anniversary

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An old city center unlike any other - Prague

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The previous post in this series is here..

After we said bye to our guide and group, we walked back to the Kafka statue and our hotel with a stop at the clock. There was not a big crowd as it was not on the hour.

We watched the Kafka head do a few turns and walked into the mall. There was an Indian food place in the second floor which had Chai and missi roti’s. So we sampled some stuff there and watched the shoppers.

Then we decided to go back to our room, wash and change and go back to see the clock and Prague by night. As soon as we got ready, we went for dinner at Masala, the Indian restaurant right next to the hotel.

The food was great but it was my mistake not to tell the guy “no sesame seeds”.. They brought me butter naan with sesame seeds. By the time we waited for the new Naan to arrive, things got cold as they got a flurry of customers within a 10 minute window! All said and done, the food was great. We were happy!

We were literally in a small backyard surrounded by high rise buildings.. it was beautiful.. this dinner was actually one of the nicest dinners we had in recent times!

Our walk back through the square. The memories of San twirling around like a little princess in this square are priceless.

There were a lot of captures on this walk. Here are the galleries

portrait format gallery..

a few pano shots of the clouds rolling in

We walked back to see the clock chime and there was hardly any room to stand in that crowd. We watched this “antique clock” do its thing and walked further out towards Charles bridge. The sunset was blurred by clouds and it was getting dark and ominous as there was rain in the forecast. We were both wearing chappals and once it started raining, we made a run back towards our hotel which was a good 20 minutes away.

Here is a tip. Don’t run with chappals on cobble stone streets!

We made it back to our hotel and got some well deserved rest.

A highlight video of this last part..

After this it was going to be a ride to the airport in the morning and fly out to our last destination on the grand tour! We did so much in those two and a half days that it will take me a long time to finish writing about.

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The magic of Charles bridge and the Vltava river

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The previous post in this series is here..

Good thing the photos and videos are bringing back memories.

After our visit to the castle complex, our guide walked us down the hundreds of steps to the Charles bridge that was built starting in 1347 AD!

It is a fantastic bridge as are the statues on it.

We walked down the steps and right before we got to the bridge we got some funnel cake. It is a local delicacy. We missed it in Budapest.. but got it here. It was close to a Churro..

After this walk across the bridge, we got to see the old Jewish Quarter, one of the oldest areas in Prague, followed by a lunch with local cuisine (which doesn’t have much in the way of Vegetarian options).. so we ate fried cheese and bread.. the rest of the group loved it. This was a restaurant in the basement of a 800 year old building. They had to put special wiring in to light the place with bulbs. It was interesting.

This was followed by more walking and finally a boat cruise on the river to see all the landmark buildings from the river. When the cruise was over, we said bye to our guide. He told us to walk back to the hotel through a gap! We went “duh”.. why did we Uber here in the morning. we could have just walked it!

a few photo galleries.. We walked past the place where they shot the first Mission Impossible movie and actually recognized it. Our guide was full of information on events that we could recognize from famous movies, famous artists who came to Prague and were inspired, there was a lot of talk of Duran Duran, etc. He was an “all things Prague” guy!

A lot of photos in the Portrait format gallery.. tall structures, small roads, go figure!

The clock tower in the old square was supposed to be a highlight and our guide said go there and don’t miss it. San and me decided to walk around a bit. We also got to spend time at the Kafka head which turns every few minutes. When we saw the head, we realized it was 300 feet from our hotel. So we decided to take a break go get changed and then get back to the square.

A video highlights reel of this part of the Prague tour..

The last part of our evening in another post..

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Vienna - a sampler visit

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The previous post in this series is here…

We left Budapest by train and reached Vienna later that evening after an almost 3 hour journey. We watched a glorious sunset on the way. The first order of business after reaching Vienna was to move our return to a later train. There was no way we were going to do every stop on the bus tour in Vienna and be back to pick up luggage at hotel and come back for a 5PM train the next day to leave Vienna. So we found the ticket place and moved to a 7PM train. We also paid extra to get a first class ticket. We were celebrating our 25th anniversary and after a very short discussion we both agreed that the extra money for losing the earlier ticket and getting new tickets was worth it. We were tired and running around all day. So why not get the extra leg room!

Once that was taken care of, we walked out of the massive train station wondering how long the walk was going to be to the hotel and would we find anything to eat. Just as I was about to pray to Lord Ganesha to give us some food, lo and behold, he was staring at me in the face in what appeared to be a psychedelic dream!

We got some naan, daal and rice to go and walked to our hotel which was 4 blocks away. The roads we walked on were deserted but the hotel MOOONS (with 3 O’s) was very nice. The staff were courteous and helpful. We told them we are going to crash, wake up, check out and leave luggage there and will pick it up later that evening and be off. It was going to be a day in Vienna. The receptionist said “I am not sure you can see what Vienna has to offer in a day!”. We told her “we will at least see all the main spots from the outside and get a feel for the city. If and when we come back, it will be great!”

The room was nice and the breakfast spread was great. We walked a half mile to get an Uber to the first stop of what would be an all day hop on hop off bus tour of Vienna.

We covered every place there was in this bus tour. There was no time to go into the museums. We did get tickets and go into the main palace and we walked with a self guided tour and finished it in under an hour.

There is a Public service warning to tired guys like me. There is two routes on the bus tour map. A Blue Bus tour and a Red bus tour. Here is the kicker. ALL THE BUSES ARE PAINTED RED OUTSIDE. IT ONLY SAYS BLUE OR RED LINE IN A SMALL INSET IN THE FRONT OF THE BUS!!!”. At one point we got off at a stop and when we came back I boarded a red bus (they are all red, duh, except I didn’t know it) and we were on the blue route. This cost us 30 precious minutes on a busy day. The buses also don’t operate like clockwork. There are more red than blue line buses and we waited for 45 minutes at one stop. We complained to the representative at the end, not that it made a difference. We took Ubers at two spots to go from one stop to another just to save time. Hindsight being 20/20, maybe we could have Uber’ed more.

There were lot of pictures from Vienna. It has taken me ages to process and select them.

This is what “happiness” looks like!

here are two galleries in portrait and landscape format.

A few Panos..

In the middle of the tour we realized that one of the stops was the train station! so some good happened out of that bus mixup. We changed our plan. There was an Indian restaurant a 10 minute walk from one of the stops. We would finish seeing everything important, go there for a late lunch (we found they were open.. again Lord Ganesha came to feed us), then get back on the bus and finish the rest of the stops and on the last bus get out at the train station. We rush to the hotel to pick up our suitcases and run back to catch our train!

My wife is brilliant. When she said it out loud, I thought she was crazy but I love it when she goes nuts like this. A million things can go wrong on such a tight plan, but surprisingly nothing did. We did exactly as we planned in-spite of losing 45 minutes at the last stop before lunch. There was some running from the Hotel back to the train station with the carry on baggage, but we had a good 15 minutes to spare before the train showed up!

Then we were off to the next stop.. we got treated to yet another amazing sunset. The ticket upgrade was totally worth it. They served us hot cocoa every hour ! We left Vienna with a smile on our faces!

A video highlight reel of the day in Vienna….

Did everything we wanted to in a day!

One of our biggest takeaways from visiting Vienna was the change a single woman leader brought, not just to this country but to Europe at large by getting girls and women qualified and into the workforce and giving them equality. Maria Theresa did wonders for the world! We have a lot to learn from history!

Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.