Bratislava In One Day

While planning this leg of the trip, we weren’t sure if we should bother going to Bratislava, capital of the Slovak Republic.  Most people don’t have much to say about it, other than the fact that it’s really cheap.  If you remember the movie Euro Trip (which totally doesn’t depict Europe correctly at all but was humorous nonetheless), Bratislava is the run down, dump city where they ended up with only $1.83 while trying to hitchhike to Berlin, but managed to live like kings thanks to the conversion rate.  Since it’s only an hour by train from Vienna, we decided to come spend 2 nights and see for ourselves what it’s really like…

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Le Nozze Di Figaro @ The Vienna State Opera

I am excited to report that tonight we officially attended our first real opera and, lucky for us, The Marriage of Figaro was playing so we sort of knew what was going on!  The Don Giovanni marionette show brought out more of an appreciation of opera for me, but tonight took it to a whole new level and I can’t wait till I get a chance to go again.  Paul isn’t quite as enthralled, but he played the part of the good husband and stood through 3/4 of the performance with me, so I can’t complain…

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Rick Steves’ Vienna

While going to ask a question at the hostel’s reception last night, I noticed a huge pile of guidebooks available for guests to borrow, so I picked up Rick Steves’ Vienna and planned today according to his itinerary and recommendations.  We had recently used his book Rick Steves’ 2009 Italy throughout our 4 weeks in Italy since the friends we were travelling with had brought it along, and it felt familiar and comfortable to follow his book again today.  Having a route to follow and a list of places that are “must-sees” just makes sightseeing so much easier!

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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…)

Bath In A Nutshell

In an effort to catch up on my blog articles, I’m condensing the remaining three of our four days in Bath into one blog entry because, frankly, our time in Bath wasn’t all that interesting!  It’s a nice little town and, after our first day of crappy food, we managed to find a few decent places to eat, but two days here would have been enough, and four days was total overkill.  Bath might be a good spot to holiday if I lived nearby and needed a relaxing getaway, but as a backpacker, it’s just overpriced without much to see or do… (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…)