An early start today, had to meet the driver at 0715. No (clean) hot water as the hotel had done some maintenance overnight and it was coming out brown. Ick.
Breakfast was supposed to be at 0700, by 0705 everyone bum-rushed the door and started eating what was there in the dark.
Driver was nice and took us to the plcae.
No leg room ugh
Dytyatky checkpoint - hurry up and wait, bought some souvenirs
[Read More]transit day
drove to the old town
breakfast at Warsawski Sznyt a trendy food place
I had a reuben with pickled beef rib. It was great, if sopping with moisture.
did a bit of a tour of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, destroyed more than once through its history and rebuilt, most recently by the Germans in WW2. A wonderful structure.
saw the royal rooms, lovely and full of wonder
much of it spirited away under the nose of the Germans before it was destroyed
[Read More]breakfast at hotel kazimierz II, nothing special of course
drove to the Wieliczka Salt Mine
I swear every spare garage/grassy spot/driveway had a parking sign and or a teenager wildly waving towards their place of business, it was stranger than going to ANZ stadium back in the day
turns out we could have bought a ticket online
multiple languages - english every half an hour
89zl with 10zl for taking photos - well worth it
[Read More]staying at the hotel Kazimerz for the second night
Wawel Castle, no photos, lame
timed entry - when we turned up at 10:30am the royal apartments weren’t available until 2pm :(
no photos, anywhere but outside - this would have been Ok if they had any decent catalogues or books
we did the State Rooms (pretty, but no photos allowed and shitty little cards with literally the worst layout so it was hard to work out what you were looking at.
[Read More]woke up, had breakfast, checked out of grand hotel praha
hotel transfer (18 EUR) to the train station with a nice guy who drove us in his high-end skoda octavia, leather seats, woo
then the train station
oh lordy.
we got there a bit early - 0930 for a 1024 train.
which was late
20 minutes late
then 40
then 50
then 80
then 110 minutes late
something about the turnaround train
[Read More]Prague Castle
St. Vitus Cathedral
Strahov Monastery
Schwarzenberg Palace - rented to the national art gallery for one Koruna a year, twenty years at a time
Hradcany Square
St. George Basilica
Archbishop Palace
Breathtaking Viewpoint - a little foggy, but kinda neat to see over the city
walked down stairs then down thunovska
looked up Nerudova Street
[Read More]breakfast at curry24 - spicy currywurst, chips and a coke
second breakfast at… the place.
Had a little bit of a wander around Dresden’s old town again. It’s very pretty, but there’s definitely places where you get an overwhelming stench of sewerage.
The Cholera fountain has some cool details
Very very very early start today - 0330 alarm, out the door by (just after) 4am.
It wasn’t entirely dark but it wasn’t far off it.
Dropped off the car without incident, got a lift to the terminal.
Fought with the automated check-in machines in an attempt to get bag tags… four machines later, we check in only to be told we had to go and check in manually with a person. Grr.
[Read More]eve online monument to find a friend’s name (woo, Drakey/Tohan Remai!)
CCP game headquarters
sun voyager
national museum of iceland
amazing
so many historical thingies
there was a germanic habit of personally owned churches
swords
things?
nice embroidery
hallgrimskirkja - what a modern art masterpiece
very very very scarily plain inside
like more than scandinavian stark
[Read More]what a day
cave tour - https://www.thecave.is/is/cave-explorer
johannes
amazing lava tube
lava shits
chocolate
hawaii vs iceland names
ah ah and poepoe?
hraunfossar and barnafoss (child falls, where two kids died etc)
geitfjarsetur - sadly closed because of a local funeral (and the off season)
the goats seemed disinterested, the dogs were happy to see new humans
Deildartunguhver, source of hot water and heating in the area
snorri’s statue, church and area was shut down for a funeral
[Read More]