Medieval Style

On our way back from Prague, we stopped in a little village in the region known as Bohemia. (This is the real authentic Bohemia, not new Bohemia).

The village is called Cesky Krumlov. It's probably the coolest little Czech town you've never heard of.

This is the towering gate to the old city. At the top are some kind of offices that are attached to the castle.

This river flows through the town and when we were there, we saw lots of people kayaking and canoeing on it. It was a little rainy but not too bad.



Just like any good Medieval village it had awesome little streets to walk along. They were filled with cafes and restaurants.



Here's the town castle.


Its too bad we only spent a few hours here. It seemed like a great little town to spend a weekend in.

We only had enough time for lunch, a little shopping, a little walking around, and then it was back on the bus for the trip back to Italy. And back to work the next day.

Not a bad place for a weekend getaway.

Ciao!

Not enough time in Prague

After we got back back from Paris, we had a crazy week of work and school and then the following Friday night we were back on a bus heading for Prague.



We knew this trip was gonna be a whirlwind. Friday night we slept on the bus and woke up around 6 am as we were crossing the Austria-Czech border. Needless to say, sleep on a bus is not very restful sleep. When we got into Prague, it was around 7:30 or 8, and the first thing on our schedule was a guided walking tour of the city.


Prague is every bit as gothic as I thought it would be. There are spires and statues and gargoyles everywhere.


The advertising is sort of interesting too.




This is the famous view of Prague that is all over pictures and paintings everywhere.



We spent the afternoon walking around. It rained on us a little bit but not too much.

We were so tired from the trip, we headed to our hotel early and took a quick nap. A couple hours later, we were ready to check out some Prague night life...


We started out at a Sushi place. Here we are getting ready to do some Sake bombers!

After the Sushi we went to Red Hot & Blues. Yep they have one in Prague.


Then we spent the rest of the night at this 6 story club right on the river. It was pretty cool I guess. But every time I find myself in one of these places I just don't seem to enjoy it as much as I used to. Nevertheless, I sucked it up and we stayed until about 3am. The music was good and the drinks were cheaper than in Italy!

It made for a rough Sunday morning though. We woke up and were on the bus again by 9am. And we had one more stop to make...

(to be continued)

A Minute to Breathe

With work, school, and travelling all keeping me busy over the last month, it's kind of funny that I feel like blogging now. It seems that keeping this website up to date makes me feel more on top of things!

The last few weeks have been a blur of activity and happenings for me. Some of the most noteworthy:

1. I'm getting promoted!!! I found out Wednesday that I passed my test for Staff Sergeant! (That's an E-5) I'll be taking on more of a leadership/mentor role in my shop and I'll start getting a little more respect. I feel like I've been doing the job of a Staff Sgt for the last few months anyway and a few of my superiors have said that too.

2. I will be going on another temporary duty assignment (TDY) to Greece, Crete, and Cyprus. Me and 3 other guys will spend a couple weeks down there upgrading networking equipment on some NATO bases. It should be an interesting and challenging task mixed in with a little fun and leisure time. Not sure when we're leaving. I only hope these new crazy terrorist attacks don't force us to cancel our plans.

3. For those of you baking in the 100 degree temperatures, know that last weekend in Austria they got about 60 inches of snow, only about 3 hours from here. A few of my buddies are going snowboarding tomorrow! One of the things I DON'T miss about Texas is the month of August.

4. I was hoping to be able to take a trip back to the US and see some of you. But then this Greece thing came up. I still might try to get out there later this year, but we'll just have to see how things turn out.

5. I turned in a request for another tour here in Italy. If it gets approved, I'll be here until 2010! If it gets denied, I'll be leaving Italy in Sept 2007. I should get my answer in the next 45 days or so. So if any of you were thinking about coming out here to visit, please plan accordingly!

This weekend looked like it might give us a little time to relax. We'd planned to chill this weekend and clean up the house a little, but then a few of our closest friends invited us to take a trip to Slovenia with them. Hey, when Ljubjana, Slovenia has the best Mexican reastaurant in Europe and it's only 2 hours away, how can you say no?

Viva La France!!!

Paris is a city that we'd wanted to visit for a long time. Who doesn't want to visit Paris? Well, finally everything came together for Susan and I, and we bought our plane tickets!





Getting There...

We flew out of Treviso, which is only about 45 minutes from our place and landed at Beauvais around 10pm.

Why do I have a picture of an Irish pub here? This was a tent that was set up right outside the airport in France. Our shuttle driver was waiting for some other passengers whose plane was delayed so he went to take a nap in his van. Susan and I saw this tent-pub and headed straight for it!

Here we are enjoying our first drinks in Paris!

The First Day

We got off to an early start because we weren't sure how the lines would be at all the monuments. A friend of ours told us about a nice hotel in a good location, thanks Lettie!!! It was in a nice part of town south of the river. We decided to go to the Louvre first so we started walking north. The pic above is the Pantheon which was only a few minutes walk from our hotel.


On the way to the Louvre... Here is the sun rising from behind the Notre Dame Cathedral.



Buildings on the River Seine.

The great controversial pyramid of the Louvre. In the words of Fache... " A scar on the face of our city"!

Here I am in front of the Venus de Milo.


We thought it was interesting that taking photos in the Louvre was allowed. We couldn't wait to get to the Mona Lisa. Yeah, well, not so fast. Taking pictures of the Mona Lisa is NOT allowed. But we saw it and it was as beautiful and mysterious and everyone says,... only a little smaller than I imagined. But we figured we should take pictures of at least some painting. This one looked cool.

One of the 8 million sculpture rooms in the Louvre that no one visits becasue they're too busy flocking to the Mona Lisa.


We saw what we needed to see in the Louvre and we didn't want to get museumed-out so we left and started walking the streets of Paris.

Paris is full of little restaurants and sidewalk cafes. Here's one of the nicest of the 7,000 cafes that I took pictures of.


This obelisk was a gift from Egypt to France. It is supposed to be over 3000 years old.


Susan and I in front of the Notre Dame.



Here is one of the cool sidewalk stands that sells cool vintage Parisian posters.

We headed for the Eiffel Tower in the early evening. We were lucky enough to have beautiful weather and a perfect sunset for our background. We weren't going to go up to the top. Not yet. Tonight would just be the night that we watched the sun go down and the tower light up.



I think it happened around 10pm. The tower lit up with all these flashing lights. When they start flashing, everyone cheers. It lasts for about 10 minutes and then stops. And it did it again on the hour at 11pm. It was very cool.

When night finally fell and we'd had our fill of watching the Eiffel tower for the night, we stopped at this little cafe and had a couple glasses of some great French wine. Well Susan did, I'm pretty sure I had a beer.

Our next stop was this little piano bar in the Latin Quarter. This was one of my favorite places we went to in Paris. Such a nice atmosphere. This guy played great piano and the girl had a great voice.

The Latin Quarter is full of bars and restaurants. And on Friday night, its full of people too.


Saturday

We woke up Saturday with only slight headaches. Nothing Aleve couldn't fix. We started out sort of early so we could make sure we had enough time to see everything.

Here is the Sacre D U'coeur. I don't know what that means, but I know it is a really big church. It sits on the highest hill in Paris so you can get great views from here. It is also located in one of the coolest areas in Paris, Montmartre.

This is one of about 3 dozen artists in the Place du Tertre. One of the most famous plazas in Paris. We stopped here and ate a quick lunch at the ultra-famous Chez Eugene.


This is just another little cafe that I thought looked really cool.

The famous Moulin Rouge Cabaret. Not as impressive as I imagined... but then, I didn't go inside!

Here is one of Paris' famous Metropolitain signs leading to a subway station.

A quaint street in Montmartre.

The only reason this picture is significant is the name of the restaurant behind me... LePalmier!


And then we meandered to the most famous street in the city, the Champs-Elysees.

It was really nothing more than a really wide street with lots of expensive stores and cafes... yawn.

The Arc du Triomphe.



Now, it was time to head back to the Eiffel Tower and actually go up to the top this time!

If you want to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, you have a choice to make. You can take the elevator all the way to the top. Or you can climb the steps to the second level and then you take the elevator from there.

Susan and I have been living and travelling in Europe for almost two years. So we are seasoned veterans at climbing to the top of old buildings, churches, and monuments. We naturally decided to take the stairs to the second floor and ended up saving about 20 Euro and probably 4 hours!

Here are some views from the tower:








So that was about it for the tower. We headed back down, we took the stairs of course, and went to grab some dinner. We ate at a nice Indian restaurant right down the street from the tower.


We had a few hours to kill so we went back to the park in front of the Eiffel Tower. We laid in the grass and watched the tower light up again with the backdrop of a clear sunset. We were so full of samosas, lamb vindaloo, and curry that we fell asleep in the park!

When we woke up it was about 9pm and we were refreshed but still full! We headed back to the Latin Quarter for some more night life. This picture is of a street in the Latin Quarter with the Notre Dame in the background.

Saturday night is as lively as ever in the Latin Quarter. It's full of greek restaurants, cafes, bars, a few discos, and shops

We stayed out kind of late. Spent a little more time at the piano bar and walking the streets. Lots of bars had live music. I really miss all the live music venues in Dallas so I really liked this area a lot.


The Last Day

We woke up again and shook off our mild hangovers. We had done everything in Paris we'd set out to do. So we spent our last day in Paris just strolling around and taking it easy. Our shuttle back to the airport was leaving at 3pm so we only had a few hours to kill.

On Sunday the weather got a little cloudy and it sprinkled a little. But we were lucky enough to have great weather when we needed it.


We went back to the area around the Notre Dame. We did some last minute souvenir shopping, had our last snacks and our last beers, and started on our way back to the hotel to catch the shuttle.

We had an uneventful trip home and we were both back at work the next day. A little tired, but happy to be able to check Paris off the list of places we need to go.

I'm also happy to report that we found the French people to be kind, helpful, and very friendly. No matter how much we butchered their language, no one scoffed at us or called us stupid Americans. I think its too bad that the French get a bad rap from most Americans.

I'll leave you with some more shots of the Eiffel Tower.

Au revoir!!!








Want to see more pictures of Paris?

Paris!