Prague

A little behind on blogging, but better late than never.

We spent 5 nights in Prague, probably a few days too many but it was nice to take our time and walk the city. Since Steven had previously been to Prague, he played tour guide for Stephanie.

The main square:

On the hour, hoards of tourists gather in the main square to watch the astronomical clock on the Old Town Hall Tower - two small trap doors open above the clock and small figurines representing Christ and disciples go around in a circle. Not extremely impressive but considering it was constructed in the 15th century, we'll say it's noteworthy.

Goulash is a must in any central European country and Steven definitely had his fill, accompanied by typical dumplings.

We also enjoyed some hot chocolate and these cinnamon bun things - a welcomed treat since it was about 50 degrees outside. BRRRRRR!

After a few days of walking around the city, we figured we should take a day trip and explore another part of the Czech Republic. Karlovy Vary, a cute town known for its hot springs, was a short bus ride away and seemed like a good choice.

The town has about 20 mineral springs and everyone carries these funny-looking porcelain cups sipping mineral water. We each took a small sip with our hands and decided people were nuts for consuming such large quantities of something that tasted and smelled like rotten eggs. But it's a good marketing ploy and whoever thought of it is laughing all the way to the bank.

One of the small springs:

The largest spring:

The suckers, err, tourists, with their cups:

The Grand Pupp Hotel, located in Karlovy Vary, was used in the James Bond film, Casino Royale:



Another interesting tidbit...Karlovy translates to Karlsbad in German and the California city of Carlsbad is named after this city in the Czech Republic.

We ended our visit to Karlovy Vary with a traditional wafer - it looks, and tastes, like cardboard.

Back in Prague, we spent our last day visiting the famous Prague Castle. But first, we had to walk over the Charles Bridge. Fortunately, it's a pedestrian-only bridge - it would be a mess to try and maneuver around massive crowds with cars and trucks.

View of the castle in the background - please note it took 7 tries to take this picture.

We hiked to the top of the hill and finally arrived at the castle. Probably the most notable part of the castle is the cathedral so inside we went to admire the stained glass.

And we had to climb the 287 steps to the top to admire the view of the city:

We walked back down the steps and hobbled back to our hotel with our jelly legs.

Vienna

Vienna was next on our "European Vacation" and even though we spent 3 nights, we really don't have too many updates. Can you tell we're ready to come home???

Vienna, like most cities in Europe, is great for walking so basically we did just that. We walked. And then we walked some more. We walked past some museums, momentarily thought about going in, then decided to just keep going. The city has a huge art collection and is well-known for operas, neither of which we're huge fans of so we decided to pass. Maybe next time we'll bring our fancy clothes and check out a concert. Maybe. ;)

In the meantime, we couldn't go to Austria and not get a grown-up hot dog and beer at a stand! Do not be fooled, this was no ordinary baseball hot dog - crusty french bread, dijon mustard, and a good Austrian sausage, it hit the spot. Add some beer and we have a happy Steven.

Besides eating schnitzel and sausages, we did actually see a few things in Vienna. The Stephansdom Cathedral, in Stephansplatz Square, is one of Vienna's most famous attractions.

We took an elevator ride (stairs were not even an option) to the top of one of the towers for a view of the city:

We walked over to the Naschmarkt, a huge market full of anything and everything one could think of buying. One side of the market is dedicated to fresh produce, cheese, olives, spices, etc. while the other side is mainly restaurants. We grabbed a bite to eat while enjoying people-watching, other favorite pastime these days.

A few other pictures we took along the way:

Parliament building:

Rathaus, Vienna's city hall:

One-man band - wish we would have hired him for the wedding.

We ventured out of the city on our last morning and went to Schonbrunn Palace, an enormous palace with exquisite gardens. The emporer wanted to model his palace after Versailles in Paris, he did a pretty good job.

Hofburg Imperial Palace was our final stop in Vienna. With multiple buildings housing numerous residences (including the current President of Austria), several museums, chapels, etc. this place is huge!

There was a small entrance to the Treasury where all of the beautiful jewels are currently stored. Surprisingly, our non-flash pictures didn't turn out too badly.

And no trip to Vienna would be complete without a piece of Sacher-torte from the infamous Sacher Cafe. Athough this little piece of cake cost a small fortune, we can say we've been and we've tasted. Now if only we could get our little hands on the secret recipe...(the fancy drink was Steven's hot chocolate with chocolate liquor poured on top).

Budapest

We arrived in Budapest after a crazy morning of rushing to the Rome airport and the madness of Rome in general. It was so nice to relax! Our B&B, Kapital Inn, was uber-fabulous and we really didn't want to leave (and actually didn't most of the time!). If you ever have the opportunity to visit Budapest, this is the place to stay. And we're not just saying that because Albert, the fantastic owner, may or may not be reading this. ;)

When we did finally venture out to the city, we were pleasantly surprised to see Budapest is a modern, clean, and culturally-rich city with some crazy history. Not sure what we were anticipating, an old Communist country perhaps, but it exceeded our expectations by far. And this is what traveling is all about - to correct any misconceptions one has about a particular country, city, whatever.

Albert had printed out a great walking tour of the city for us, so away we went on our first full day in the city.

The Opera House:

We never made it inside since the tours weren't until later in the day, but check out the website if you want to see more. It's pretty impressive.

Budapest is an interesting city...Albert told us the there is a ton of development going on right now. Foreign investors have been coming in an buying up old, delapidated buildings, basically gutting them and putting in 5 star hotels or fancy stores. Directly across from the Opera House we saw this:

This is just one example of many we saw around the city. Budapest is already one of the "it" places to see in Eastern Europe, but we predict it's popularity will grow ten-fold over the next few years.

St. Stephen's Basilica, Hungary's largest church, was next on the list; not technically a basilica as the Pope must give it the honor, it was given the name because of it's sheer size. It was named after (obviously) Stephen, the first king of Hungary.

A little creepy, but King Stephen's fist is mummified and has been placed in a glass case available for viewing inside the basilica. No pictures were allowed, so this one has borrowed from the web. The picture makes it look much larger than it actually is in real life.

We walked down to Freedom Square, a park with a playground area and some grass. Most notably, however, the square is home to the last Soviet monument in the city, a reminder of the Soviet's "liberation" of Hungary after WWII. The star at the top used to be red but has now been painted gold. This still angers the Hungarians as they believe it should be removed since that era is not a time most would like to remember.

We walked down to the Danube River to see the shoe monument, a memorial for the Jewish who were killed by the Arrow Cross Militiamen during WWII. The victims were forced to remove their shoes before being shot and falling into the freezing river. Fun times.:/

And that was enough serious stuff for us for the day...we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the city before taking on another history-filled day.

The next morning, we finished the 2nd half of the walking tour, checking out the Great Market Hall and the Jewish Synagogue (2nd largest synagogue in the world) amongst a few other things.

An interesting thing happened at lunch, however. Albert gave a few suggestions and we decided on Abszint, a semi-fancy cafe located on the main street with a nice patio. We were enjoying our lunch when we noticed a homeless man had picked up a drinking glass at a table next to us and drank whatever liquid was left. Mind you, two ladies were still at the table enjoying their meals. The waiter ran out of the restaurant and proceeded to slap and kick the man. We decided it probably wasn't wise to ask the waiter about the mushrooms missing from Steven's meal.

We left the House of Terror as our last main "attraction" to see. It might have been best to see it first to really understand the unjustice and hardship the city and it's people have experienced, but it's a pretty tough subject to digest. Many, many, bad things happened in this building - more information than we could ever write about so click on the link if you'd like more info.

This is the outside of the building since we couldn't take pictures of the inside (not that we would have). When the sun hits at just the right point, the word "terror" is projected on the side. Pretty eerie.

On a lighter note, Albert sent us on our way to Vienna after an amazing breakfast of chocolate French Toast - what an increcible host! Many thanks, Albert;) And this was after we had an omelette and chocolate chip pancakes the previous days...oye.

Rome

Rome has so much...stuff. Between what seems to be hundreds of churches, thousands of ruins, and some other things in between, it was a bit overwhelming! But we survived, even with Steven cursing every 2 minutes at the crappy maps and what seemed to be millions of tourists.

We made our way to the Spanish Steps and tried to prepare ourselves for what to expect over the next 4 days...too.many.people.

Taking a deep breath, we managed to make our way down to the fountain and sort of take in the scene.

Steven refilling our water bottle - not to fear, the water was completely safe for drinking and hey, it was free.

We fought our way to the crowds to go to yet another insanely-packed place, the Trevi Fountain. Rumor has it that if you throw one coin into the fountain, you will return to Rome; two coins and you'll fall in love with an Italian; three coins and you'll marry said Italian. We only threw one coin in as we've already found love and have been fortunate to get married. Awwwww...

We read in our travel book that some guy was regularly stealing coins out of the fountain...with around 3,000 Euros being thrown in every day, we're sure he was making a nice salary.

The following day, we headed over to the Roman Forums and the Palatine Hill. At one time, the forums used to look something like this:

Hard to imagine since the Forums now look like this:

And never at a loss to gauge tourists, we could have had a picture taken with a Trojan (we passed hence having to take the picture from far away):

After lunch, we headed over to the Pantheon, the oldest standing dome structure in Italy. Originally dedicated to the Roman gods, the Italians decided to turn it into a Basilica. They didn't have enough churches already?

Next on our mile long to-see list was the gigantuan Colosseum. Truly impressive in size, it's crazy to think 50,000 spectators would be packed in this area to watch executions, amongst other events.

The following day was Sunday. Europe is tricky on Sundays - many, many places are closed so we figured we'd just walk around and see where the day would take us. There was a Pizzeria, La Montecarlo, that our hotel recommended (and it was open on Sundays) so we checked it out. Some of the best pizza ever! It was pretty packed so we were lucky to grab a table when we did.

Since the pizzeria is close to the Piazza Navona, we stopped by to check out the scene. There were quite a few artists trying to sell their paintings, we immediately thought of Stephanie's mom who is an extremely talented watercolor painter. We think she'd make a killing in this Piazza.

And we reserved our final day in Rome to focus on Vatican City, home to St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and the area where the Pope resides.

Getting an early start, we rode the metro and beat the lines to enter St. Peter's Basilica in relative calmness.

Go figure the one church that actually allows flash photography and none of the pictures turned out, they are all too dark. We present to you the main website so you can view the inside for yourselves:

http://www.saintpetersbasilica.org/images.htm

We didn't realize the entrance for the Vatican was on the other side of the compound from St. Peter's so we hussled over, hoping to still get a good spot in line. Not so lucky - this was about 30 minutes:

We waited for a good hour before finally making our way into the Vatican museum and eventually to the Sistine Chapel. Again, no photos inside, so check out the website for more info/pictures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistine_Chapel

The artwork on the ceiling is absolutely spectacular and it was fairly amusing to see everyone craining their necks to get a good view and admire the details. Crazy to think Michelangelo spent about 4 years painting the frescoes.

We ended our stay in Rome meeting up with our friends Marco and Beth, and Beth's sister, at yet another amazing restaurant, Taverna Trilussa. It was so good to see familiar faces and catch up with great friends! Good food, great company, perfect ending to our stay in Italy.

p.s. A tip for visiting Rome - if you want to check out the Villa Borghese (or museum), make a reservation beforehand. We arrived in Rome on Friday and they were booked until the following Wednesday. We left on Monday:/