I started off the last post with “We were so tired the night before from the lack of sleep...” but little did I know what was in store for the end of the trip. If you remember the last post, we barely got the airport in time for the checkin, but instead we were Czeched in. Czech airlines first said that the flight was delayed due to the incoming aircraft being delayed but we could all see that the plane was standing right there at the gate. They then proceeded to blame the weather in Prague and then in London. They would come back on the intercom every 30 minutes only to tell us that the flight was delayed by another 30 minutes. Finally around 11:30pm, 2 hours after the flight was supposed to take off, they came back to tell us that the flight was delayed by 8 hours and would fly the next morning at 5:30am and that we should line up at the ticket counter for the next steps.
The tired and somewhat upset passengers in a show of good character lined up at the ticket counter only to be left standing for another hour by the ground staff without any information as to what’s going on. After a few of us disgruntled passengers expressed our anger in the nicest but most forceful of ways, they proceeded to get us a hotel etc.
While we were all waiting in line, one of the passengers who was a ground staff for another airline, let us know that we should ask for a full refund of the flight since EU regulations clearly state that if the flight is delayed by more than 5 hours, passengers are entitled to a full refund. But of course, when we got to the counter, we had to drill the information out of the Czech Airline folks. Reluctantly, they gave us the information needed to get a refund.
At about 12:30am, we were put on a bus and driven for about 45 minutes to get to our “transit” hotel, which was right in front of the place we had lunch the day before. We got into bed by about 1:30am only to be woken up by the alarm at 3:30am and back on the same bus bound for the airport this time. The rest of the flight was uneventful and we came back into London a good 12 hours after we expected to have come in. We filed for the refund but haven’t seen any of this money yet. I doubt we ever will but hey, at least we tried.
It was sad that a really nice trip to a pretty city such as Prague had to end this way. But I still do maintain that Prague is one of the prettiest cities in Europe, just don’t fly Czech Air.
We were so tired the night before from the lack of sleep and all the walking around town that we basically crashed only to be woken up by the alarm at 8:30am. We were checking out today at noon. We showered and headed downstairs breakfast by 9:30am. The breakfast setting at the Jelini Dvur is small and cozy and comfortable although the choice of Macaroni instead of eggs for breakfast was a bit surprising. That didn’t stop up from filling ourselves up to our nostrils with oj, cereal, coffee/tea and Macaroni.
On coming back to our room, we finished our packing and just chilled out for a couple of hours before checking out at noon. We left one of our bags at the reception and headed out to visit the castle. We had 6 hours and a few things on our list to tick off today.The castle was a short 5 minute walk from the hotel.The castle was a mix of different architectural styles having been refurbished more times than I can count on my hands.It hosts a mini city inside it, galleries, museums, cafes, guardhouses, church etc. We walked the perimeter of the castle, appreciating the view of the city from on top of the hill and walking through an outdoor photo gallery.
The steps from the castle lead to the Lesser Town. Don’t go by the English. It is not lesser than anything else in Prague. Pretty, quaint and well preserved old town at the gates of the castle with cobbled streets, old buildings, fancy stores and cafe’s adding the new touch while still keeping the spirit of the city the way it was in the days gone by.By the way, watch out for the guy hanging out of a ground level window scaring people.
Prague seems to have lived through its shares of fights with tyrants and oppression. Mean kings, the second world war and then the communist “friends”. One voice that acted as a voice against oppression and stood for freedom against the red army for the Czech was John Lennon’s.There is a huge tribute to the legend in the form of a Lennon wall. The wall itself belongs to a monastery who check the wall for indecent content from time to time but allow all things Lennon to remain. There is a spitting image of Lennon carved on the wall. The fans even had a mock burial when Lennon passed on.
Frank Gehry’s designed some crazy buildings. But the dancing house in Prague has to rank as one of the craziest. This one in Prague seems like a safety hazard waiting to happen. I bet if this were in the US, some woman who did not quite see the bent parts of the building would have slipped and fallen and sued Gehry for gazillions of dollars for being dumb.
We had the urge to explore some non touristy parts of Prague and go where no tourist had gone before. We decided to catch the first bus that showed up and go to the end of the line. Boy did we pick the right bus. The tour went through some of the prettiest residential areas of Prague and ended up at, what seemed like, the old forgotten ruin of the Strahov Stadium on top of the Petřín hill. On our way down from the hill we had a late lunch at a very quaint looking pizzeria. The two us shared a salad and pasta.
Taking a roundabout route and a couple of bus changes, we decided to pay the Jewishquartera visit. There are 6 different synagogues close to each other in this small corner of old Prague. Our plan was to visit a couple of them and buy some bohemian crystal piece from the many stores in the area. Why buy from this area? Well, for some reason the Jewish folks here are more than happy to discount and one can talk a nice bargain if one was familiar with the art. Having been an unwilling apprentice to my mom’s daily shopping exploits in Delhi for the first 20 years of my life, I had picked up a trick or two.
Top tip: The shops in this area sell things a little bit cheaper than the other parts of Prague anyway and easily about 25% less than the duty free stores at the airports. After about 20 minutes of shopping, we negotiated a 600czk for a piece that was marked at 690czk but as with every negotiation, I walked away thinking that I should have beaten them down that little bit more.
Sorry for the digression, getting back to the synagogues now. The old-new synagogue (ONS) supposedly has the remains of an ancient daemon Golem, created from clay by a powerful Rabi about 800 years ago to protect the Jewish population of Prague from a tyrant ruler. Legend has it that the daemon had to be put down by the Rabi because it eventually turned on the Jewish folk after demolishing the forces of the evil king and also that it can and will be resurrected if needed. I wonder where it was in the late 1930s.We also visited another pretty looking Synagogue very close to the ONS.
That was pretty much the last planned stop on our trip. We walked to the National Museum to take our subway back and came across a gallery of pictures of 1968 Prague.
We had just enough time to head back to the hotel, pick up our stuff and get to the airport.We go there but did the plane take off on time? That’s a whole different story for another post.
When people talked about Prague as the most beautiful city in Europe, I thought they were kidding. How can a city compare to the likes of Rome, Venice etc. but I could see what they were talking about once I got there. It is most definitely one of the prettiest cities in Europe if not the prettiest. The different thing about Prague is that even the bad areas aren't really bad. They are still slightly downtrodden old, pretty buildings.
As soon as we made our way into the city, we knew we had our work cut out for us. We had two days and plenty to see. We took a bus from the airport to a nearest tram stop and took the tram to our hotel. It took a total of about 45 minutes from the airport to get to our hotel which was 5 minutes walk from the castle and we even had a castle view from our hotel room [Pic]. The hotel building itself was still owned by the castle authorities and reflects the architecture of the castle.
We put our stuff down, freshened up and after a half hour rest, we were on our way to explore the city. We had a bunch of things to see, the castle, the lesser town, Charles bridge, the old town, the Lennon wall, the dancing building and the Jewish quarter.
We started off taking the tram to Charles bridge and walk over to the old town from there. Charles bridge, constructed about 800 years ago, was the only bridge over the Vlatava river and used to connect the old town to the castle. Its a pedestrian bridge with painters and different vendors trying to ply their trade and of course a ton of tourists :-). Looking up from the bridge, the castle on top of a hill makes for quite an imposing sight.
Anyway, walking over the charles bridge we made our way to the old town center. We spent the afternoon just walking through streets after streets of pretty buildings, canal-ed streets looking like venice, nice cafe's and designer shops etc. The atmosphere, although extremely touristy, seems very chilled out and relaxed. Storekeepers paying the right amount of attention, broad smiles all around and people eager to help. English isn't spoken very widely though and we did struggle to communicate with the locals. Well, I even got offered some dope , well the guy was speaking Czech so I guess I don't really know. He should really get some classes on identifying his target customers right.
While in the old town, we caught a street stage show being put on by cultural groups from the various countries. The Italians kept their show lively and us captivated and dancing whereas the polish dancers bored us enough for us to be attracted by other lures and we walked on.
The Old Town was the original place of settlement of Prague. In its north is the Jewish quarter, south is the crazy quarter with slightly more downtrodden buildings. To its west is the river and the castle and to its east... well more of Prague I guess. The old town square has been the heart of the old town for about a 1000 years now. It houses the very gothic Tyn Cathedral and the Astronomical clock. It's about 700 years old and still running :-) and the swiss thought they made good watches.
We got on to the trams and the busses after that to take a tour of the rest of the city. The outskirts and the places not usually frequented by the tourists. Again, the city impressed. As I was saying earlier, there aren't any bad parts to prague, well none that we could see anyway. After dark, we came back to the old town to take a look at the town and the castle at night and the sigh was just mesmerizing. It took the word picturesque to a whole new level.
Grabbing some dinner in the form of a pizza slice and a falafel sandwich, we turned in for the night. Well ,I hadn't slept the night before and Anusha hadn't had more than a 4 hours of sleep so we both were pretty knocked out for the night.
Chasing a low score of 94 in 40 overs wasn't ever going to be a big challenge, even on the low, slow, green Fullers wicket. Nick H and Freddie opened the batting Nick pretty much went on a Sehwag style rampage with smashing nearly 7 runs an over for the first 6 overs. Freddie as usual was blocking the other end and scored about 1 run in the 60 run opening stand. Nick mixed some fantastic off drives and lofted pull shots and was particularly punishing of the bad bowling from the near end. Very soon, they switched to an off spinner and Nick using his feet really well to him lofted a couple of fours over mid-off. From the far end though, the other opening bowler, big lad over 6 feet 4 inches was generating a fair bit of pace, bounce and swing and was consistently beating both the opening batsmen outside the off stump. His hard work was finally rewarded when he Nick's off stump cartwheeling and TGCC were and 60/1 after 12 overs.
The Churchill captain made some quick bowling changes causing a bit of a middle order crash, TGCC were very soon 85/4. I came on to the crease at than point and 5 balls and a couple of boudaries later, TGCC had successfully won the third Sunday game in a row. Important to mention that Freddie carried his bat through the innings, scoring 3 runs out of the 96 scored by TGCC. Talk about blocking one end !
Earlier in the day, our opening bowlers, Charlie and DJ hit the perfect on and about the off stump line beating the opening batsmen consistantly. The best part was that both the bowlers were extremely disciplined and bowled no wides or no balls. DJ produced some good chances off his bowling with two catches just falling short of slips and one being dropped in covers. By the time the two opening bowlers had finished their spell Churchill were 14/0 off 10 overs.
The first change bowlers continued the good run and finally we had we got our first breakthrough when Sam Hall rattled the woodwok with a an inswinger to the right hander from left arm over the wicket. Churchill sent in a pinch hitter next who improved the runrate over the next few overs. By the time I came in to bowl, Churchill were about 44/1 in 20 overs.
My very first ball, pitching on the off stump and turning just enough, produced an edge that was dropped by the wicket keeper. Although there wasn't much purchase from the green & slow wicket, I was still able to turn the ball a fair bit. I was mixing up seam-up deliveries with flighted legspins. Four balls later, I induced another edge, this time of a ball pitching on middle and turning to a feet outside off stump, and the first slip diving to his left caught a tough one. The new batman coming in shuffled around the crease trying the follow the next few legspinners and I knew then that I will have another wicket soon. As expected, he tried to pull a flipper, surprised by the bounce he managed to edge a skier to midwicket. Beating the batsmen very often, I had another a few other near missed in the next couple of overs. A couple of full tosses and a bad over cost 8 runs with the pinch-hitter still trying to go after the bowling. The bowling at the other end was beginning to falter and give some runs away also.
My last over, I got the pinch hitter out. A flighted leg spin following a couple of quick straight ones and a googly made him play too soon and straight back into my waiting hands. Wo hoo!!! the third and most important wicket. The quickies came back and polished off the tail and 93 of 40 overs was never going to be a challenging target.
I finished with figured of 6-0-18-3 and scored 9 runs of 5 balls faced with two fours. All in all, not a bad day at all.
Lille wasn't particularly a choice destination. It was one borne out of necessity. We had to get a ticket to some place in France in order to get a visa and we chose Lille. We didn't know much about Lille or had had a chance to read up about it.
What we learnt about Lille was amazing. About a little over a 1000 years ago, Lille was probably an island and hence the name. It was not always French. It was Flemish and Spanish before it was French. Louis the IV fought for Lille around 1667AD and won it for the French. This is when Lille really started becoming the 4th largest metropolitan area in France. Traditional French character, values and architecture was introduced to Lille and most of the monuments we visited were created by the French after this time. The park in the picture is a good example of that: Used to be a downtrodden street and now has become a really nice park. Once the French took this city over, this rapidly developed to be the Manchester of France, heavily industrialized with textile mills etc. These industries were put out of business by cheaper offshore products but resilient Lille reinvented itself. While re-modernizing itself with new town centre, fancy L shaped Euralille building [pic] and software and services industries, Lille rediscovered its culture and heritage and setup the old town as a perfect balance to the new hi-tech parts.
The Place du Général de Gaulle or the Grande Place [pic] is the centre of attaction. Right next to the The Palais Rihour [pic], a 16th century building that hosts the Tourist information centre, the Grand Place is at the cusp of the old city and the new shopping district. The new age shopping district houses all the big high street brands, specialized boutiques and cafe's and restaurants. Walking through to the city to the extremely well preserved old town, we came across a blend of modern and old. Most of the houses in the old town have been modified to be either very cool cafes or high end designer stores. It was quite an experience walking through the old town... and it is as far as old towns go.
All this was on north and north east of our hotel. Oh! by the way, we stayed at the Hotel L Hermitage Gantois. A 4* deluxe hotel which is a modified 16th century hospital. A fantastic historical building with a really cool setup. Just on the south side of the hotel was the mini Arc de Triomphe. Smaller but not less significant for Lille than the Parisian counterpart is to Paris, this was once a gate of the old city. Adjacent to it isthe Town Hall and its belfry.
A little further up were the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, the second largest museum in France after the Louvre, and the Republique building.
A walk further south revealed residential and industrial part of town. A nice walk through what seemed like the forgotten part of town. All in all, a restful Sunday in a very modern park watching people walk by ended a nice, relaxing weekend in a Lille that pleasantly surprised us.
We won today. I had an okay day, but hey, we won !
We batted first and put up a 201 in 35 overs. I went in to open with Freddie and we didn't exactly get off to a flier but we didn't lose a wicket either. 10 overs in and we were 40/0. Decent start considering we were always 2o/2 or something like that in like 4 overs. Although the pitch was very dry, it was really slow, low and unpredectible. We soon stumbled to 52/2 with both the openers, me and Freddie back in the pavilion. I scored 20. Don't know what I was thinking and decided to play on the back foot to a short pitch delivery on our home pitch, a pitch where the ball is never where you expect it to be was caught plumb in front of the wickets. So plumb that even our own empire couldn't save me. Anyway, the middle order also collapsed until we were rescued by a 75 run 6th wicket partnership and some late order hitting got us to 201. This was a very good score on our home wicket where usually 150 is a winning total.
Our opening bowlers started off well and we had them 20/2 in 5 overs. But some good hitting by one of their openers got them back into the game and they were soon at 75/2 in 15 overs. This was until the spin duo came on. One left arm spinner (Singh) complimented by a right hand leg spin bowler from the other end (Me) and very soon the match changed shape. Singh ended up with figures of 7-1-14-4 and I from the other end got 6-3-4-2. We got the quickies to come back in and close the match off and they were all out for about 120. :-)
My batting average is in a bit of a mess this season. So far 5 matches with scores of 25, 14, 4, 0 and 20. Last season I averaged a little over 30. Well, I will be out of London next weekend and so no match, but am hoping to improve the scores in the coming matches.
At least my bowling has been going better. I kept wickets in 2 of the 5 matches but in the other three that I have bowled in, I have ended up with about 10-5-16-3. Not too bad for a leggie in a 35 over run riot.
Unlike the first two days, this day started off relatively early. We were ready, all breakfasted and out of the hostel by 9am. We had a 1-hour drive to the station and had to take the 11am train up the hill. The train was expected to go only 3/4th of the way up the hill and we had to walk the other 1/4th, about 45 minutes.
We got there with enough time to spare and decided to get something to munch on. By the time we finished the food and got to the train, the coach was very full and we struggled to find any place to sit. After packing us all in like sardines, the train started on the slow ascent up the mountain. A really really slow ascent. The train journey was a bit of a letdown. Although it was sunny at the base, it was cloudy, cold and raining at the top. After a fairly boring 45 minute journey, we got off at the station. Instead of making our way up to the summit in the rain and cold, we decided to head down the trail to the base of the mountain.
The path was slippery and rocky and quite steep in places but was an amazing trek down. With amazing views all the way down, I kept on clicking pictures.
The weather improved with the decreasing altitude and it got more sunny and warm. Smita trotted (literally like a horse) her way down the steep incline. She seems to think this reduces the stress on her knees and reduces her health insurance premium. All I know is that we had a good laugh at her expense. A couple of hours after we had started on our trek down, we found ourselves back at the station cafe feeding our even increasing appetites.
Waving our goodbyes to Wales, we started off on our 5 hour return drive to Hitchin. All I can say about the drive is that, 5 hours in the backseat of a car sucks big time especially when all you want to do is get back home, shower, get a good cup of chai and go to sleep!
I would classify Wales as a poor man's Switzerland. My summary is that it is a good place to go for hiking and camping etc. in pretty surroundings, provided you have a better way to incorporate weather predictions into the holiday planning model.
Most of our trips have been 3 day trips and Day 2 is usually the most exciting day of these trips.
Not this time. Day 2 was started off as one of the laziest days, even more so when you think that this was to be a full-on hiking day. We were supposed to hike up mount Snowdon. Guess what we ended up doing.... if you know us, you have guessed right. We woke up late, lazed around and finally made our way into town and had the biggest & best breakfast possible :-) Well, in all honesty, weather was a big spoilsport today. It was a horrible day with non-stop rain till late afternoon.
After the filling brunch, we got to the station to take the mountain rail up to Snowdon and even bought the tickets but then exchanged them for tickets for tomorrow, since tomorrow is expected to be sunny and bright. So with tickets and a plan for tomorrow but no plan for today, we all kind of stood there scratching our heads as to what to do and we started walking back to the car.
Before getting into the car, I saw this interesting sight of the parking attendant talking to a Ferrari driver. In order to just talk to the guy, he had to take a knee and salute the Ferrari. Thought this was interesting.
Right beside the carpark was a stream, a crystal clear stream which Anusha wanted to pollute by plonking her feet in it. Oh! did I mention that it was cold and we all were pretty sure that the water would be freezing. But then again Anusha's 'feet in streams' fascination knows no sense. For the next few minutes, we all watched her hop and scream in the cold water. Well, you had to be there to truly enjoy it.
After our little scream-stream episode, we spotted a small trail off the back of the parking lot. We decided to take that and landed up at the old ruins of what was once a small fort with amazing views. I'll let the pictures do the talking. Take special notice of the details like the faces by the hanging jacket from the window of the ruin and the mountain rail in the background of the second picture.
With Smita navigating and Raghav driving, the infamous four headed off once again in search of exotic locations and prettier locations. A beautiful 2-hour drive took us through many a curvy roads, each with a better picturesque view. It was one of those stop - look around - soak the scenery - off again journeys. We finally ended up in island county of Anglesey, an island with some awesome views of the Welsh coast of the Irish sea.
We stopped by a local pub on the way back to grab some food. As usual we overstuffed ourselves and crawled our way back to our hotel room. Somehow, all of us got re energized by looking at the pictures from the day and a cup of tea and finally decided to embark on that elusive hike. It was a really nice hike up the hills & away from the village. We were supposed to be on this circular path that would get us back to the village from another side. However, we strayed off our path because the one we were supposed to take was being guarded by some really mean looking bulls that were watching our every move. We trekked for a little over an hour along whatever path we could find and finally with Raghav claiming 'aamayaar, idu straighta bullukkepoharade!' (this path is heading straight towards the bulls again!), we turned around and came back to our village.
Finally going to be sleeping light after the hike. Have a fairly full day ahead of us with the train ride up the mountain, another hike and the drive back to Hitchin. Stay tuned ....
As we walked into their place, Raghav warned us that Smita is planning to make us all get out at 7am the next day. We all knew at that point itself that we weren't leaving before noon the next day. This was supposed to be an adrenaline high, pushing the physical boundaries type holiday. Coming off of a hectic project, I knew that wasn't going to be the case.
True to form, we all woke up late and lazed the morning away chatting and playing the piano. Finally we got ready and got out just after noon. We had decided that we were going to drive to Snowdonia. A couple of pit stops on the way to fill up our pits and 4 hours got us nicely to within striking distance of Snowdon. Smita had booked us in a hostel in some village no one had ever heard of - Penmachno.
Penmachno is a village in an isolated upland valley, about 4 miles south of Betws-y-Coed (which we still don't know how to pronounce) in Conwy, North Wales. Beautiful surroundings, small windy roads, old church, nice people, cozy cottages and green hills and valleys.
We had booked a bunk-bed room with shared bathroom facilities. While we all settled down, Smita the brilliant planner realized that she had forgotten her hiking boots for this hiking trip. Of course we all made fun of her !
Given that we had a couple of hours of sunlight left, we thought it would be nice to just explore the area a little bit. All jumped back into the car and drove off to Conwy falls. Once we got to Conwy falls, we walked around for about half an hour trying to get to the bottom of the falls, the top of the falls etc. without much success. The authorities had barricaded the falls because it was raining and slippery. After all the waltzing around, I came to the conclusion that Conwy falls is just a false falls.
Making our way back to the Conwy cafe, we ordered pizza and salad for dinner. Or at least so we had thought. While the three of us ate our food, Raghav was sitting twiddling his thumbs because the waiter has never taken down his order. Of course we ordered again and Raghav got his pizza. I ordered a melt-in-your-mouth brownie with some local Bara Brith, a local Welsh ice cream, all this of course to keep Raghav company. I didn't particularly like the Bara Brith, tested coconuty but the brownie was awesome!
Once back in our hostel, some more researching and some Uno and we were all ready for bed.
Recent superhero movies have all been a letdown. Last couple of weeks, I have seen three superhero movies. Prince Caspian, Kung-fu panda and Hancock. Here's what I thought of them...
Finishing last was Hancock. I did expect more laughs from this movie. There were some scenes and dialogues that were funny but I guess my expectations from this movie were high. I did like the twist in the middle but then the second half of the movie spiralled off into this whole new movie, belonging to a completely different genre without much connection to the first half. The movie had way too much happening and made for, at best, an okay movie.
Prince Caspian and the Kings and Queens of old come in at second place. Decent animation, good visual effects, with child actors growing up into their roles and some good fight sequences made for an entertaining couple of hours. Peter Dinklage, as Trumpkin the dwarf, is amazing in the movie and I loved the accent. Also refreshing, was the comedy by the mouse king. these supporting actors, by far, have the best dialogues and the best dialogue delivery of the lot. Notable mention should be the centaur leader. He did seem like the one ideal to lead the Narnians instead of Aslan. Then again, I didn't write the book.
The winning superhero by a clear margin is the the fearless dragon warrior. Jack Black is in top form as the Kung-fu Panda and so is Dustin Hoffman as the master Shifu. Probably one of the best animated movies I have seen to date. (well, maybe Monsters Inc. was better) Amazing animation, breathtaking action sequences, very funny dialogues and a strong supporting cast set this movie up well. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the movie and will definitely buy the DVD when it comes out.
at 5:30am and that we should line up at the ticket counter for the next steps.
at 5:30am and that we should line up at the ticket counter for the next steps.
