snacks. In the summer, sit out on the covered terrace and observe the daily battle between the trams and the cyclists - like watching a pack of sharks taking on a school of darting fish.
Spui 30
(0031) 20 6225110
www.beiaardgroep.nl/
A bar specialising in beer - but not the usual fare from large brewers or multinationals. Yes, it does offer these brands but its speciality is more obscure (in the UK at least) beers form smaller foreign brewers - Kolsch, eastern European, etc. Friendly atmosphere, spacious inside, and nice views of the world going by. Try!
Candleriggs, Merchant City, Glasgow G1
Cosy pub on steep and curvy Cockburn Street. Loads of whiskys (they have a 20 page printed list with taste notes and prices) and good selection of ales. It gets the tourists right enough, but has a good crowd of regulars and enough randoms to ensure an entertaining time. Get a booth at the window and watch the world go by.
11-15 Cockburn St
Right up the road from Waverley Station.
An offshoot from Le PUB Hanoi, this bar located in the backpacker area of HCMC is a refreshing change to the regular places in the area. Fantastic music, free wifi, well-priced excellent food and a huge selection of drinks, coffee and smoothies makes it a great spot for people watching.
175/22 Pham Ngu Lao. Dist 1, HCMC
08 837 7679
le.pub.saigon@gmail.com
Le PUB is a fantastic bar serving reasonably priced food right in the middle of the old quarter. The staff are very good and there is even free wifi. The place attracts a good mix of locals, tourists and expats and the music is superb. The tables outside allow fantastic people watching.
www.lepub.org
25 Hang Be, Hanoi
le.pub.hanoi@gmail.com
04 826 2104
It's only a simple cafe in the Grand Bazaar, but the tables on the "street" provide a lovely, inexpensive spot to sit and watch the world go by. You'll find it at a junction just north of the musical instrument section, not far off the goldsellers' street.
On sunny days this is a great place to sit and to take shelter at the square's eastern end, should it rain. The élite of Seville society use this square as a meeting place so it's a fantastic spot for people-watching. The plaza is also a good place to hail a taxi should you need one.
Plaza Nueva is close to the cathedral at the end of Avenida de la Consitución.
John Joe, the friendly grocer tells us that lots of famous people have houses round Louisburgh and Westport as retreats from the hurly-burly of high pressure life. Did we not see Mick Hucknal from Simply Red there in front of us at the check-out? A grand lad (with his spending power, I bet he is a grand lad). And Miles Kinston from the Irish Times? And yer man who owns Ryan Air? And Madonna? And … The list goes on.
We feel rather poor as we load the supplies into the dusty Toyota that sits shyly among the brand new four-by-fours, the shiny Mercs, the sleek BMWs. These belong, not to the rich and famous, but to the shopkeepers.
John Joe waxes lyrical and looks prosperous, but pleads poverty claiming that it is the farmers with their grants and subsidies and tax exemptions who are the nouveau riche. To tell the truth, there’s no sign of poverty, which is good to see in a land so long barren.
Superb place for breakfast. I notice that one of the owners is a westerner: if he's not Australian, I'd be very surprised, because this place has a really Sydney feel about it. Decent coffee, papers from Bangkok to read, and a 'hang around as long as you like' vibe. Don't leave without trying the Bagel Egger: it'll set you up good for a day of cycling around temples.
Th Chao Fa Ngun (in the centre, and Luang Prabang is small, so you'll find it easily);
tel: 071 252292
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