My wife and I will be traveling to NY in early April. I already have our "nice" dinners planned at Osteria 57 in Greenwich Village and Peak NYC at Hudson Yards. If, for some reason, I should absolutely avoid these two places...please let me know.

We need to loosely plan dinner for the other two nights. These two nights shouldn't be as expensive as the two nights above :). Both of these nights we'd like to eat closer to Astoria, where we will be staying (roughly 28th and 38th). We'll be close to Richmond Hill one of these days, so would be open to eating down there as well before returning back to Astoria.

Could you suggest a great pizza place where we could sit down and have salad and pizza?

how about a traditional Indian restaurant? Not a fusion and not some place where someone tries to do something fancy. A place I can get Chicken Tikka Masala and my wife can find Chana Masala.

Some other place that isn't Indian or pizza, but is an absolute must in Astoria?

Thank you New Yorkers!

I work remotely for a US tech start-up, and my work is flying me out for our company kickoff in Santa Barbara at the end of February. Because I want to spend as little time in Berlin February weather as possible and I want to meet up with some local(-ish) relatives, I'm flying in a week earlier than necessary. As a result, however, I'm going to have some free time to fill.

The biggest thing is that I'm going to have to find and pay for my own lodging while I'm there until the work event starts and I can check into the hotel my company booked. So if anyone has any personal experience with some cheap-but-not-sketchy lodging options in LA or Santa Barbara, I especially welcome that. I'm flying into LAX so I'm able to stay there before going down to Santa Barbara for the actual work event if it's cheaper or there's more to do there (which I kinda assume is the case on both counts, idk).

I've heard LA is generally pretty expensive. I'm not a huge party animal by any means, but I figure I should do more when I'm there than sitting in my hotel reading (especially if I want to kick the jetlag before all the work stuff starts). So I'd also love any recommendations for cheap but interesting stuff to do while I'm there. My cursory Google searches have turned up a bunch of Hollywood tourist type stuff and recommendations for outdoorsy activities like hiking, neither of which is my speed. But surely there's gotta be some interesting stuff for a nerdy introvert to check out!

I'm also a very food-motivated traveler, so any particular restaurant recommendations for while I'm there are very welcome -- especially stuff that's hard for me to find in Germany. Latin American food is especially high on my list ofc, and I'm also on the lookout for good wing places, since I know both of those things are very hard to find at home in Berlin. But I also welcome other recommendations, especially stuff that isn't gonna come up in a quick google search. Or authentic Chinese food (even though I'm not going to SF, I learned how to say 洛杉矶 in Chinese class back in the day so LA's gotta have at least somthing 😅). I'm also a coffee person, so I'd love to know about any particular standout local coffee shops (even though I'm sure there's way more than I could try in even a month in a city the size of LA).