busker

Day 20 – Prague

Posted on July 16, 2017

I’m always serious; I’m Czech.

After having a nice home cooked breakfast at the apartment, we headed out for a slightly late start, but it’s summer, so we get plenty of daylight here. We didn’t have any specific destinations in mind today, just decided to wander around the city and see what we could find. We started in the main square in Old Town, since it’s super close to our apartment.

From there, we walked back towards the newer area, as we had seen a few museums and other interesting looking buildings back there when we walked past yesterday to get to the supermarket. We briefly stopped into a chocolate shop and tried some goodies.

A bit further on, we found the other main square, which had some marquees and a stage set up, where a group of Hare Krishnas had some sort of event. There wasn’t too much set up yet (more on that in a minute).

Nearby there was a Museum of Communism which we decided to check out. Inside, there were many walls with information, photos and items from Prague’s history with Communism after the Second World War. There was a lot of depressing information to take in, it’s weird to think how recently all this was happening.

Once we had made it through the museum, we headed back out onto the square to find a much larger amount of people. The Hare Krishnas were on the stage speaking while free food was being given out from a nearby marquee.

We made our way through the crowd, and continued on to a nearby shopping centre (of course…). After a bit of inevitable shopping, we went upstairs to the food court to get some late lunch/early dinner. There was a good looking Japanese place there, and it looked well priced. It turned out to be pretty great, with large portions, tasty food and really good prices. A decent variety of choices too.

After eating, we walked back towards Old Town, getting some strange donuts along the way, and walked up to the river and bridge. There were a couple of bridges, so we walked across to what seemed like the main one, and hung out there a bit.

There were a number of buskers out today, and again I got quite a lot of video, but balanced with a decent number of photos too. Tomorrow will probably be a similar day hanging out in the city, seeing other things we didn’t get a chance to today. Perhaps even a concert/show tomorrow night.

Trinity College installation.

Day 1 – Dublin

Posted on June 27, 2017

And that auld triangle, went jingle-jangle, all along the banks of the Royal Canal.

I was going to do a short Prologue post last night, but had too long of a travel day and couldn’t be bothered. After our 24 hours of travel, we finally got to our hotel in the afternoon and everyone crashed immediately. I was however too hungry for such nonsense, so opted to go pick up some pizza from Il Capo, a great little Italian place in the city. We ate that in the hotel room, and then we all went to sleep (I stayed up a bit longer, as it was only about 6pm).

After we all caught up on sleep and awoke, it was around 6:30am. We had plenty of time to wake up, get ready and head out in our own pace. I did some research on things nearby to see in the city and found a few restaurants and some interesting places which came highly recommended.

So at around 9am, we headed out to find the Kilkenny Cafe (actually a cafe within a retail shop) to get some breakfast. A short walk later, and we’re standing before a large buffet of pastries, cakes, sweets on one side, and eggs, sausages, bread, juices on the other.

We loaded up our trays, paid for our (very reasonably priced) selections and ate vigorously. After consumption had concluded, we paid a visit to Trinity College which was right across from the cafe. The campus is nice to walk around and had some interesting installations.

The main tourist attraction for the college however is the Book of Kells exhibition and Old Library. No photography was allowed in the exhibition, but there were various super old books (including the Book of Kells of course), with information about the history of them etc. Amazing how well preserved they are, and the detail which went into them.

After seeing those books, we went through to the library. It was huge.

So many old books everywhere, as well as busts of some old geezers.

After that, we had a quick trip around Merrion Square Park. There was an Oscar Wilde monument which was cool.

It was at this point that the day took a turn for the worse… The family wanted to go shopping… Wasn’t too bad actually as I just wandered around the busy streets, took some photos/video and listened to the buskers.

Oh and we did have a short detour to stop into the National Gallery of Ireland. There was a Vermeer exhibition I wanted to see, but the next session wasn’t for a little while, so we just looked around for a bit before moving on.

When the shopping was done, we started walking over to Dublin Castle, but stopped to get some lunch at another highly recommended place, Umi Falafel.

A delicious meal later, and we stopped into the Olympia Theatre to book tickets for the musical Once, for Friday night. Will be great to see it in Dublin for that authentic experience. But that’ll come later on. For now, we were heading to Dublin Castle.

There were some interesting things to see inside, with some quite ornate furniture and room displays.

By the end of all that, everyone was tired and sore, so we limped back to the hotel. Upon return, everyone else basically fell asleep, although it was only about 5pm (sunset is 10pm). We might head out later for dinner if they wake up, but it seems unlikely at this point.

Tomorrow we might take the car and drive out somewhere out of the city. Not sure where exactly yet, time will tell. Find out next time, on Dragon Ball Z!