Hello /trv/,
Next week I'm heading to Arkansas Newport (from south america) and will be there until the 6th of january, staying at my girlfriends parents house, have a car at my disposal.
I am looking for things to do there, we are planning on doing a one day trip almost each day to different places and a couple of overnight trips so we are looking for places to go, things to do and such.
So basically recomendations on where to go on overnight trips, (where to stay and things around it to do) and recomendations for places we can go leaving early in the morning and arriving late at night for one day trips.
>tl;dr will be staying at arkansas for 20 or so days, need things to do and places to visit almost on a daily basis.
self bump.
Also hows little rock? any interesting there?
What part of it has the better night life? pubs/bars and such.
>>1057327
I lived in Hot Springs for a few months. Hands down the most boring and depressing place I've ever lived. There's a reason most people forget Arkansas is a state. I'm not trying to be a dick, just telling you to keep expectations low. Focus on spending time with her and her family.
There's two truly good things about Arkansas though:
>Incredibly nice people
(although Little Rock is very run down and ghetto-y, so don't expect to much here either)
>Really good hiking
Unfortunately, it's going to be pretty cold. I'm sure there will be some days that get up to 50 degrees, so I recommend you plan some hiking trips to quick-draw on any day that has nice weather.
If you're not worried about money, consider spending a day or two in the bath-houses of Hot Spring, old style spa resorts (not that expensive, relatively).
For night life, just go where your girlfriend wants, or do some research on yelp.
Since you have lots of time, consider taking a few days to a nearby city with more fun stuff: Memphis, New Orleans, Springfield, all within a few hours' drive.
>>1057345
I've never been but I always thought that visiting Hot Springs would be cool, just because I've never been to natural hot springs before.
Also, I definitely recommend New Orleans as well.
It's where I live now and it's amazing.
>>1057364
do you recommend doing an overnight trip over there? concidering its 7hs drive to get there?
Saying I leave at 5 in the morning or so to get there, what would you recommend me to do?
>>1057368
Eat. Drink.
It's the sterotypical answer, and the stereotypical thing people do in New Orleans but it's really true.
It's harder to find bad food in the city than good food. Although all the French Quarter restaurants will be a little overpriced.
If you've never done Vietnamese food before find a couple places that do that.
Also bars. If you like a particular type of bar, New Orleans has options for it.
>>1057370
cool! any particular area/neighborhood/street you'd recommend to do those things?
>>1057364
I've been to hot springs. I actually quite liked it. Of course since it is in Arkansas there is going to be a lot of poverty but the architecture downtown is cool, especially the hotel, va hospital, and of course the bath houses. Check out the race track and mountains including some of the natural springs around the city, also Bill Clinton grew up in hot springs so I bet there is some kind of museum there or one of his former houses you can check out.
>>1057373
Not the NOLA guy but I would strongly recommend staying in the french quarter, CBD, and garden district. Everywhere else is quite seedy and rather dangerous.
>>1057377
Thanks for the recommendations!
Leave
>>1057402
>>1057411
I think he's saying you should leave Arkansas.
>>1057377
>Not the NOLA guy but I would strongly recommend staying in the french quarter, CBD, and garden district. Everywhere else is quite seedy and rather dangerous.
Nola guy here.
Not necessarily true. Crime in the city can happen literally anywhere. A pizza guy was shot on a street with fucking multimillion dollar mansions. Also, there's a lot more to the city than just that, and you don't even have to go to an area of the city that's really dangerous.
>>1057373
French quarter, CBD, and garden district are the most touristy areas, but still worth seeing. Especially if you want to check the "essential" stuff off your list like Bourbon Street (which I don't like) Cafe Du Monde (which I do like), and the Riverwalk.
I hang out with people in Uptown a lot, which isn't talked aboout as much, but is a fairly ritzy area.
MidCity has a lot of cool stuff in it as well, but scares tourists away because it looks seedy, despite actually being one of the coolest areas of the city. On that note, Treme is a really famous neighborhood which used to be quite dangerous, but is rapidly gentrifying.
As far as specific streets go, Magazine street and Frenchman street are my two go to streets for showing people around, however, both have gotten really crowded over the last few years.
If you want to take your girlfriend some place nice that doesn't involve eating or drinking, go to City Park. It's a huge public park (I think 50% bigger than Central Park?) which is a great place to walk around.
>>1057415
>Treme is a really famous neighborhood which used to be quite dangerous, but is rapidly gentrifying.
Interesting. Don't get my wrong I love NOLA but when I looked on google street view in NOLA in the Treme neighborhood it looked like katrina had hit just 10 days ago. It looked really bad. I had actually considered moving to New Orleans at one point because I loved the french and art nuveu architecture but decided against due to the fact more than half the pop is poor blacks. What are some of the best neighborhoods to live in New Orleans? I really love the european feel to a lot of the city.
>>1057432
Well it depends on a lot of stuff.
Yes, the city is about half black, although I think that number's gone down a bit since Katrina actually.
The thing is, there's going to be blacks and the risk of crime in every neighborhood, and every neighborhood can differ a great deal street by street.
If you're really conscious about the risk of crime, New Orleans is not a good city to live in, because you will hear about it a lot.
Like I said I have a bunch of friends who live in Uptown, and although they hear about crimes going down every day, they've never witnessed anything personally and never been attacked or mugged or anything like that.
I've never had anything like that happen to me either. Although if you're in the French Quarter you will get pan-handled a fair bit.
The closest thing to black-on-white crime that my friends ever mentioned is that for a while their was this old black guy who was going through his mail for a couple weeks. He caught the guy at it once and told him to leave and he didn't come back after that.
Best neighborhoods to live in New Orleans depends on what you want out of your neighborhood. The easy answer is that the safest neighborhoods will be the garden district, uptown, CBD, and the areas around City Park.
Alternatively you could move to the 'Burbs. Mandeville and Covington can be nice.
Everything I just mentioned is going to be really expensive though.
I could go into more detail but what do you want out of a neighborhood?
Where would you be working? What would you be doing?
How important is cost to you? Convenience? Space?
>>1057316
I'm a native Arkansan, so I think I could probably help a bit. Personally, I feel like the only two places worth visiting is Little Rock and Bentonville/Fayetteville.
Little Rock can kinda seem dirty and dangerous, but there are some nice areas. Plus, I've never been to a bad restaurant there (it's especially good for BBQ). I enjoyed visiting the Capitol Building and the Arkansas River Trail. The River Market can also be fun, since there's a ton of different food and unique objects, but it depends if you're into that. I believe there's also a Clinton Library in LR but I never got a chance to visit it.
Bentonville and Fayetteville are super close to each other so I'm just gonna count them together. They're both kind of out of the way from Newport, but I still feel like you should consider giving them a visit. Both cities have waaaaay friendlier locals than Little Rock, too. Fayetteville is a college town so there's a lot of neat bars and restaurants in the area, and the university there is pretty. Plus, if you arrive before Christmas, the downtown area will have a ton of unique Christmas lights and it can be fun to walk around and check them out. Bentonville is kinda hipster in an irritating way, but I've always liked the downtown area and there's some unexpectedly unique restaurants in the town square. Museums may not be your thing, but if they are, there's two museums I'd recommend visiting: The Wal-Mart Museum, since Wal-Mart was founded and is headquartered in Bentonville, and an art museum called Crystal Bridges, which can probably compete with a lot of art museums in larger cities, like New York or Chicago. There's also a boutique hotel called 21c Museum Hotel made specifically because of it's proximity to the museum. It's been voted one of the best hotels in the U.S. and has a neat restaurant inside.
Hope I helped bro, enjoy your visit to my home state. Ask any questions if you want.
>>1057464
The museum was founded by Waltons' wife. There was a news story about how she got kids involved in art there.
