In Search Of The Eurodog…

After another round of unimpressive Czech food yesterday (we tried a “Czech feast for two” at the restaurant across the street that the guy at reception recommended and it was a giant portion of various meat without much taste), we’ve officially decided to give up ordering “traditional” Czech dishes at restaurants since the Czech diet of massive quantities of meat and starch doesn’t suit us.  Instead, today we went looking for eurodogs, a type of hot dog which involves sticking a wiener inside a baguette that has a hole cut into it instead of a cut-open bun.  Unlike what we read on TripAdvisor, in the middle of October, eurodogs are not easy to find…

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Some Unimpressive Czech Food

Since we’ve spent two days in Prague without trying any “Czech specialty dishes,” we set out today to explore more of Old Town and find a Czech restaurant to eat at.  Unfortunately, our decision to randomly trya place called Restaurace U Golema turned out to be a bad one, and our first experience of Czech food was deeply disappointing.  Hopefully it can only go up from here…

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Prague Day 1 – The Castle & Don Giovanni Marionette Show

After a brutally long 7 hour train ride in one of the old school style trains where you sit in compartments containing 6 seats/compartment, we arrived in the much anticipated city of Prague yesterday.  We spent some time at the mall next to our hotel and then crashed early, catching up on some sleep.  Today, we headed out to begin exploring Prague, starting at the huge castle and finishing with a marionette version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni opera.  So far, Prague is not quite living up to the hype everyone gives it…

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Old Farm, Moreton-In-Marsh

When planning the UK segment of our trip, we used Rick Steves’ website to compile a list of places to visit based on his recommended itinerary.  Visiting a town in the Cotswolds, a range of hills in west-central England, was fairly high on his priority list, so we decided to spend two nights in Moreton-In-Marsh, the only town in the Cotswolds which has a train station. I’m happy to report that, although it’s small, Moreton-In-Marsh may turn out to be one of my favorite places in England… (more…)

4 Days In Cardiff

This past Sunday we caught a very crowded train to Cardiff, Wales, where we’ve spent the last 4 nights.  Once again, I’m summarizing several days into one blog because our time here hasn’t been that exciting.  Cardiff is Europe’s youngest capital city and is growing quickly, but when there isn’t a major rugby match happening at Millennium Stadium, there isn’t a whole lot of excitement in the city…  (more…)

You Call This Spaghetti?!?!

Well, it’s been a little while since my blog entries have focused solely on the food we’ve been eating (at the beginning they did more often), but today is a day where all I have to write about is the food really – except this isn’t about how good the food was, it’s about how unbelievably bad it was!  I’m starting to see why the UK has a rep for bad food… (more…)

The Princess Di Memorial

Today, our last day in London, we headed out to explore Hyde Park and find the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain.  We had asked a couple of police officers about how to find it on our first day in London with Calvin, but it was quite far from Buckingham Palace, where we were, and they told us it wasn’t worth going to, which we thought was an odd thing to say.  As we wandered around Hyde Park asking people for directions everyone we talked to said the same thing, and when we finally found the fountain we, unfortunately, couldn’t help but agree… (more…)

More Sightseeing & BBQ Duck

As predicted, we ended up stuck in the area by our hotel for one more day yesterday because of the Tube strike. Today, with the Tube strike over, we headed back to city center to see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum and try some ramen noodles at Wagamama in Covent Garden, another restaurant on About.com’s top 10 cheap eats in London. It wasn’t a crazy exciting day of sightseeing, but it was a nice way to start our last weekend in London, which is going to be pretty busy. (more…)

Westfield London Shopping Center

Today for Calvin’s last day in London, we decided to spend some time shopping at Westfield London, which isn’t anything exciting to write about, but I wanted to include a small blurb here about the mall because it’s probably the nicest mall I’ve ever been to, in terms of interior design and appearance.  I was born and raised in Edmonton, home of West Edmonton Mall, the largest in the world until 2004, so big malls are nothing special to me, but Westfield London, the largest urban mall in Europe, did make me go “Wow!” just a little bit… (more…)

Vietnamese Food & Snog To End Our Saturday

After our failed day of sightseeing, we took the Tube to Old Street, in the borough of Islington, to find a Vietnamese restaurant called Cay Tre, which Paul had read great reviews about on several food critiquing websites.  Although the spring rolls were among the best I’ve ever had, the rest of our dinner wasn’t as spectacular as we had read.  Calvin and I both ordered a dish called Bún bò Huế, which is vermicelli with slices of beef in a spicy broth, and it didn’t taste anything like the Bún bò Huế we’ve had at Vietnamese restaurants in Canada – the broth wasn’t spicy enough and didn’t have any lemongrass flavour, which it should, and the meat wasn’t the same kind at all.  Looking around us, we didn’t see any Vietnamese people eating there, leading us to conclude that this is a somewhat “westernized” style of Vietnamese food and those reviews we had read were written by people that are used to this type and not the truly authentic stuff… (more…)