Exploring a New City

You wake up much earlier than usual. Some new sound has disturbed you, or perhaps it's the color of the light through strange curtains. There's the smell of fresh coffee: and from next door, someone's washbasin gives a chug-chug of greeting. A strange city awaits you. At least that's how it happened to me in Paris in 1946. I was a schoolboy, allowed to travel to the hard-eyed city only because a friend of my father's had promised to meet me at the station and look after me. During one hour in the Gare du Nord, I met more tarts, black marketeers, military cops, deserters and assorted criminals than I did for the next six months. The man due to meet me--a French officer--had been ordered to another part of France at a few hours' notice and never did turn up. So for two fantastic weeks, I lived in a flea-bitten little hotel near the station (I didn't speak enough French to take a taxi or Metro anywhere) and got myself involved with all sorts of crooks. One gang was selling U. S. Army PX supplies, and a group of deserters operated from the hotel, living precariously by selling blankets stolen from the War Graves Commission. Each morning, I woke up wondering what new places, faces and excitement the day would bring; and still today, I reach each new town with the same tense uncertainty.

The major decision when arriving in a new town is, of course, where to stay, and it's a decision that should be made a long time before you board your plane. Do you want a luxury hotel or a pension, in the center of everything or on the fringe? Is the place you chose in the middle of the shopping district (which could mean it will be dead by dusk) or is it trapped between two of the noisiest nonstop discothèques in the Western Hemisphere? Can you get cognac sent to your room after ten? Does your room have a view of the river or the park, or does the window open onto a brick wall?

Unfortunately, too many travelers don't learn the answers to these questions until it's too late. Although it's impossible to guard against every undesirable eventuality, you can avoid the most painful hazards by checking with a reliable travel agent, who should be able to provide you with brochures of the best hotels (although these publications tend to be excruciatingly self-congratulatory), a few well-informed friends and a couple of guides to the city you intend to visit, then choosing your hotel and writing to the manager, telling him specifically what you want. If a country's tourist board or bureau has an office in your city, its people--most often imported from their native land--can help. If you haven't yet decided on a city or cities to visit--or where to stay, if you have--a quick glance through Playboy's Capsule Guide to Urban Europe, in our May issue, will fill you in on our preferences, as well as our favorite restaurants, night spots and activities.

If I don't know the city I plan to visit and if I have no friends living there who might put me up, I try whenever time allows to make these sorts of inquiries. But if I'm in a hurry, I just book a suite at the best hotel in town. By doing that, I can be fairly confident of getting comfortable accommodations, reasonable service, perhaps a hotel car to pick me up at the airport and all the other extras that one expects and deserves on a vacation that comes only once a year. I would reserve a room with private bath, high up in the hotel, to avoid street noises, and preferably with a balcony overlooking the city--perhaps big enough to eat dinner on. After a couple of days in this lotus land, I might feel like moving to another part of town, although once ensconced, I must admit, I rarely change hotels; wasting the better part of a day packing, moving and unpacking isn't my idea of a good time.

Most large cities outside the U. S. offer all kinds of esoteric--and often water-based--alternatives to hotels, since a principal reason for a city becoming large is its maritime location. There are a number of large houseboats for rent on the Seine and the Thames, as well as many small canalboats in the backwaters. In cities built upon islands--Stockholm is a fine example--yachts can be the best base of all. And if you plan to be away for a month or more, you could try to arrange a temporary swap for your apartment. A friend of mine from Atlanta did this last year with a couple from Zurich, and he was overjoyed to discover that the neighbors on both sides were girls, several of whom he met as he was moving in. They were very friendly. To his dismay, they were all taken away by the police later that night.

The problem of finding female companionship in a strange town is not one about which I profess expert knowledge: Come to think of it, I know very little about it--a fact that never fails to astonish and disappoint people who seem to confuse me with Michael Caine. But I do know there are three cardinal principles that govern the acquisition of girls in a new town. One of them is luck; the second, a degree of boldness; and the third is money. Sometimes they all go together. Luck means that you know someone who will introduce you or that you'll meet a girl on the plane or in some other public place. In Copenhagen, she might be a member of the clerical staff of your hotel; in London, a salesgirl who's grown fed up with being squired around by guys dressed like floral arrangements. In Rome, she could be the daughter of an embassy official who's tired of civil servants; and in Rio de Janeiro, she might be an air hostess who's fed up, period. This is where brashness comes in: If an unescorted dolly catches your eye while you're browsing through Prince Rainier's unique Oceanographic Museum in Monaco, or if you're turned on by a bikinied bird in Brighton, simply strike up an acquaintance; as a stranger in town, you can always find some adequately legitimate pretext for a conversation. If your make-out score is good at home, chances are the language barrier won't deter you abroad.

There are guidebooks that will tell you, or so they claim, where to get laid around the world; but don't count on getting it for free anywhere. These experts deal with cardinal principle number three--money--and anyone with cash can find his way into a warm bed. Every big city has its little niche of professional flesh--everything from red-light cribs to classy callgirls--and the lonely enthusiast can locate what he wants without too much trouble; hotel porters, desk clerks, bartenders, taxi drivers and, in some cities, the police are standard sources of information. A wonderful invention, antibiotics.

Banks almost always offer a slightly higher rate of exchange for your dollar than hotels. If you haven't picked up some foreign currency before leaving home, have a few singles handy for airport and check-in tips, and be sure to exchange enough money at the hotel to hold you until you can visit a bank. Try to remember what $10, $20, $50 and $100 comes to in the foreign currency you're using, or you'll wind up cabling your Stateside bank for money sooner than you expected. I'd advise you to take along traveler's checks and, to make certain you're never left without funds, have your bank at home arrange a letter of credit with a local bank. Before embarking on your journey, pick up one of those tiny two-way dictionaries; they are always helpful and almost always overlooked as a real aid. In England (and widely available in the U. S.), Collins publishes an excellent line, with all volumes 4-1/2" × 3"--eminently pocketable.

A dictionary will be especially handy to have along while strolling through a new city: If the town's geography allows it and if I have a lot of time to spare, I often do my sight-seeing on foot, though it's not always practical. A taxi or a car with a chauffeur means that I can ride from one neighborhood to another, get out and walk whenever I feel like it and be picked up a couple of blocks farther on. The driver will know the short cuts and the local traffic regulations. A self-drive car doesn't give me this mobility, because I have to worry about parking and traffic signals, and the street I might want to drive down is all too often one way in the wrong direction. I also must pay attention to driving at the cost of looking. I'll always use self-drive, however, for exploring the countryside.

It's true that a chauffeur-driven car is expensive, but if I'm going to the theater and a late dinner afterward, I'll take a chauffeured limousine every time; if I don't, I find myself competing with hundreds of theatergoers and late-night diners for half-a-dozen taxis, and possibly in a violent thunderstorm, to boot.

If you get a good chauffeur, he can probably lead you to restaurants that most visitors don't know about. They will not necessarily be the fanciest in town, but if you have any interest in eating genuine local food or sampling the most popular wines in the region, your driver will find them for you. And they're worth finding, believe me. One doesn't simply wander off the street into Madrid's Casa Paco; even if you know the address, it may still take you a half hour of maddening motoring before you locate the place, if you try to find it on your own. I have usually discovered that the proprietors of such restaurants are delighted to meet strangers, although there have been a couple of occasions on which I've suspected that the proprietor and my driver have been brothers.

As for haute cuisine--this, again, depends on the city. Naturally, there are "best" restaurants in every large town and you will easily find your way to them. Most European hotels have booklets (continued on page 128)Exploring a New City(continued from page 104) describing the cuisine and location of the better restaurants; and if there isn't one in your room, the desk will help you. And don't be bashful about asking for the unusual; I was once told about a countryside restaurant, located 25 miles outside Florence, that catered to the knowledgeable and enormous appetites of a leading Italian soccer team. The meal was well worth the drive.

If I'm in a city that's plentifully equipped with sidewalk cafés, I'll take note of the attractive-looking ones while riding around and choose one to return to another day. If there are canals or rivers, I'll seek out a restaurant or pub with a patio on the bank; and if I'm in a seaside city with a rural coast line close by, I'll drive until I find an open-air café on the beach.

If there's no attractive or interesting waterfront in the vicinity but there is a large park, I might take a horse-drawn cab into the interior for a quiet lunch by a swan pond shaded by willows. If my hotel had a particularly good kitchen, I'd get a couple of lunches and some champagne packed in a hamper and just head for a meadow full of long grass. If you're in Vienna during the summer, for instance, drive to Kahlenberg and the Vienna Woods--or almost anywhere else outside the city. Park just off the highway near a slope and let your senses luxuriate in Austria's matchless pastoral landscape.

In most cases, big-city entertainment is fairly standard: cabaret, discos, native dance and song, concerts, striptease, cinema (check to see if English-speaking productions are subtitled--in which case, they'll run with the original English sound track--or dubbed in the local language) and pub--or outdoor café--hopping. Additionally, most big cities, especially in Europe, have ballet and opera companies and repertory theater, which can be enjoyable even if you don't speak the language. Some towns explode into life when it gets dark and others just yawn at ten o'clock and turn out the lights. It's no great hardship if you find yourself in one of the latter--not for the first night, anyway, because the town is still new and full of mysteries, even if you are the only sign of life on the streets. But it does get a bit tiresome by the second and third nights. If I find myself in that sort of predicament and if the hotel staff can't offer any advice, I call up the local office of the airline that carried me there and ask the sales manager or anyone else I can get hold of: "Where is it all going on?" I point out that I'm there because his airline's advertising convinced me I should be there and that his company therefore has some sort of obligation to make sure I enjoy myself. This works often enough to be worth trying; but sometimes, after I have pointed this out, they hang up. Sometimes they laugh before they hang up. When that happens, it means nothing is going on. It may also mean they don't know where the action is.

If you come from a city like New York, which keeps rocking for pretty close to 24 hours a day, it can be pretty disconcerting to arrive in a large city overseas and find yourself with nowhere to go and plenty of energy when midnight comes along. So ask around or you'll have to resort to driving about looking for crowds; when you find a lot of reasonably attractive people diving into the same backlit doorway, follow them and hope you find music. If you know how to track such spoor, you may wind up at the place: In Acapulco. Le Club, the town's leading discothèque, is set off the main drive; the only way to know you've arrived is by suddenly coming upon a cluster of sports cars parked nearby.

In the kind of city that lights up only when the sun goes down, you'll have a good idea of what the main after-hours diversions are and where to find them, or at least you should, if you know anything about the place before you get there. To find out which restaurants, discothèques and night clubs are currently the most fashionable, some people get the gossip columns translated from local newspapers and magazines; and others, if they're in the capital, call their own embassy. Embassy officials, naturally enough, have a fairly thorough knowledge of the city they're based in and will often be happy to help you out. If you're visiting a nation where American tourist traffic is minimal, you may even wind up getting information over lunch with an embassy staff member.

Your own vocation is as good a guide as any to where you'll find friends among people with your own interests. If, for example, you drive a sports car or restore antique cars as a hobby, you might find a members' club in town. Your university club might have a reciprocal hospitality agreement with overseas clubs. If you're in television or advertising or, for that matter, engineering or accounting, find out whether there's an affiliate organization in the town you're visiting. If you work for a newspaper, find the offices of the town's biggest daily and look for the bar nearest to it. And if you want to swing with the jet set, find out where the local chapter congregates and be prepared to tip the maître de lavishly in return for the kind of table--and attentive service--that in itself constitutes a proper introduction.

I've sometimes found that the highlight of my trip to a new city has been a visit to a night club or a restaurant that is universally condemned by "sophisticated" travelers because "all the tourists go there." I've been surprised to find that the food in these establishments is often excellent, which is perhaps why the tourists like it. Tourist traps, like the Mafia, have gone respectable; but if you do happen to see a man standing outside a curtained doorway dressed in a shiny suit and patent-leather shoes and shouting at people through a megaphone, walk on by. Strip joints, not so much in Amsterdam but especially in London, employ very voluble and persuasive barkers, who make it their business never to divulge the full cover charge. You find out what it costs by the time three men have relieved you of sums of money that escalate as you get closer to the stage.

All tourists have to recognize that one of their functions is to be victimized by the natives. It is an old tradition and is most effectively applied to people making their first visit somewhere. They will be conned for the duration, but it is usually nothing to get agitated about and most of us don't even know when it's happening, so light and skillful is the touch. The French rob us when we go to Paris and we rob them when they get off the boat in New York. The last cabdriver who took me from Kennedy Airport into Manhattan asked me (before setting the meter) if I knew how much the fare would be. I lied and said no, knowing that it would be close to eight dollars but curious to watch him operate. "That's twenty-five dollars," he said, studying my oafish English face in his rearview mirror with considerable approval. "How much would it be," I asked, "if you took the Van Wyck to the Long Island Expressway, followed that to the Midtown Tunnel, then across to Fifth and straight down to Washington Square, with the meter on?" We didn't talk for the rest of the journey, but I gave him a big tip because I felt guilty.

Since these words are not a guide to a specific city, it's obviously not possible to give specific advice. Your travel plans should be tailored to the city you're visiting. Toward this end, and toward the happy exploration of any new city, the best advice is to do as much legwork, in advance and sitting down, as you've time for. Consult as many sources as you can. be they guidebooks, your travel agent's itinerary planned for you, travel memoirs, brochures, etc. And talk to people who have been there. They needn't be close friends, either. If you're an astute observer, you'll know from your informant's manner of dress, speech, preferences in restaurants and movies, the degree to which his interests and tastes conform to your own.

Remember, once you've got where you're going, you'll be at the mercy of your own research; and if you haven't done it adequately, you'll waste precious time getting the feel of things. But even if you're reading this aboard a ship or a plane, or even comfortably ensconced in a hotel room abroad and you haven't clone your homework, don't despair: Start asking questions. It's not only helpful, it's often an excellent way to find a companion-guide. The loneliness so many visitors feel in a new city is simply explained: Most of us are gregarious; a shared experience means more than a solo one; seeing sights is no substitute for meeting people. Most strangers like to be helpful--it makes them feel good. Be guided by this universal adage: "At the tip of the tongue lives the world." Speak and ye shall be spoken to. And have a good time.