Skiing in Austria (St Anton Edition)

February 05, 2011 by Morgan Kan in Trips

Last year, Diane and I got our first taste of the week-long skiing holiday, and it wasn't a secret that we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. So we were excited about returning to the Austrian mountains for another go. Extensive ski terrain, weiss beer, mulled wine, apres ski, schnitzel, and four course gourmet meals awaited us! We departed Dublin early in the morning on January 15th on Austrian airlines. Like last year, there was free food and drinks on our three hour flight to Innsbruck airport. We were greeted by our ski rep there, who introduced us to our driver: a profusely apologetic gentleman who arrived late in a too-small vehicle to fit the five of us who were going to St Anton. He was very friendly, and we squished our group into the little car for the one-hour transfer to the resort.

We arrived at the resort with plenty of time to sort out picking up our lift tickets and ski rentals. We could hit the hill first thing the next morning! So after sorting all that out, our group of 5 (Jay, Bryce, Jeremy, and Diane and I) hit the pub to kick off our trip! A few weiss beer later we stumbled back up to our hotel for our first dinner of the trip. The three others were staying in a hotel in the town center, but it had filled up before we booked so we ended up in a hotel that was a 15 minute walk up a steep hill. The hotel was lovely, just not the most convenient place to get to every evening after hanging in town. Fortunately, the hotel had a deal with one of the rental shops where we could store our gear, so a few walks up and down the hill was actually just good exercise rather than painful at the end of a long day of skiing.

The first full day there was a gorgeous sunny day -- which was just a tad too warm even for skiing. The temperature in town was something like 7-8 degrees, with the temperature higher up the mountain still above zero. One of the immediately apparent things that differed from our trip to Mayrhofen was that the bottom of the actual skiing terrain was the town. That meant that there wasn't a giant gondola queue both first thing in the morning and last thing on the way down, and it made for a more pleasant experience. Speaking of queues ... we didn't wait in one longer than about 5minutes for the whole week, and there were no queues to speak of at most of the lifts. It was a remarkably smooth operation with an incredible 85 gondolas and lifts - many being high speed quads or better!

Our week there coincided with Interski, which is a conference of ski instructors that only happens every four years. So our first day there we quite enjoyed seeing the various teams walking or skiing in matching bright coloured jackets of their respective countries. Of particular note was the Finnish blue jackets that were *everywhere*. Contingents from Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Romania, Norway, Japan, Korea, and Montenegro were just some of the flashy teams we saw. Canada had a team there, we understand, but we didn't actually see any of them on the parts of the hill we were on during the week. Our second night there marked the opening ceremonies so we headed down to see a bunch of cool synchronized skiing demonstrations and were treated to a lengthy fireworks display.

The second day of skiing took us up, in particular, Schindler's Spitze which reaches 2660m elevation. This peak is accessible using one of the few triple chairs on the mountain, and featured a trippy moment when you go over a local maximum in the mountain and the left side right underneath your chair cuts away to a several hundred meter drop. The view from that peak was incredible (as you can see in the picture above), and the skiing was pretty good too (although a bit icy). We met for lunch with everyone at the top of the Galzigbahn, which is the first main gondola you can take from town, and had our first schnitzel of the trip (but not the last!) After our day on the slopes, we skiied down to Mooserwirtz - one of several on-hill apres ski places pumping loud German oktoberfest-favourite songs both in and outside. We found some spots to sit down on the crowded benches and were promptly our choice of beer (lager or weiss), warm beverages (mulled wine or jagertee), or even ready to go jagerbombs (small jagermeister glass bottles uncapped and sitting in a glass with red bull). The waiters carried something like 30 drinks on large trays through the crowded atmosphere and somehow still managed to not spill or break anything. I was impressed! Diane and I fled apres ski early to make sure we stowed our gear in the storage area before they locked up for the night, and climbed back up our hill to have some dinner. The rest of the guys kept going pretty late into the night!

The next morning, Diane and I were up early in relation to the other guys, so we headed up the mountain on our own -- this time taking two large gondolas and then a third 6-man viewpoint gondola all the way to the top of Valluga. This is the highest mountain in the resort at 2811m, and offers an incredible 360 degree panoramic view of the Austrian alps! It was pretty breathtaking. After viewing there, we started a long ski down all the way back to town. We hopped on Rendelbahn, which is the other main gondola from St Anton going to a peak opposite the main skiing area -- and met the other guys there for a late lunch. It was an enjoyable long skiout from that peak back down to town.

That night we ended up at Arl Rock: a multi-sport facility offering bowling, rock climbing (both indoor and out), squash, indoor tennis, and ping pong. We spent some time bowling a bit. Bowling in Austria is a bit different from what we're used to: there are 9 pins arranged in a diamond configuration. It made knocking them all down in one go quite a bit tougher than 10-pin bowling in my experience. The bartender there was a girl from Canada who met her heli-skiing boyfriend/fiance in the Yukon and moved over with him ... so it was kind of cool to meet a random Canadian there. We were slightly jealous of her chance to live and ski in the Austrian alps!

The next day we decided to catch a bus to the ski region that was only accessible via lifts from the neighbouring towns of Zurs and Lech. The sunny weather came to an end that morning and was replaced fog and clouds. On the one hand it was a pity to see the beautiful sunny weather end, but the slopes badly needed some new snow so it was good to get some again! Anyways, we hopped on a bus and ended up in Lech. Our first couple runs of the day weren't very enjoyable as we couldn't see where we were going ... so Diane and I, having been separated from the rest of the group, stopped for a quick bite to eat at one of the mid-mountain hotel/chalets. Fortunately, while the snow continued, the fog cleared enough to offer some visibility and we got some excellent skiing back in that area. In fact, I would go as far as saying it was some of the best powder I've ever skiied on an on-piste run! Deep fresh powder, and for some reason, there was a high speed octa-chair way in the back corner of the resort. Yeesh.

Our skiout from Lech after meeting up with Jeremy and Jay for lunch (and yet another different gondola ride) was unfortunately through fog, which made the skiout pretty tough. But we made it down to the bus station safely and returned to St Anton happy with a pretty successful day trip in the books.

Thursday was deemed a non-ski day. I had some significant bruises on my legs that I wanted to give some time to heal, so we spent the day wandering around town a bit and doing some shopping before going back up the three gondolas to the top of Valluga with the SLR camera to get some more pictures of the panoramic scenery.

Our final day there I was determined to get some more skiing in, but we started a bit late and did some of our favourite runs of the week on the main hill before turning our equipment in to the rental shop. We then took a bus back up to moosers for another go at apres ski. The temperature had dropped quite a bit, so we ended up sneaking inside and finding ourselves a table there next to some Irish skiers from Cork. Much merriment ensued - including some weird shots that involved a layer of whipped cream above some sort of warm liqueur.

The flight out the next morning was entirely too early (an 8am flight, with a one hour drive prior to that ...), but it got us home in good time. It was a magnificent trip, and quite fun. More pictures will be on flickr when I catchup in my backlog. I've got several events to catchup with here though, so it might be a little while before they're up!

Morgan

Diane's '10

January 01, 2011 by dbbarker in Life Updates

2010 Where did it go?

I spent it here in the apartment, at the farm down the street, around town, around the island, around the other islands, and on the continent.

The beginning of January found us back in Ireland after spending last Christmas in Barcelona. The end of that month found us on a train to Belfast, to enjoy Giants' hockey and Cathedral Quarter red ale. Water pipes froze and burst, and people had issues driving and flying. It was just another winter to gently acclimatize the island for the winter to follow.

In February, a group of us went on a ski vacation to Mayerhofen in Austria for a week to enjoy good food, good company, sauna, steam, and snow! Not to mention TV coverage of the winter Olympics and post-ski trip Gold Medal hockey and pizza. It was so enjoyable that we may have to make the pilgrimage again this year.

March and April saw the lambs born and me planting up my little allotment in Airfield, thanks to the generous head gardener. The produce that eventually made it to relative maturity was quite expensive to produce: 50 euro plus gifts and trades, and about 10 hours for approximately 5-10 lbs of beets, 2-3 lbs tiny little onions, 5-7 lbs potatoes (pulled early as I was too lazy to spray for blight), various herbs, way too much rhubarb, one carrot, and some leeks that are currently in the plot at their peril. I think I'll do balcony tomatoes from seed again - 'Gardener's Delight' are the bestest! The lettuces were a win though - cheap and long-lived - I got quite a few very tasty salads out of them. I also had a little strawberry patch that brought me a disproportionate amount of joy upon finding one juicy red treasure.

March also contained two trips up to Ashbourne RFC for some hot port and Six Nations women's rugby: I got some pics of the 'Ireland v Wales' and 'Ireland v Scotland' games. And fans under umbrellas with warm drinks!

Lots of our friends came out to see my first spring concert with Dublin County Choir downtown. We did Beethoven's 'Mass in C' and Rossini's 'Stabat Mater', plus the world premier of the Magnificat one of our basses wrote in Irish. :) Before the concert I was fed dinner at one of my favourite restaurants. During the break I got a text from Jenny saying that her rugby team had won their division final! And afterward I had a pint and a few more songs with the choir crew. Hard to top that, but I'm excited for it again this year.

The spring and summer were absolutely gorgeous in Dublin this year! May was just lovely. It started out with a long weekend trip with my exit buddy around the ring of Kerry with stops at Killarney National Park, Muckross House, Torque Waterfall, some lovely restaurants and B&Bs, and as luck would have it, a walk on Skellig Michael on a warm, sunny day.

June was a very busy month indeed. We were in Prague for our second anniversary, visiting Morgan's parents and cousins. There was a weekend in London with Morgan's folks, strolling around St. James' Park and Hampton Court. At the end of the month we travelled up to Donegal for the Sea Sessions music festival and a few mornings of surf lessons. Bundoran was the place to be that weekend. The ruggers were there in fancy dress, doing what they do best. The bands were battling. The surf was... salty!

During the summer, I fell in with some hill walkers through a choir friend, and thus got to experience parts of Wicklow I would never have otherwise seen. They are lovely and helpful and welcoming; if only you have a sturdy pair of hiking boots, bring water, a snack and maybe some rain gear, boy do I have a hook-up for you! I think the camera is going to have to come along for the next round of walking. Relative to the spike in photography interest last spring/summer, progress has definitely been slow, and since Morgan has a fancy new camera body, that should pick up again in the coming months.

At the end of August, my mom came over to Dublin and we were to be found somewhere around these isles throughout September and into October. We saw Riverdance and ANUNA while in Dublin, spent a day seeing the old passage tombs at Newgrange, and went kayaking in Howth harbour. Our UK road trip took us over on the ferry from Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead, through north Wales, through the Peaks, to York, across the Dales to the Lakes, then down to Warwick, Bath, and back to Wexford via the south of Wales. I will make this new year's resolution: I will create a separate post for all you adventurers to consult should your future path cross that of my past.

And the traveling wasn't quite over! My dear friend Celine very kindly had us to stay with her in Switzerland, and we ate some very tasty noms: fondue, sausage, confections, and chestnuts that we gathered ourselves. I'm also completely spoiled by the local wine. My wine life will never be the same. And I love to meander around with Morgan, enjoying a bit of scenery. Also, would recommend the Olympic Museum in Lausanne and CERN in Geneva. Celine even came over to Dublin for a few days of rain and wind and excursions that did not nearly compare to our adventures in Vaud. Please come back in the summer, Celine!

Then teh travellingz slowed down and the only other places we went were over to Newcastle to see Joanna and catch a soccer game, and Glasgow and Aviemore to see Brasstronaut.

Once home, I decided it was finally time to join the Belvo rugby gals, so I signed up and started showing up for the Tuesday/Thursday night training sessions. My first game was down the road in Arklow, and though I only played half of it, I got muddied right away and had a few plays I felt alright about. Jenny thinks it's funny that because the development team (that's me) trains with the first division squad, we tend to do little things well, like ball presentation, but we're not great at the basics, like running and passing and scoring. :) Most of the time, I just stand around trying to figure out what's going on. And whenever the other team gets the ball and scores, I like to congratulate them for the hard work and dedication I can't be bothered to muster. Don't worry, though, the girls are teaching me, slowly but surely.

Other than that, I've been enjoying my two mornings a week on the farm, visits with the girls, outings with the groups, games with the boys. Pigs. Cows. Picnics. Tea. Beersbieques. Yoga. Monday/Wednesday choir, Tuesday/Thursday rugby. Gardening. Laundry. Eating. Sleeping. Karl has very kindly given me a loan of his viola and I have discovered that it is quite impossible to play, let alone hold properly. I've done a few bits with the choir committee and made a lot of cookies to take along to the farm. I've been to the Mill Theatre and the movies a few times. And the pub lots of times! Apart from that, it's gone from the season of frozen pipes and running out of hay, to the season of frozen pipes and running out of hay, and life goes quite pleasantly on.

Diane

2010 In Review

January 01, 2011 by Morgan Kan in Life Updates

This blog hasn't been getting the love it was getting for previous trips, but we're still going to try and keep it updated every so often through the next year. I'll use our annual tradition of having a year in review post to catch you up on the rest of the happenings in the year. Previous years in review include: 2007, 2008, and 2009. Our plan in 2010 was to try and do a bunch of trips. Since we returned home twice in 2009, we decided that we'd skip doing so this year. Instead, our plan was to try and do a bunch of trips in Europe to see some of the continent we found ourselves on.

After getting back from Barcelona over Christmas though, we spent a couple weeks relaxing at home and getting to know 2010. Near the end of the month, a group of us went up to Belfast to witness the Giants ice hockey team play against the Nottingham panthers in the British Elite League. Yes, us hockey-starved Canadians had to find the nearest place where they played just to get a fix. It was a fun group - a good ten of us at least headed up for the trip.

In February, we went to Austria for a full week of skiing in Mayrhofen. A large group of 8 of us enjoyed some amazing skiing, some good food and the Austrian atmosphere. The trip coincided with a good portion of the winter olympics in Vancouver, so many nights were spent out at bars watching some of the events -- and of course we needed to stay up late to watch several of the team Canada hockey games! It was an awfully fun trip.

For St Patrick's day this year, we decided to skip the parade and instead watch some Hurling and Gaelic Football. On St. Patrick's day, the all Ireland finals are played out in both sports so we decided to go and see what these sports to have to offer. Hurling is a crazy game ... and it was a pretty good spectator sport. Players run up and down the field balancing the ball on their hurling sticks before swatting the ball large portions of the field in an attempt to split the uprights at the other end. Gaelic football, on the other hand, wasn't quite as enjoyable to watch IMO. Seemed like a weird cross between football (soccer) and hurling.

For the May bank holiday weekend, Diane and I hopped in the car for an Irish road trip down to the Ring of Kerry. We had some absolutely gorgeous weather, and took full advantage by not just doing the main Ring of Kerry loop, but also climbing up the Skelligs. These rocky outcroppings several miles off the coast of South-West Ireland were the home of monks centuries ago. Now, they are a tourist attraction with a fairly limited number of visitors per year. We were lucky to get a spot - the high season wasn't quite there yet where people have to book weeks or months in advance ... and we really couldn't ask for better weather than what we got!

In June, my folks returned to Europe to see us and our Austrian relatives. Since they had seen a lot of Dublin already, we decided to meet up in Prague to do some sight-seeing there. We spent almost a week in +30ºC weather walking around almost exclusively the old town. There was a lot to see just there! The food was good, cheap, and the beer was cheaper than the water! A weekend later, we headed to London with my folks to spend a weekend there before they headed back to Canada. We spent the main day out at Hampton Court: a historic palace associated with King Henry VIII. The next day we spent just walking around central London seeing some of the main landmarks before Diane and I had to head down to Gatwick to return to Dublin. We cut it a bit close: we ended up having to run for it after checking into our flight!

A weekend later, a few of us returned to Bundoran for another go at surfing in the ocean. This being our 3rd and 4th days in the water, we were already beginning to notice an improvement. Our teacher even went so far as to teach us how to turn. I'm actually pretty surprised how much I enjoyed it. Our trip coincided with the Sea Sessions music festival which gave us some live music to go listen to in the evenings.

July kept us busy as well. We headed up to the "Woolshed Sports Baaa" which was throwing a Canada Day party with Canadian beer in the fridge. There was a few of us PocketKings Canadians in attendance which made it a lot more fun than it might've been on our own. A week later, the office summer party was staged to an unfortunate day of rain. Still, the day was quite fun, and despite the rain much fun was had by all. We were also visited in July by our friend Jess whom we showed some of the sights including a trip up to Howth. Our friend Bryce had a milestone birthday as well in July and we partook in a really fun photo scavenger hunt.

Late in August, Diane's mom arrived for a visit that started in Dublin and continued on with her and Diane taking the car on a ferry over to England. I didn't take part of the road trip as I had to work, but that trip was bookended by a trip to Newgrange (which I hadn't done yet) and another trip to London to see her off. The highlight of this trip to London was the Natural History museum: an impressive building all on its own, with a large number of displays in its not-insignificant size.

Almost immediately after returning to Dublin we were back at the airport to fly to Geneva to visit with Diane's friend Celine. We spent a week touring the vineyards and attractions surrounding Geneva lake. This was the kind of trip I had wanted to get blog posts up for, but I kinda ran out of time so I guess this detail will have to do. We stayed with Celine in her apartment in Lausanne: a drive of an hour or so around the lake from Geneva. On a couple days where we were on our own, we took the ferry along the lake to some of the charming towns along the lake, We visited the Château de Chillon: an old castle neighbouring the Swiss alps. Our host took us to sample several of the areas wines ... the whole valley was covered in vineyards with ready-to-harvest grapes! We also enjoyed the local fondue, and went to a restaurant in the woods for some seasonal game. Delicious! To top off the trip, we went to Geneva to see CERN. The tour of this large science facility was well worth doing!

Just a few days after returning from Switzerland, we headed back to the airport for a trip with Aaron to see his brother's band play in Scotland. We caught Brasstronaut's Glasgow show on October 15, and then took the train up to Aviemore to see them play there on the 16th. The two shows were played in very different venues -- which was pretty cool actually. The first was a club that reminded me a lot of the Starlight room back in Edmonton. A relatively small venue, but great for bands that wouldn't necessarily be able to fill a large venue ... and good atmosphere for it too. Aviemore is a small ski resort town much like Jasper. The town's main road is lined with mountain equipment stores, and the population of it can't be very high. The venue was a small pub, and was a great intimate atmosphere. Before leaving Scotland, we had a few hours to spend before flying back to Dublin so we sought out the Science museum in Glasgow which was quite good.

Whew. That was a lot of travelling! We returned home and rested up a bit. We played host to another friend, Maria, and also met up with our friend David in early November. Later that month, we headed over to Newcastle to visit a former coworker who had moved back home. Newcastle had just got a big dump of snow - which turned out to be a lot of fun: we had a fun snowball fight the first night between the pub and the nightclub. On the Saturday we spent some time walking around the city before heading out for a lovely dinner, some more drinks, and a few of us ended up at one of the local casinos to play some poker. On that particular evening, I ran about as good as you can at a cash game and cashed out a profit of nearly 400 pounds! The next day, after sleeping in a bunch, we headed out to see the Newcastle football team play a match against Chelsea. It was my first Premier league football match -- and I'll have to admit that even though I'm not a big fan of the sport it was a pretty fun game to watch.

The big news in December was two separate dumps of snow: the first coinciding with our trip to Newcastle, and the second one leading right up to Christmas. Both times, the city ground to a halt with the lack of snow tires and proper process to clear the snow in place. The airport was backed up, and even the LUAS was closed a couple days. Luckily, we hadn't planned on going anywhere over Christmas in an attempt to save some holiday days for another ski trip. So we spent a very quiet holiday time at home. The company threw its annual Christmas party earlier on in the month. As usual, they pulled out all the stops on an evening that lasted until 7 in the morning for some of us. The food was excellent, and it was open bar all night long. Yeesh!

It has been a very good year -- lots of good things happening, and all kinds of fun trips to go on. Hopefully we can fill next year with a bunch more fun trips.

Like previous years in review, I'll leave you with some of my favourite photos from the year. Happy new year everyone!

Catching Up: June-July: Hampton Court, Sea Sessions, and Howth

October 31, 2010 by Morgan Kan in Life Updates, Trips

So ... it has been quite awhile since we last posted here. Life has been insanely busy in the last couple months, and sadly this blog has been forgotten about.

Let's try to catch you up on what we've been up to, shall we? After our Prague trip, we spent a weekend in London with my mom and dad. This might come as a surprise, but despite living just a one-hour plane trip from London for almost two years, we hadn't yet spent any time there that wasn't spent in the airport. So this was our first trip there to actually see anything there. We spent most of Saturday visiting the Hampton Court palace. It was a nice place to visit with a mix of architecture, art, history, and gardens.

The other day in London we mostly spent walking around central london. We walked around St. James Park, saw Buckingham Palace from the outside, saw the London eye, walked around in China town for awhile. It was a pretty nice weekend -- not too fast paced but we still saw a bunch. On the way home, we almost missed our flight by slightly underestimating the time it would take to train it to Gatwick airport. Luckily, we didn't need to check any bags, and a bit of stressful running through the airport found us at our gate before anyone had boarded yet.

The weekend after London we went up to Bundoran for surfing classes. That weekend, there was a big music festival on called "Sea Sessions". So our weekend involved going to surfing lessons in the morning, and then heading to the festival to listen to some live music and enjoy some tasty beverages. The festival itself was kind of fun, although I didn't really know any of the bands. Probably the highlight was the battle of the bands. There was some pretty talented bands there and I enjoyed most of their sets. It was also the second time we'd been up to Bundoran for surfing, and our 3rd and 4th lessons went pretty well. By partway through the last one, we were starting to figure out turning. Maybe with a few more lessons we'll be pro surfers!

On Canada Day, a pub in town called the Woolshed threw a party that we decided to attend. They served molson canadian, moosehead, and sleemans at the bar (in bottles and cans), played the men's and women's gold medal hockey games from the most recent olympics on the televisions, and had a Canadian DJ playing tunes from Canadian bands like Great Big Sea, The Tragically Hip, Our Lady Peace, etc etc. It was pretty fun.

One of our friends, Jess, arrived in Dublin for a few days. On the weekend, we went up to Howth to walk along the cliffs and see the market up there. We had a nice lunch there and watched the seals being fed in the harbour. It was a nice little visit.

The summer really flew by in a hurry!

Morgan

Prague

July 18, 2010 by Morgan Kan in Trips

Yeesh, June was a busy month! I'm just now finally catching up with what we all did. Hopefully I can get through the several trips we went on before the next batch! My folks had arrived in Europe late in May and had spent some time with our Austrian relatives. Our plan was to meet them in Prague for a week and then head back to Dublin. So on our 2nd anniversary, Diane and I flew to Prague.

A Canadian visiting the Czech republic, living in Ireland...

We arrived in the afternoon and made the trip from the airport into town pretty easily. There's a convenient bus from the airport into a metro stop, which we hopped on and found our hotel. Upon walking in we were greeted by my parents and my cousin and her husband who were sorting out our rooms. Apparently the hotel had some water problems, and we were moved to another hotel in the same chain but right in the old town. This turned out to be pretty handy, as we didn't even have to make use of the transit services at all that whole week. We just walked everywhere.

Having found our new hotel, we checked in and then headed out to wander the streets a bit. The streets of Prague are quite pretty. The streets and sidewalks are all cobblestone, and the sidewalks in particular are all arranged in nice patterns of black and white stones. After wandering a ways, we found a place to eat called the two hedgehogs (after translation, of course). Dinner was simple, and tasty.

The next morning we got up early (well, for us) and after a quick breakfast at the hotel, headed out towards the Jewish district of the city. This is apparently quite a draw for tourists, so we figured getting there earlier would be best. The tourist areas for this were several buildings spread throughout the Jewish district. So we dutifully took each building in order. The most impressive one of the bunch was the Spanish Synagogue -- in which every inch was beautifully decorated. I wish pictures had been allowed inside ...

After exploring these buildings we went in pursuit of lunch, and after getting out of the heat for a bit, hit the streets again. My mom was looking for some bead shops, and one in particular was near by so we went in search of it. After finding it, our group split up for a bit of exploring and shopping on our own. So Diane and I split off -- I had seen a Crumpler store (a company that makes nice bags and backpacks) which we went off to and I bought a new camera bag. Sweet! After that, we found a lovely little park with an incredible rose garden, and a little farther along a mall that sold some cheap and delicious ice cream. We met back up with the rest of our group in front of the National musuem which overlooks Wenceslas square.

From there we headed back towards our hotel to drop off our purchases and get out of the heat for a bit more -- it was 30 degrees almost every day there! We then went for dinner at a pub around the corner from our hotel. Not the best choice for food, but it wasn't too bad either.

The next day, the plan was to hit up Prague castle. This wasn't something my dad was interested in doing again, so he took my cousin and her husband off shopping and we walked our way up to the castle to explore the many exhibits open there. It was a blisteringly hot day, but we got going and there sure was a lot to see at the castle. Probably the highlight of it was St Vitus' cathedral, which sits in the middle of a large courtyard in Prague Castle. The cathedral itself is impressive enough from the outside, but inside it was quite amazing. It sported several large stained glass windows with incredible detail, and every nook and cranny of the church seemed to be filled with yet another thing to look at. It was a good spot for pictures...

We took our time looking through all the exhibitions and then headed back down towards Charles' Bridge: a long pedestrian bridge over the Vltava river. This was our meeting spot with the rest of our crew. On the way, we walked through quite a large group of people surrounding a bike race that had been setup in the area. So in +30 degree heat, these people were pedalling their bikes up and down hills for what is almost certainly a grueling amount of time. Ugh. The rest of our party were waiting for us at the bridge and we walked around the area for a bit doing some recon for a place to eat a little later. Diane had done a bit of research on wikitravel and we settled in a place called Malostranska Pivnice which turned out to be a great choice. The food was delish!

The next day, our destination was Petřínská rozhledna (Petřín Lookout Tower). The tower sits on top of a large hill overlooking prague, so the top of the tower offered a really nice view of Prague. To get there, we took a funicular that serviced that area. On their previous trip to Prague, my parents had climbed the hill and had ruled that out as a possibility for this trip. So after taking the funicular we wandered some of the gardens at the top of the hill and eventually found our way to the tower. Since the rest of the party had already done the tower on their previous visit, just Diane and I climbed the many stairs to the top and enjoyed the view from the top.

The heat had started to get to us there, so we decided it was time to head back down the hill and find a place in the shade to have some lunch. We found a place on the main road not far from where the funicular stop was. After a much needed break we wandered around a bit more before going back to our hotel to rest some more (we really weren't used to the heat, and the whole week of heat was enough to make us slow right down). On the way though, we grabbed some ice cream from the same place a few days earlier. Mmm.

This being the last day in Prague, I wanted to try and find a particularly good restaurant to eat at. After doing some looking on wikitravel I found one, but when we got there it was all booked up. Oops. So we returned back to the hotel and asked them for a recommendation. They kindly made a reservation at a place really close by for a late dinner -- which was fine given our late lunch. So we wandered over there and enjoyed a wonderful meal.

Our final day in Prague was a travel day, so we didn't do much other than wander a little bit before taking transit to the airport and heading back to Dublin with my mom. It was a pretty fun week, and I think since we didn't see much more than the old town in Prague that we'll have to return!