Made it to Vienna!

As sad as we were to leave Prague (and we were super sad), south-south-eastward, ho!

With basically zero snafus, and a Czech uber under our belts, Becky and I (and several adventuresome Blackhawks fans) made it on to the correct train, at the correct time, heading in the correct direction.  Approximately four hours later, we hit Vienna.  While on the train, we planned our approach to the 2.5 days that we have in Austria.

Day 0.5 - 1

1. Check into hotel, find food (priorities, man)
2. Navigate the Viennese metro system, get a lay of the land
3. Explore downtown Vienna via walking tour, doing as many of the historical attractions as are still open post-4:00 pm
4. Find more food (obviously).

This plan was perfectly executed.  The Courtyard Marriott is lovely, and the receptionist was exceedingly helpful.  Lunch was tasty, and provided enough for breakfast leftovers.  The metro system, while more complicated than Prague's, still affords us a straight shot to the City Center, and we were able to do a pretty full loop of some of the main highlights.  I was even able to pre-identify what my Austria magnet will be (I'm not fully committed, but like... 85% of the way there).

Day 1

We went ahead and booked a day-long excursion, so that we could get a sense of the Austrian countryside.  This will be a panoramic Alpine tour, featuring the Admont Abbey (home of the largest Benedictine library in the world) and the town of Hallstatt.  We're excited.

Day 2

We also have an excursion planned for Wednesday.  At 10:00 AM, we're going to the Spanish Riding School to watch dressage practice.  My understanding is that this is held at a palace, and will be set to Mozart.  There is no part of this excursion that I'm not super excited for.  

We'll surely add some other activities to the agenda, but this is where we are so far - this is a pretty darned rockin' trip, guys.

Last Day in Prague :(

We've had a great time in Prague - pretty much everything has been easy, the city is super straightforward to navigate, and there have been tons of options for fun stuff to do.  Given that today was the nicest day that we've had weather-wise, we were pretty happy to be spending a lot of it outdoors.

We started the day with a tram ride around the City - the 72-hour public transport pass is really useful, and also only ~$14, definitely a bargain.  We rode until we got close to the Strahov Monastery, which was founded in 1143.  We visited the church and the extensive library, and then sat outside and enjoyed lunch (goulash, in a breadbowl).  The gentleman who picked us up from the airport on Friday spoke really highly of the restaurant, both because the food was good, and because the monks had been making their own beer for centuries.  Becky had the beer - I'm holding out for wine country :)

After lunch we went back to Prague Castle, so that we could go into the cathedral.  The stained glass was pretty incredible, though we've seen several different styles of glass while we've been here.  This was the glass that I picture when I think stained-glass-in-a-church (or play the board game Sagrada), but we've also seen some really pretty geometric patterns that struck me as being pretty modern.

We had a little time to kill between the Castle and our afternoon excursion (a prosecco cruise on the Danube), so we wandered across the Charles Bridge, which is pedestrian-only and has lots of different street vendors and things to look at.  After that, we headed over to the cruise terminal (having learned our lesson about on time being late), and took a lovely river cruise.  We were able to get some pretty good views from the water, and the boat was encased in glass, which was great, given the dropping temperature.

We didn't have quite enough time between the cruise and our black light theater experience to head back to the hotel, so instead, we found a Mexican restaurant, had some delicious frozen margaritas (so happy, right there), and ate tacos.  Traditional Czech? No, obviously not.  An excellent excursion anyway? Hands down, yes.

The final activity of the night/trip was to go to a black light theatre show.  The one playing was Afrikania, which was described as "Wildlife dance styling, and impressive effects of black theatre.  Tourists, a postman, and a big, playful misunderstanding.  It does not go together, does it?  But it can." The show was a mix of non-verbal comedy (with a bit of audience participation) and dancers with different safari-themed costumes that illuminated under black lights.  The lion segment was really cool, as were the zebras - the fly was kind of strange.  Overall, it was as bizarre as I remember it being, and as far as I'm concerned, an essential part of a visit to Prague.

On to Vienna!

Beer Spas - A Czech Tradition

Jetlag is a weird thing.  I was exhausted on Friday night, but by the time it felt reasonable to actually fall asleep (10:00 or so), I was wide awake.  So, rather than doing the smart thing and lying wide awake in the dark trying to will myself to sleep for hours on end, I started a new book.  And then I finished my new book.  ...At least my GoodReads challenge appreciates it.

Saturday morning (and, really, most of Saturday) was damp and rainy.  Obviously we refused to let that deter us, and we crossed the river to see the Prague Tower, which is Eiffel-inspired and at one of the highest points in the area.  We took a felicular up to the Tower and spent some time walking around, before getting into approximately the smallest, most closed in elevator ever, with the operator and four of our temporary new best friends.  Seriously, I swear that I have been in airplane bathrooms that are more spacious than this elevator.  But we survived!  And the views were lovely, as promised.

Hiking back down the mountain (? Large hill? I'm unclear on how to refer to it), we had about an hour to grab lunch and motor it to our early afternoon excursion, which was to experience a beer spa.  As many of you know, I'm not a huge fan of beer.  But I like spas, and I like somewhat random adventures, so this definitely fit the bill.  Things to note about the beer spa experience:

• It was really pretty awesome - we had a private room with these cool wooden tubs.  There were beer taps built in, and (not that I cared) unlimited consumption while we were in there.  The spa also adds a mixture of hops and other exfoliants that are supposed to be good for your skin, gives you some sausage to snack on, and lets you just chill in these giant jetted tubs for a while.
• Post beer bath, they bring you to a dark, quiet room where you wrap up in a sheet and lie under a heated blanket (complete with a heated pillow) to relax for 20 minutes or so.  Very pleasant, very cozy, very nice after being outside in the rain all morning.  Highly recommend.
• Maybe don't show up late.  And recognize that you're supposed to show up pretty early, so even on time is kind of late.  We were just late-late, and the receptionist was somewhat less than impressed (though probably walking in looking like a drowned rat wasn't super helpful either).  Lesson learned.

After our beer spa experience, we went back to the hotel for showers (hops are really kind of gritty, and the showers at the spa were on pretty fast timers), and to get ready for dinner and our concert.  Dinner was at a traditional Czech restaurant near the church that our concert was in - very tasty, pretty reasonably priced.  The concert was the Prague Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, in the Tyn Church.  It was really lovely, and we were in the section near the organ, which was pretty neat to listen to.  Highly recommend that experience if you ever find yourself in Prague.

Here, There, Around the Square

Honestly, the travel to Prague was about as easy as it could possibly have been.  Flights were roughly on time; airline food was less delicious than the flight attendant suggested, but certainly passable; and customs was straightforward.  Becky even thought ahead and set up an airport transfer, so there was a guy waiting for us with our names on a sign - may have to repeat that one in the future, as it was so low stress, and pretty cheap.

The Czech Republic is not on the Euro, so to do the conversion, we lop of the last digit of the price and divide by two (roughly).  I've been kind of blown away by how reasonable everything has been, from food/alcohol to transit to excursion-type activities.  Highly recommend.

After checking into our hotel, we crashed for a few hours and then ventured out for a late-ish lunch (Indian, delicious).  We're staying across from a Metro stop, so we got 72-hour passes and headed into the city.  Recognizing that we hadn't talked about a plan or anything like that, we opted to walk around the Old Town Square for a while, see the Astronomical Clock in motion, hike up to the Prague Castle (not open, but we walked around the complex), and then wander for a while to get our bearings.  We also bought tickets for a concert - the Classical Spectacular Concert in the Tyn Church - and Afrikania, which is a black light show (more information to follow on that one).

By the time 7:00 rolled around, we were starting to fade, and it was starting to rain, so we took the Metro back to our hotel, arriving just in time to watch the Blackhawks-Flyers Global Series Exhibition Game (also in Prague, tickets were outrageous).  While the hawks were not ultimately victorious, I'm pretty happy that we're back to hockey season.

Tomorrow's an exciting (and more planned) day!

Going, going, Prague!

... in just 7.5 hours.

Becky and I have reunited for Europe Trip 2019!  In just negative 23 minutes, we'll be taking off from Philly and heading off to Prague (followed by Vienna and Budapest).  We're excited (despite lack of auxiliary power and air conditioning on the plane) and mostly ready to fall asleep.

Items of note so far:
- Most of our flight seems to be going to the Blackhawks-Flyers exhibition game in Prague.  I'm jealous.

That is all.  Happy birthday, Mom!

Bergen, Norway

Our last stop was Bergen, which was definitely the largest city that we visited, and situated on a bay between several mountains.  The whole city worked its way from sea level up the sides of the mountains, which created a lovely stacked look.  Unfortunately, we didn't realize that we only had about a half a day to spend in Bergen, and the majority of that was spent doing our excursion.

Our excursion was a guided tour through the old city, ending at an ice bar across the bay.  Our tour guide was actually Norwegian, as opposed to French or German, and seemed reasonably knowledgeable (except that as a renter, he did not know the property tax rate, or any of the other increasingly complex economic questions that one of our group members asked).

Bergen has always been one of Norway's biggest ports, with dried cod being a major export, due to it's longevity as a foodstuff and its significant protein.  When the black death hit in the 12th century, the city was more or less decimated, and Norway's international trade fell to basically nothing.  Eventually, some German investors came and reinvigorated the trade, and we were able to see Norway's original stock market on our tour.  Also, the monument to Bob, a dried cod (see right).

We continued through the fresh fish market (interesting, but not really something that can be taken advantage of in a cruise cabin), and made our way over to the ice bar.  Real talk - I expected that the ice bar would be touristy and kind of stupid, because why would Norwegians need this thing?  Isn't the whole country an ice bar for half the year?  While I never got that question answered, it was cooler (haha!) than I thought that it would be, and we had a great time sipping our Norwegian liquor from our ice glasses in our thermal clothing in an ice cave.  Most of the walls had sculptures built into them, which were lit by different colored lights for kind of a cool effect.

Bergen was actually our shortest port of call, and we only had about six hours total in port, so I only had a few minutes to walk around and souvenir shop.  Ultimately, I only got one gift, for #babyboynoyes.

Shout out to Princess - Troy let the ship know that it was our anniversary, and they gave us a $50 gift certificate to the spa, which I used to book a massage.  So after the day in Bergen, we got lunch, read for a little bit, and I headed off for hot stones.  Definitely an awesome way to spend an afternoon :)

Geiranger, Norway

Today was kind of an interesting cruise day – we landed first at Hellsylt, Norway, so that people who had excursions starting there could get off.  We then departed again to cruise for a few hours into Geiranger.  We didn’t have an excursion today, so we used the additional cruising time to do exciting things, like morning trivia and laundry.

According to our adopted trivia friends (John and Mrs. John), who have done this cruise like a zillion times, Geiranger is pleasant to walk around, but didn’t have a ton to do (Mrs. John did bemoan that the town had allowed a campground so close to the water, because it just totally spoiled the view, but she just walks right on through the campground anyway).

We cruised into the town, which was set in the cove between two fjords, and it is absolutely gorgeous.  It’s like there are mountains rising out of the water on all sides, and the weather was perfect.  Snowcapped mountains, blue skies, green everywhere.  Gorgeous.

We took a tender from the ship into Geiranger, and decided to do the hike went up through town to the Fjordsenter.  Let me just say now.  If any of you are considering traveling to Norway, find your nearest 20+ story building, and climb the stairs a few times a day for basically ever.  Everything we’ve done so far has included pretty solid elevation gains, and the Geiranger hike was no exception.

We hiked (mostly walked up stairs) along a giant waterfall, and stopped at several viewing points along the way, where you could see the whole bay with the mountains and the two cruise ships that were in port.  As we got to the top, it started to rain (because of course it did), so we took some pictures, read some of the exhibits on fjords, and headed back down.  In case you were wondering, the campground did not, in fact, spoil the view.

Geiranger is a pretty small town, but happily, on the way back, I was able to pick up a Norway magnet.  Very important part of the travel experience.  The port time has been pretty brief on this cruise, so there hasn’t been much time for shopping, and there’s not much in between super cheap tourist crap and omigod expensive Norwegian sweaters.  Just crazy – hopefully we’ll have a bit more time to poke around in Bergen, tomorrow.

The evening was more or less uneventful – we went to the lounge on deck 15 and watched the fjord pass for several hours.  It’s totally mesmerizing to watch, and there’s a lot of variation in the fjord landscape, which kept it interesting :)

Bergen, Ho!