japanese

Day 22 – Prague

Posted on July 18, 2017

Han shot first.

A solo mission today, to Prague castle once more, as promised. The castle grounds are larger than I thought, so it was great to have enough time to walk around and see the different areas.

I revisited the South Garden and took some photos of the city below. It’s a great garden, which has amazing views of the city down the entire length.

I also found my way to the Royal Garden on the opposite side, which was much larger, and way less crowded. Hardly anyone was there, and it was quiet. A very calming, peaceful place.

After exploring those, I did a quick visit inside the enormous St Vita church. You had to pay to go properly go inside, but there was an area you could walk into inside which was free. Oh and this thing is huge. Like, crazy huge. Just an enormous structure. Quite a sight to behold.

At this point, the heat and constant walking was tiring me and I was hungry, so I started the long trek back to meet with the others and get some food. We ended up eating at the same Japanese place again and had another solid meal, before heading back to the apartment for the night.

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.

Day 16 – Monaco

Posted on July 12, 2017

Who you think you kidnapped? Chelsea Carter?

Today we travelled to Monte-Carlo in Monaco (by train) to spend the day and look around. Oh did I say train? I meant hellish-sweat-box. Once we were reacquainted with oxygen, we went and had lunch at Valentin, where I had some delicious roast chicken. From there, we went down to the coast, where there is of course the Monte-Carlo Casino and some surrounding nice areas. It’s definitely a rich city, with a lot of people driving around them fancy million-dollar cars. But nice to visit and check out the area.

There was also a nearby Japanese Garden randomly, which is sort of just there among the city, which is a pleasant calm place, if you ignore the sounds of traffic.

After that we decided to head back to Nice, so we could get our laundry done and have a rest before going out for dinner. Which is precisely what we did.

Mum wanted to try a Lebanese restaurant tonight, which I was happy about. I found a good one near Old Town, about 15mins away. It was in a nice street, with a good atmosphere, some old buildings, the setting sun and a bar next door with live music which we were able to enjoy too.

We ordered a few dishes to share (their menu had so much choice – all the classics), and were soon eating some quality Lebanese food, which I didn’t realise I had missed so much. A great day for food.

Then we walked home, stopping briefly to watch the street performers, including a sizable group of people doing what I think was dance-fighting, which was cool. Tomorrow will be a less interesting day I predict, as the women want to spend it shopping, so I will likely sleep in and take it easy. Maybe go somewhere new in the afternoon? We shall see.