Archive for the ‘travel adventures’ Category

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Prague – Music, Books, Food

April 9, 2014

Posted by Kanga. Please do not reblog.

We headed up to the castle hill for a second day. DaddyBird stopped into a music shop to get a couple of Zelenka albums.

rows of compact discs in a music store

As we came out, we noticed that it had clouded up and was raining. There was much rejoicing.

quaint restaurant

We stopped in for lunch at a quaint restaurant.

cobblestone lane

We wandered on down the hill to the castle. We toured the Story of Prague museum display at the castle, but photography was forbidden.

view of rooftops from castle hill

This is what Prague looks like on a mildly rainy day.

tree lined path in a park

Back down the hill, we found another neighborhood park by wandering through a doorway.

bookstore

We stopped in at Shakespeare and Sons bookshop because Daddybird wanted to pick up a few Czech authors in translation.

graffiti on an archway showing a sheep's head

Graffiti is rampant as you may have noticed in some of my pictures, but it is mostly tagging and not artistic. It seems strange in a city so filled with art that the graffiti wouldn’t be artistic, too.

arched wooden door

I took several door pictures.

stein of extremely dark Budweiser beer

We stopped for dinner at a restaurant that was established in 1466. We had REAL Budweiser beer and a lovely meat filled meal.

To see all the pictures, click here.

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Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral

April 8, 2014

Posted by Kanga. Please do not reblog.
main entrance to the Prague castle
We took the tram up to the top of the hill and walked down to the castle. (Interesting point of information – the castle is still used as the seat of government and the presidential residence.) Click here to see all the pictures. Click here for a map of the castle grounds.

cathedral spires

Within the castle grounds is St. Vitus Cathedral. To see the interior photos I took, click here. Click here for a map of the cathedral.

stained glass cathedral window

Many beautiful stained glass windows in many different styles.

entrance gate to the Strahov monastery

After touring the castle grounds and walking down the hill to the tram stop, we took the tram back up to the top again so that we could have dinner at the Strahov Monastery.

plate with goose leg, cabbage, dumplings

We ordered goose and duck. The goose entré was the best. The duck was good, but not as tender and lovely as the goose. The chef didn’t seem to know what to do with spinach except cook it to death.

plate with duck, spinach, dumplings

I ordered stuffed gingerbread dumplings with plum sauce. The dumplings were not made of gingerbread, much to my disappointment. I am not impressed with Czech dumplings, whether savory or sweet. They are tough and tasteless. Inside was half a plum and the plum sauce was delicious, so it wasn’t all bad.

dumplings, plum sauce, cream

DaddyBird had the pancakes with beer ice cream. I had a little taste of the ice cream and it was yummy.

crepes, ice cream, whipped cream

The sun was going down and exhaustion was setting in, so we took the tram home and called it a day.

tram rails

Posted in food, historical site, Prague, travel adventures | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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Dinner and a Movie – Prague

April 7, 2014

Posted by Kanga. Please do not reblog.

restaurant menu

Day Five was a laid back day. We headed out for lunch at a little neighborhood restaurant.

sausage and cheese appetizers

Cheese and sausage appetizers.

potato pancakes and goulash stew

DaddyBird had goulash and potato pancakes – very nice.

pork ribs and sour cream

I had the world’s best honey glazed pork ribs. Beyond words.

two glasses of beer

And, of course, there was beer.

We made a quick trip down to Wenceslas Square to buy games at the game shop we found the other day and another quick trip back to the apartment to drop them off.

movie ticket

Then, we were back on the tram to go to a neighborhood, artsy-fartsy movie theatre to watch Only Lovers Left Alive starring Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton. It was so lovely to be in a room where no one was talking or eating. Everyone was quietly watching the film and laughing only when appropriate. No one was sitting next to me asking me to explain the film to them. This is how movies should be experienced.

lobby of the movie theatre

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Another Peaceful Prague Day

April 6, 2014

Posted by Kanga. Please do not reblog.

view of Prague from a rooftop

We woke up to a cool, cloudy day. It got up to 59F for a high. Perfect day. We love that kind of weather.

Nothing overly exciting on our agenda. We just took the tram down to Wenceslas Square and wandered around the Easter market booths. We had a grilled cheese sandwich.

slice of bread, grilled cheese, fruit jam

We went up to a rooftop restaurant for a very leisurely lunch. It was after 3 pm by the time we decided to move on.

We wondered down to Old Town Square again to browse more Easter market booths. We tasted the trdelnik which is bread wrapped around a spindle and cooked, spinning, over coals. It tastes a lot like my mother’s cinnamon rolls. We had spa wafer cookies. They were heated so that the filling oozed out. Trust me, next time you eat wafer cookies, heat them up.

We bought a few souvenirs. I bought a few linens.

two table cloths embroidered with blue flowers

Then is was back home to the apartment and dinner in the neighborhood restaurant downstairs. A day well spent.

To see all the pictures, click here.

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Prague = Beautiful

April 5, 2014

Posted by Kanga. Please do not reblog.

ornate church exterior

Prague is beautiful. There is art everywhere. There is a mixture of all the historical periods and art styles. Old buildings have been maintained and updated so that they can still be used without stripping away their history and beauty. Even the utilitarian Soviet era buildings have a place and add to the beauty.

statue of a woman with two children

Living in a country where representation of the human form in sculpture is not allowed makes the statues here even more impressive to me. I understand the prohibition against images, but I wonder at the loss of history by the exclusion of this form of communication. Public art depicting historical figures teaches us about those who went before us. We can look them in the eye and wonder about who they were, what they were like. They are all around us. We can stand on the bridge where John of Nepomuk was tossed over to drown by the order of the King for not divulging what the Queen had been confessing. We can marvel at the bravery and the villainy. Maybe when I take a picture of St. Anne, I’m thinking more about the pigeons than the history, but later I might wonder what she did to be remembered in this fashion.

colorful five story buildings

DaddyBird did quite a bit of reading and research before we came. He read advice on a blog written by a couple who lived in Prague for a few years. They warned their readers away from the crass touristy area around Old Town. We walked through there on Friday and are still wondering where the crass part is. It was a bit crowded, as you will see in the pictures, but the shops were pleasant and the wares in the windows were good quality. The prices are high, but that’s normal for tourist areas. We only encountered one hawker who wanted us to eat at his restaurant, but he took “no” for an answer. It was clean and charming.

To see all the pictures from Day Three, click here.

Posted in historical site, Prague, travel adventures | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

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Roaming Around Prague

April 4, 2014

Posted by Kanga. Please do not reblog.

tram ticket

Our studio apartment is one block from the end of a tram line. We wondered around a bit looking for a place to buy tickets and finally stumbled upon the ticket vending machine. It had enough English assistance that we were able to get our 30 minute tram tickets.

man in front of a tram in front of a church

About halfway to our destination, a van accidentally connected with the side of our tram, so we got off and walked through the neighborhood. By the time the accident was cleared and the trams were running again, there was only 3 minutes left on our tickets, so we just walked the rest of the way down to Wenceslas Square.

view of Our Lady of the Snows Church from Franciscan Garden

In our wonderings, we found the Franciscan Garden, which is a lovely, peaceful park surrounded by buildings. You have to know where to look to find your way in. The tall building in the background of this picture is the Our Lady of the Snow Church which became our next destination.

statue of a winged man holding a woman with an owl at his feet.

What appeared to be the gate to the church was locked, but we peeked in to see what we could see and continued to roam the neighborhood. Behind this sculpture is a door and we went in because the sign hanging next to it promised books. Little did we know that this was the actual entrance to the church.

entrance to the church

The church is very beautiful and impressive from the outside. The inside, however, went beyond our expectations.

very tall ornate church altar

This picture doesn’t do it justice. It was awe inspiring and definitely the highlight of the day.

To see all the pictures of the day, click here.

Posted in Prague, travel adventures | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

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Beer, Sausage, Cheese – Rinse, Repeat

April 3, 2014

Posted by Kanga. Please do not reblog.

Our agenda for the next few days in Prague, Czech Republic is beer, sausage, and cheese. We will probably get a bit of sight seeing in, too.

street view in Prague

For the first few pictures, click here.

From the moment of touchdown, our experience has been lovely. The flight, however, was not so lovely. We arrived at Dubai International Airport at terminal 3. After check-in & baggage drop off, we went through passport and security. These were all normal and easy. Our gate was A7, which is at the newer terminal (number 4?) so we took the train to that terminal and walked down to the end of it, gate A7. This is were it gets stupid. Gate A7 is actually a bus terminal. They load people onto buses and drive them to a plane. I hate this because it means standing in a moving bus which has no seats and is crammed with people followed by climbing wobbly metal stairs, dragging my carry on luggage to get into the plane. This bus ride was ridiculously long. They drove us from terminal 4, through terminal 2, to the far end of the airport. An exact map of the airport is not available, for obvious reasons, but here is my approximation:

Google map of DXB airport showing point of departure to point of arrival at plane on opposite ends

Emirates Airline is clearly over-reaching and scheduling more flights than it can actually handle. The last several flights we have taken with them have all be late in departing due to stupid stuff like this. Next time we book a flight we will look at other airlines a bit more seriously.

Posted in Dubai, Prague, travel adventures | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

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Do you miss America?

August 13, 2013

Posted by Kanga. Please do not reblog.

view of the Columbia River from Crown Point

We are often asked if we miss America or most specifically if there are things we miss. Our answer is “No, we don’t miss America, but we miss Portland.” We miss the many people there that we love, we miss the climate, and we miss the culture. It is really too bad that we can’t afford to live in Portland.

Our Oregon sojourn is over and we are in California for a few days again. To see all our Portlandia pictures click here. To see all of our Oregon pictures click here.

We’ve been terribly remiss. We visited many friends, as many as we could squeeze in in one week. However, we did not even think to take pictures with all of them. Duh! I’m so used to taking pictures in a culture where people usually don’t want their picture taken, that I forget that it is acceptable. Despite the lack of photographic evidence, we enjoyed our time with Cedate, Laura, Tony, Colleen, Mari, Jeremy, Sue, Kraig, Paul, Gary, Troy, Martina, Todd, Angie, Kristen, Troy, Shawna, and Linda. If I’ve missed someone, my apologies. It was a whirlwind week and my brain is old.

Here is something that we do miss. The coin operated laundry.

large laundry machines

We spent Sunday afternoon in a self-service laundry. There are no such things in the UAE. People there either have laundry machines in their home or give their laundry to a laundry service. Our current all-in-one laundry machine does not remove cat hair, so we happily ran our clothes through these machines and reveled in the lack of cat hair when they came out.

coin operated clothes dryers

This is a rather disjointed blog post, but I hope it makes some sense. We love Oregon and Portland, specifically, and enjoyed our time there.

Posted in travel adventures, USA | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

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Going East

July 31, 2013

Posted by Kanga. Please do not reblog.

After a few errands and a pleasant banking experience (so refreshing), we headed east, over the Cascade Mountain range to Prineville.

See the travel photos – click here.

A few more Portlandia pictures were added – click here.

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Portland Pit-Stop

July 30, 2013

Posted by Kanga, please do not reblog.

After only three days in California, it was time to get back on a plane and fly again. This time the flight was less than two hours and as pleasant as a plane flight can be. Southwest Airlines knows how to load people onto a plane. They don’t have assigned seating, but as you check in, you are assigned a “pole position.” At the gate they have clear signage to show everyone just where to line up and when boarding begins, everyone goes in an orderly fashion. Once in the plane, you can choose where you want to sit. It is fast and efficient.

Everything else went efficiently, too. We were a bit concerned, because despite repeated tries (both in the UAE and the US) to contact our bank to notify them that we are traveling, we have not succeeded. Our bank is paranoid and will probably block our cards once they begin to receive charges from outside the country. Don’t get me started on UAE banking, because I could rant for days, a real fillibuster.

The evening was spent at one of our favorite, locally owned, Portland pubs – McMenamins 205. Great beer, great food, great (and entertaining) service, and great friends. Much of the conversation was spent talking about the TV show Portlandia and how true it is with specific examples from real life.

We will continue to document Proof of Portlandia throughout our trip – click here.

Next, we have a three hour drive to Prineville, Oregon where my family lives. Stay tuned.

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