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!

Olden, Norway

Olden was totally awesome!!  And given that 100% of our Olden activities took place in low temperatures with mild-to-driving rain, you know that I mean it :)

We had an afternoon excursion, so when we woke up (well in advance of 11:15, I might add), we had time for a leisurely breakfast, independent Olden activities, and some literary progress.  The rain didn’t look awful from our sheltered, inside breakfast spot, so we got dressed and planned to explore the little village, all of which could be seen from the ship.

Fake news, people.  Fake news.  It was basically pouring, so we explored the two souvenir shops directly across the pier, didn’t purchase anything, and scurried back to the ship, where we read and ate until it was time for our actual excursion at 2:15 (eating and reading are both par for the course on this trip, and it’s glorious).

According to the ‘Princess Patter,’ Olden is a land where the reindeer outnumber the people (year-round human population is between 498 and 1,500, depending on whether you ask the ‘Princess Patter’ or our tour guide).  The village is on the Nordfjord, which is the 6^th longest fjord in Norway.

Our excursion was a hike to see the Briksdal Glacier.  It started with a 45-minute drive to the base of the peak (sidenote: Mom, don’t book bus trips in Norway).  As I believe Troy’s summary post read, “Like in much of Europe, Norway is seeing a general decline in the Christian religion.  Despite this, 100% of Norwegian tour bus drivers believe in divine intervention.”  Very narrow, very wind-y roads, with a lot of stopping to see which vehicle is larger upon encountering oncoming traffic.

All that said, we survived the bus trip.  Our guide told us that if we wanted to skip most of the hike, there were vehicles that would take us to within 10 minutes of the best glacier viewing for an additional charge.  Troy and I felt like that would be cheating, and no way in heck would we be skipping the majority of the excursion.

And boy, am I glad we didn’t.  Despite the rain and the wind and the cold, the hike was absolutely gorgeous.  The scenery is a weird mix of Alaska and Yellowstone, only taller, with more waterfalls, and sheerer cliff drops.  And SO green.  Most of the hike was along a river that ran down from a pool that formed at the base of the glacier, and it was just lovely.  The hike was moderately challenging, and had a lot of variation in the scenery that we were able to get close to.  I really can’t wait to add photos to this post, because it was just amazing.

It took us about 45 minutes to hike to the pool beneath the glacier, with a fairly solid gain in elevation, and then about 30 minutes back to the beginning of the trail.  We were SOAKED.  Both fortunately and unfortunately, we were some of the more fit and hale folks in our tour, so we had a bit of time to kill before we headed back.  Luckily, there were pastries and warm beverages.  When we got back to the ship, we made a beeline for the hot tubs, which felt almost painfully hot after as cold as we had been.

The evening was also great, because after dinner we went up to the lounge on the 15^th floor and watched the scenery go by (sunset was at 11:24 PM) for a few hours.  The fjords are really, really neat to sail through.

Tomorrow, we’re in Geiranger, Norway!

Stavanger, Norway

First stop on the Norway cruise is Stavanger, Norway – a city that Troy has consistently referred to as ‘Strat-Avenger’ (which is hard to unhear, once he’s said it a few times).  Our excursion, to an iron farm and the national petroleum museum started at 11:45 and we arrived at around 7:30 AM – plenty of time to head out early and explore, in advance of our excursion.

Well, it would have been anyway, had we not slept in until 11:15.  Let me just say in our defense, our cabin is really, really dark.  And we lost an hour switching time zones.  And we didn’t have an alarm set (or an easily accessible clock).  Also, I’m tired, and Valerian left me with a lot of questions the night before.  It’s a thing.

So, ripped from the headlines (i.e. ‘The Princess Patter’), Stavanger’s clear skies and mild climate are sure to put a song in our hearts.  It is believed to hold Europe’s largest collection of wooden buildings, and we can hear the music of the land that has been sung since the 13^th century [end quote].

After a hurried breakfast of pizza, we met up with our tour group and headed to our first stop, which was at a monument constructed to honor the unification of Norway, which, according to our tour guide, was done for love.  You know the story – guy loves girl, girl feels like guy has less status than the other royal families in Europe, guy pledges to unite the 13 or so Norwegian states to prove his love.  Anyway, the monument was three giant swords, plunged into the beach.  Photos to come :)

The iron age farm (Jernaldegarden) was a bit underwhelming.  Squatly placed in the shadow of three apartment buildings (possibly college dorms), we saw two buildings that had been reconstructed from the iron age.  We were met by a docent dressed in 13^th century fashion, which led us to believe that he might also share some iron age knowledge.  Instead, he helped us to file into one of the buildings and never really said anything while we waited for something to happen.  Nothing really did.  We sat for a while and then filed out.

The next stop was much cooler – it was an abandoned telecommunications tower that we could climb up part of to get a sense of the countryside.  Great views, despite some blustery weather and low-lying clouds.

Our final stop was at the national petroleum museum.  Clearly, Norway has made some money through petroleum, as this was a very well-constructed, interactive, interesting museum (I will admit to not having especially defined expectations).  Lots of stuff to play with, lots of cool exhibits and models and whatnot.  Apparently, the petroleum industry employs about 13% of Norwegians, and a huge amount of the revenue from the industry goes straight to the country via taxes.  Norway has then used ~4% of that revenue per year to enrich the citizens (infrastructure projects, educational system, etc.).

After our excursion, we got some lunch and went to trivia.  Our winning friends found us again, and asked if we wanted to join them.  We did, but unfortunately our collective wisdom did not carry the day.  We got 15/20, which still feels pretty respectable.  The rest of the evening was more or less uneventful – dinner was good, drinks and live music were good, and despite sleeping a lot already, we called it a relatively early night.

Tomorrow, we’re hiking to a glacier in Olden!

Day at Sea the First

I think that this is the first time that our cruise has both started and ended with a day at sea, which is pretty great from a rest and relaxation standpoint.  The weather was cool and kind of blustery, but pleasant to be outside in for a bit.

We started the day with morning trivia, which we, despite excellent collaboration and our award-winning strategy of relying mostly on Troy’s gut rather than mine, did not emerge from victorious.  

My big plan for post-trivia was to go hunker down in the Sanctuary, which is a super sweet, adult-only quiet place on the top deck with big comfy lounge couches etc.  Unfortunately, my plans were cruelly thwarted.  Princess now charges you to access this space ($20/half day), which isn’t that much, but I’m opposed to on principle (it was free, and my favorite spot, on our Japan cruise).  Harumph.  So we read outside for a while anyway.

I participated in “Speed Watercolors,” in which everyone was given exactly five minutes to paint whatever they cared to.  I tried to use too many colors, and was unable to finish my painting as a result.  It’s currently living in our cabin closet, and will probably not be making the journey back stateside with us.

Afternoon trivia was better for us – we were adopted by the older couple who had carried their team to victory in the morning (they always seem to find Troy).  Apparently, they cruise several times per month, and may actually be the people on this ship who have spent the most time at sea (I don’t fully understand cruise ship status yet).  We were ultimately victorious at trivia, and scored some sweet Princess water bottles.

It was our first of two formal nights, so we got ready and headed off to that.  We were seated next to two other Americans (we’re a really solid minority on this cruise – seems like it’s almost exclusively British folks), and the gentleman actually went to Wake… small world.  After dinner we saw Princess’ show “Bravo,” which was described to us as operatic pop.  It was kind of pop, and also kind of opera, but never at the same time.  Definitely worth doing, but there were some solidly weird dances happening behind the singers.

We ended the evening with live music and then watched Valerian: City of a Thousand Planets.  It was an entertaining movie, but wow was there a lot going on, and a lot that didn’t really make sense.  Oh well!

Tomorrow we dock in Stavanger, Norway!

Southampton, UK

Good news, all!  Despite not blogging about it yesterday, we did manage to make it from London to our cruise ship, with basically no problems at all.  We had such faith in ourselves leading in to that journey, that we opted to sleep in and get a nice breakfast at one of the cafes near our hotel, and our faith (mostly in the state of public transportation) was totally justified.  From London Paddington, we took a 25-minute ride to Reading, then switched trains to get on a 40-something minute train to Southampton.  From there, it was a quick 6 GBP cab ride, and we were at the cruise terminal.

Now, as you may have guessed, from my description of our travel philosophy, I didn’t opt to print out luggage tags ahead of time (for some reason, I thought that Princess would email those to us, and when they didn’t, I assumed that it wouldn’t be a big deal).  I also neglected to print out any of our cruise confirmations or ticketing information (in retrospect, that would probably have been an okay thing to have done).  So, as you might imagine, I had a last-minute worry or two during our brief cab ride to the terminal.

But, my key takeaway was that I shouldn’t have even spent those 6 minutes worrying about it, because Princess has the embarkation process down pat, especially if you’ve already hooked your credit card to your account (which, I had done, because it’s the next screen after they take your passport information when you book the cruise).  We met a nice gentleman who wrote out luggage tags for us, went upstairs to wait in line for a few minutes, checked in next to a woman from Durham NC, and went through security, all in approximately 15 minutes.  Despite us showing up around an hour earlier than our assigned check-in time, our cabin was ready to go, and we had an hour and a half to kill before our muster safety drill.  So, check plus to Princess for embarkation :)

Our muster station was in the casino, and weirdly not very packed.  This ship doesn’t feel totally full, which is nice (I have yet to really get a feel for how many people are on board, but so far, there seems to be plenty of space.  On a second weird note, the muster drill was set to music, and that was… um… new and interesting (and also kind of awful).  Now we know.

Post-muster, we read/napped/walked around/read/drank a martini for a few hours.  Troy did discover that we have earned cruise “status” – we’re in the gold captain’s circle, which signifies that we have taken at least one (1) cruise with Princess before.  It entitles us to gold stateroom keys and a gold pin.  I believe that ends the associated “perks.”

Dinner in the dining room was pleasant – we sat with a father/daughter/son-in-law trio, and two other couples cruising together.  Everyone else was from the UK, and everyone had cruised before.  The food was good overall – I had enriched broth soup with tortellini, a cheese and leek tart, and crème brule, while Troy had a salad, prime rib, and a sundae.  Safe to say, we’ll be doing the dining room a fair bit.  Evening activities included checking out a few of the live bands/entertainers, one of which we enjoyed pretty well (the other was doing loud ABBA hits, and I guess it wasn’t quite what we were feeling last night).

Sunday is our first of two days at sea!  Just think of all the trivia :)

London! Day Two :)

Only 8.91 miles today - but SO many of those were stairs.

Today we had a leisurely morning and got Tube passes, with an initial destination of Westminster Abbey.  Unfortunately, the Abbey is closed on Fridays (possibly the downside of our commitment to the "First we show up, then we see what happens" travel philosophy), so we were unable to enter, but we did wander around the outside for a while.  From there, we opted to cross the river and make our way down to Shakespeare's Globe Theater.

First stop, lunch.  Second stop, photo op with the 94% covered in scaffolding Big Ben.  Third stop, London Eye.  Lunch was great, Big Ben was basically as expected, and the London Eye was stupid expensive for one circle around the Ferris Wheel, crowded into a capsule with your husband and 23 of your closest tourists - so we viewed it from afar and felt good about that decision.  We did make it to the Globe, but apparently tours only go through about noon, so, armed with that knowledge, we'll probably return next weekend, post-cruise.

Two strikes to our travel philosophy (which, coincidentally, was also Napoleon's battle plan), so we crossed back to the other side of the river and went to St. Paul's Cathedral.  Now, I did St. Paul's roughly two decades ago with my dad and other members of our family.  The first time, my grandmother and I stayed on the ground floor, instead of making the climb up the 528 stairs to the top viewing area.  I was upset (the fear of missing out was strong in 4th grade), so my dad and I went back the next day and climbed to the top.  I remember it being easier than it was today to climb up 528 stairs.  Ah, youth.  That said, I think that St. Paul's has done an awesome job putting together interactive, self-guided tour experiences.  Really, really good resources.

After St. Paul's, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner and a show.  Dinner was good, and then we went to see Aladdin, which was so much fun!  Lots of great sets, lots of great costumes, and the Genie was awesome!  Definitely a great way to spend the evening, and they even came out at intermission with Haagen Daz, which is a pretty sure way to my heart.

Tomorrow we're off to Southampton to catch our cruise!  Super excited about that! Out internet is currently pretty awful, so I'll add some photos next time we have a more reliable connection.  Troy's color commentary on the day is below.

From Troy:

London by the numbers…

NUMBER OF BANNERS OUTSIDE OF PARLIAMENT LABELING THE ETERNAL BREXIT PROTEST SITE: 3
NUMBER OF PROTESTERS: 2
NUMBER OF PROTESTERS THEY WERE GOING TO NEED TO GET THOSE THREE BANNERS UP AND STRAIGHT AGAIN: Far, far more than 2.
NUMBER OF TIMES I HAVE SALUTED A TRASH CAN LABELED "GENERAL WASTE": All of them
NUMBER OF STEPS TO GET TO THE TOP OF ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL: 528

A SCENE FROM 1675:
CHARLES II: I do say, Sir Christopher Wren, the construction of this cathedral is coming along quite well.
CHRISTOPHER WREN: Thanks, current King of England!
C2: The colonization of the New World is also going quite well at this moment, but it occurs to me that, should things change at some point in the future, we might want to have a spot to hide from the Americans.
CW: Something with 528 stairs, perhaps?
C2: And tight spaces.

And scene. Much better than the stick fighting demonstration going on outside the Globe Theater, which would have been told to wrap it up if they were a part of a high school talent show and yet they were inexplicably allowed to defile that place for that amount of time.

Still enjoying London and noting that the Brits have to be the shrewdest monument makers I’ve ever seen. My current heroes are the 20 geniuses who went in together on a bench simply reading “To my love on the occasion of her sixtieth” and the architect of the Emmeline Pankhurst memorial who just tagged on a note saying “Oh, yeah, and Christabel, she’s… uh… she’s honored by the pillars.”

London!

*Insert thoroughly British opening that John Oliver would mock in "And Now, This."

We made it!  Guys, the travel was so easy!  And I can say that, having given basically zero thought to the logistics for this trip post-flight purchase.  Yesterday, we flew from Charlotte to Philadelphia, had a better-than-par dinner at a Mediterranean place at PHL, and made it to our gate with plenty of time to spare.  

Not a great picture, but we're on our way!

We did end up sitting on the runway for an hour or so, due to PHL congestion, but it gave me time to watch A Wrinkle in Time (in 8-10 minute increments, around departure "updates" from our captain).  The flight was smooth, Troy and I both slept at least a little, and we touched down at Heathrow around 9:45 AM.  Even customs was easy!  We bought fast train tickets from the guy selling them at the bottom of the escalator, walked onto the train, and made it to our stop approximately 15 minutes later, from which our hotel is about a block away, and we were able to check in when we arrived.

We're staying near Paddington Station, so after cleaning up a bit, we decided to explore Kensington Park/Palace, Hyde Park, and then head over to Buckingham Palace.  Really, this was a bid to keep us out of our hotel room and walking around, so that we didn't fall asleep for six hours and throw off our internal clocks even more.  With that as our established mission, Success!

Kensington Palace, across the pond

We ended up doing a big chunk of the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Walk, which, combined with the destinations listed earlier, led us to walk more than ten miles in around three and a half hours.  The weather was gorgeous and breezy, and the parks were very pleasant, though I do have a few lessons learned.  Lesson learned the first: if you start the walk by saying, "I'll probably regret wearing flip flops," stop and change your shoes.  Lesson learned the second: overcast and breezy does not exclude sunburns for me (though it does for Troy, so he has different lessons learned - go figure).  But, the parks and gardens were lovely, and Buckingham Palace is very... stately.

I will note that we went into the Buckingham Palace gift shop (though it's called something classier than that).  I was... um... underwhelmed by some of the "official" royal wedding gear/new royal baby designs.  I did consider purchasing some royal monogram seersucker pajamas for #babyboynoyes, but the smallest available size was 4-5 years, and #babyboynoyes may have pajama preferences by then.  Who can say? 

Made it to Buckingham Palace! (aka, last stop before down time)

Ultimately, we did come back to the hotel for a mid-length nap before dinner.  Obviously, we went to a British pub for dinner, and equally obviously, ate meat pies and fish and chips.  Real talk - it was a pretty much perfect way to end our transition day.  Now we're back and planning for tomorrow, which will likely include several of the attractions along the Thames, and maybe a show tomorrow night.  Troy is pushing for the puppet theater river cruise... we'll see.  

More tomorrow!

London and Norway!

T-minus eight-ish hours to vacation!

We're off to London for a few days, and then on Saturday we're sailing on the Sapphire Princess to Norway!!!

As of this moment, we have nothing planned.  No excursions, no activities, no list of things to do (I mean, other than the list of things to do for work and to get ready to leave).  We're taking the "first we show up.  Then we see what happens" approach.  It's my favorite approach, during times of limited mental energy (or when I've had four work trips in four states in the last eight days, all with flights taking off at o'thunderstorm-thirty).

So now, off to get ready (do work, buy books, buy snacks, pack some stuff).

$1 = .75 GBP

$1 = 8.02 Norwegian Krone

County Limerick

... Or, the Treaty County, according to Rory.

Today was our last unstructured day, so we opted to relax in the morning and explore Limerick City and County.  Tomorrow, we do the Cliffs of Moher and Irish music/dancing in the evening, and Sunday we head back to Dublin to fly home.

Adare is about 30 minutes south of Limerick City.  Upon arriving, we spent most of our time in the City at King John's Castle, which was a military castle, originally constructed in 1212.

Like the other castles we've been to, this was more than just a walk through.  We started with a very interactive, separate museum, which walked us through the Norman invasion, how Ireland and England became entangled, then how Ireland came to be under English rule  (thanks a lot, Henry VIII), and finally the Irish rebellions.  My takeaways were that it must be a little rough as a country to have had your golden age prior to the late 12th century, when the Normans invaded.  Speaking of rough, I feel like that pretty accurately depicts Ireland over the last 800 years.

Once we had gone through the museum, we walked through areas of the actual castle (mason, mint, armories, etc.).  Again, this was pretty interactive - you could pick up pretty much everything, and there were lots of little movies to share information.  Also, there were some great views.

I have clearly not mastered the art of "selfie" - oh well.

After the castle, we walked around Limerick in search of a late lunch, which ended up being Italian.  It was excellent :)  Since we needed to leave Adare around six for our evening activity, we headed back for a little bit of downtime.

Our evening entertainment was Limerick community theatre.  We went to see Inspector Drake and the Perfekt Crime, at the Friars Gate Theatre in Kilmallock!  It was SO funny, and very entertaining to watch.   Here's the synopsis:

When a genius commits a murder, the plan is perfect. But is it foolproof? Inspector Drake is 
back to face his greatest-ever challenge. 

Who is the mysterious Doctor Short, and why did he marry a warthog? Has he murdered his fourth wife - or did she murder him first? These are just some of the questions facing the indomitable Drake in this hilarious sequel to Inspector Drake and the Time Machine.

Those were the questions, and we got those (and many, many more) answered.  Definitely a good day :)

County Cork

Or, as Rory called it, the Rebel County.

Today we headed southeast, to Cork County for a day filled with adventures.  Before even getting started, I want to acknowledge Jenn as the day's MVP, for navigating the considerably more constricted urban streets than those found in Adare, which is especially impressive given the wrong-side-of-the-road driving.  Many, many snaps/kudos/other good things to Jenn for that.

First on our list was Blarney Castle.  My expectations were minimal, given the highly tourist-centric nature of kissing the Blarney Stone.  That said, my expectations were vastly exceeded.*

*Not by actually kissing the stone.  That part was ~60 of the most awkward seconds ever (see photographic evidence below).

So that's a thing that happened.  No, my expectations were exceeded by the grounds and the layout of the castle estate.  It was very pretty, and sat at the convergence of two rivers.  We were able to see the castle garden, the poison garden, a pretty-but-weirdly-tiki-themed waterfall/fern garden, and a number of pagan artifacts (which may have actually been representations of pagan artifacts - it's hard to know for sure).  Anyway, we ended up staying for way longer than I thought that we would (at least two and a half hours).  The whole experienced was helped by the fact that it was partially-mostly sunny, and pretty pleasant the whole time we were there. 

After finishing up at Blarney, we headed into Cork City, which is where Jenn demonstrated her extreme driving prowess, in search of the County Gaol (Jail).  We finally found it, but it's pretty clear that maybe spending 10 Euro / day on a GPS wouldn't have been the worst of all ideas (though, I wasn't particularly inclined to buy into any more of their nickel/diming/fees/whatnot, by the time we were done with Dooley's).

As I've come to expect from museums/castles/etc. on this trip, the Gaol was really well set up.  The self-guided tour was thoughtfully done, and the exhibits were well-constructed and fairly interactive.  The inside of the Gaol was also pretty gorgeous (you know, minus the cells).  Would probably be an excellent event space, if that weren't super weird.

Our final stop of the day was to go to the Jameson experience.  Unfortunately, we arrived after the last tour opportunity, but we (Carly and Jenn) were still able to sample some whiskeys and go through the Jameson store.

Since Jenn and Carly sampled whiskeys, I had my first Irish driving experience.  In the rain.  In the dark.  On the wrong side of the road.  For real.  Guys, there are sooooo many rotaries here.  And they all go the wrong freaking way.  Do you know how stupid that is?  I need someone to start writing letters about this.  Dislike.  

... But clearly we survived, and I was mostly navigating rural roads, which are way, way easier than the ones that Jenn navigated in Cork.

Tomorrow, we're staying in County Limerick for our adventures.  Until then!

Ring of Kerry!

Hi All,

My plan for this morning had been to wake up and blog before we get going for the day (we're going to Cork, and nothing is really open before 10:00 AM... pretty much the Irish experience pre-St. Patrick's Day).  So I assumed I had plenty of time.  And then I overslept (which, from a sleep-vacation perspective, was awesome).  So, since we're getting going in a few minutes, here are a bunch of pictures from the Ring of Kerry (shown in reverse chronological order), which I'll go back and add text around tonight.

... Or the next morning.  ANYWAY.   Our Ring of Kerry journey started in a small cafe in Adare, where they have approximately the same color scheme as one that I'm thinking could work for our kitchen at home.  It could especially work if my stated priority hadn't been "I want the kitchen to be lighter."  But maybe that can happen with some really kickin' light fixtures.  The dark gray is more of a slate blue, but I think that would make for very pretty cabinets.  We already have the teal walls and the white accents.

Moving right along, we picked up our small bus at the Adare Heritage site.  Rory was our driver, and there were seven other passengers.  Rory's goal was to take us from Adare to Killarney, where our tour actually started (~ 1 hour).  And he talked the entire way.

Rory's one-sided discussions included:

• His bus driving legacy - he has a second cousin in America who played a bus driver at the very end of "The Town."  This makes total sense, because his grandmother was one of 23 children, his parents were each one of 11 or 12, so I assume that he's related to every Irish person ever.  One of his brothers is also a bus driver, so it's in his blood.  We were pretty sure that he's early in his bus-driving career, as he didn't seem to be allowed to drive the actual bus - just the little one.
• Seemingly every celebrity who has ever visited Ireland.  And every movie they've been in before or after.  And the plot of many of those movies (whether they were related to Ireland or not).
• A description of how the sport of hurling works, why it's a non-professional sport (because people don't get paid to play), and all of the local allegiances/favorite players.

Needless to say, this was hilarious, and at times even, somewhat enlightening.

When we got to Killarney, we had about 45 minutes to walk around before getting on the Ring of Kerry tour bus.  What we seem to have discovered is that March is the month for things to be under construction, or closed for renovation, as much of Killarney was.  We were able to peruse several shops before heading back to the bus, and got a sense of what the center of town looked like.

Our primary tour guide was somewhat less bombastic than Rory, and was probably way closer to actually informative.  Over the next six or seven hours, we did scenic driving with photo stops at the Dingle Peninsula and Killorglin, stopped in Waterville and Sneem, and did a brief hike at Killarney National Park to see the Torc Waterfall.

All along the way, we learned about Irish ancient history (the circle was added to the Irish cross to represent the sun, which was worshiped by the pagan religions when St. Patrick brought Christianity to the island), recent history (the island didn't fully have electricity until 1978, and that was one of the last houses to get it - suckers), local culture (more on sheep marking than I had anticipated would come up), and, again, every celebrity to have ever come to Ireland (Charlie Chaplain's daughter still comes every other year or so - you know, she was here in 2015...).

Rory brought us back to Adare at the end of the tour (listening to classical music this time).  All in all, we had a great day.  I would definitely recommend Paddywagon, and all of their tours seem pretty reasonably priced.

Our first photo stop (I think in Killorglin)

Waterville

Jenn and Charlie

Charlie and Carly

Scenic stop to check out the bay off the Iveragh Peninsula 

My thought is that this is Sneem, but who knows where thoughts come from?

And Killarney National Park - Yay for international women!

Adare and Shannon!

Well good morning!

Day two got off to a (thankfully) slow start, as we all worked our way through jet lag.  My strategy was to go ahead and sleep for ~12 hours, which was tough, but I persevered.

We had planned to do a local hike called the Knockfierna, which was featured on the Adare website.  As we discovered upon arrival at what we believed was the starting point, the next point was nowhere to be found.  After wandering for a bit, we went into the Visitors Center, where we were informed that, despite being featured on the Adare website, the hike actually started roughly 20 minutes away by car.  Because of course it did.  The woman who dashed our hiking hopes was able to provide an alternative, however, and we opted to do the local churches and river walk.

This allowed us to see most of Adare's center, which the website refers to as the Prettiest Village in Ireland.  It is, in fact, very picturesque.

After our rather blustery walk, we stopped at Auntie Leana's for lunch.  The beef stew was the lunch special, and I wasn't going to not get the beef stew special (also delicious, though I may pause on my beef stew-a-day plans to sample some other local delicacies).

We also stopped by the grocery store again to round out our dinner stuff.  I think that it's interesting that our receipts have asterisks by any Irish-made products, and there's a summary line at the bottom that lets us know how much money we spent on local products.

We drove to County Shannon in the afternoon, and went to Bunratty Castle and Folk Park.  The idea is that it's a living village (representative of different areas of Ireland in the 19th century) with a restored castle.  The castle itself was damp, cold, and did not undersell in its frequent warnings of uneven and slippery steps/ tight quarters - while I would probably not be interested in living there, it was pretty neat to explore.

The village itself was also very cool.  We didn't see it in actual operation, but most of it was open to walk through.  Lots of farm houses from different areas (rural, mountain, etc.), mills, town shops, etc.  Almost everything smelled really strongly of smoke and peat.

We got back to our Villa around six.  Dinner was vegetarian tikka masala and naan (an Irish-Indian delicacy, obviously) and movie night.

And now we're off to our Ring of Kerry Tour!

Have a great day!

Ireland!

Hey All,

We've made it to Ireland!  Day 1: smashing success.  Here's what we've done so far, with a brief pause for car insurance shenanigans thrown in for good measure.

3/6/2017
8:30 AM - Arrive via Aer Lingus in Dublin
9:00 AM - Pass through Irish customs.  Pro: big ol' stamp, and clearly no interest on the part of the customs officer as to why we might be here, or for how long.  Con: It's like 3 pages away from my other stamps, in a mostly new passport.  Chronology is clearly not an Irish value.
9:20 AM - Arrive at the rental car office.
9:50 AM - Arrive at the rental car office front desk.
10:00 AM - Compete all rental car paperwork, only to get to the actual payment/insurance part, and discover a "problem."

Here's my intervening rant.  We did this trip through Groupon, and our package included six nights at a resort (to be described later), flights out of Boston, and a rental car.  We had already upgraded our rental car to be an automatic.  At no point in this process were we informed of Ireland's bizarre and anti-tourist car rental insurance policies.  Here's the deal.  Apparently, when most credit card companies say that they offer rental car insurance, it's not valid in the Republic of Ireland (either that, or our rental agent was lying to increase revenue... I could go either way on this).  Anyway, two phone calls later, I was able to determine that my AA Advantage Card, which was the one we booked the trip on, does carry actual worldwide rental insurance (which is awesome).  Even with that confirmation, and a letter of coverage that the benefits lady was able to email to me, the Republic of Ireland still had to put a 3,000 Euro hold on my credit card for the duration of the trip.  Had my AA Advantage card not had worldwide rental insurance, our options would have been to pay 188 Euro, with a 1,500 Euro hold on my account, or pay 263 Euro, with a 200 Euro hold.

So let's be clear.  Groupon is clearly a budget vacation tool.  In the best, but seemingly rarest of all situations, I have insurance that covers me, so long as I have 3,000 Euro's worth of space on my credit card (I do, but the policy seems like a trap to me).  In most scenarios, you're responsible for paying their (high priced) insurance with a significant hold, or paying an even higher price for their insurance, mostly in lieu of the hold.  And Groupon/Great Value Vacations never saw fit to mention this.  Grumble, grumble, grumble.  Anyway, we're good.

11:00 AM - Leave (on the left side of the road) the rental car facility.  The guy who helped us to pick up our car gave us excellent directions to get to Adade (~2:15 from Dublin).  We stopped for lunch at at the Irish equivalent of a Maryland House, and got to our Resort around 2:15.  Over that time, it rained approximately 12 times, and was sunny and nice for about the same amount of time.  Interestingly, all semi trucks have big labels on the back, identifying them as "Long Vehicles."  Jenn is a left-side-of-the-road-driving Champ.

2:15 - Arrived at what we were pretty sure was our resort.  It was, but the resort is being completely renovated, which in construction lingo, means razed to the ground.  This made navigation a little tricky, but we're well on our way to mastering the many "temporary roads" (read: muddy areas through fields) of the resort.  We did know that this was happening though, and are staying in a Villa somewhat away from the construction.

2:30 - Got a description of the resort and available activities (mostly falconry with owls), and located our villa.  It's da bomb.  We each have our own rooms and en suites, plus a sunroom, a huge kitchen, an office, and onsite laundry (which will likely be most useful for the dryer, if the frequent rain episodes keep up).

3:00 - We're all asleep.

4:30 - Planned nap time conclusion.  We're all asleep.

5:00 - We drag ourselves out of nap time in search of food.  First stop: Pat Collin's Pub.  I had traditional Irish Stew, and likely won't be eating anything else for the rest of the trip.  So there.

7:00 - Go grocery shopping, buy American peanut butter, crackers, and Diet Coke.  (Routines are important).

7:45 - Play "Love Letter" which is a quick-ish card game that Trace and Lauren gave us for Christmas a few years ago.  It's a good game, and Carly slaughters us.  We did manage to set plans for tomorrow, which include exploring Adare, doing a hike in the area, and possibly going to the Cliffs of Insanity (Moher).

9:30 - We're all asleep.

Yay! Ireland!