100 ISO

Wow... All I can say is the south of France is a drag... If I were to stay here for too long I would surely be suicidal. The sun is shining. Most of us are in shorts and I am among us who are sunburned from basking too much in the rays. Its hard for me to put on sunscreen when I feel like I haven't seen the sun since last October. Oh well, travel is all about live and learn right? On to the tales...

In the morning we got up and went to the most amazing Farmer's market. There wasn't a lot of time and I was promised by my beautiful wife that there would be enough time for me to go back to the hotel and shower before we left for the boat. Well, there wasn't nearly as much time as we thought so I left the market to go grab a quick shower, but before I left I bought some bread, strawberries and some egg roll things from various vendors for breakfast. Shower, pack-up and then rush to the bus with all the shit so we can go get on our boat! I'm sorry I don't have any pics of the market. It was incredible. Some of them were even selling veggie starts. If I didn't know that US customs frowns on bringing back plants I would have been tempted to put some in my bags.

We got on the bus (barely, we didn't think Ixtla was going to make it in time)and went to the canal where we would start our boat trip. We get there and I see the boats. I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I saw. Our boat is HUGE. It has four sleeping cabins, three bathrooms/showers, a kitchen, table and sitting area and an upper deck. You can drive from the inner area or the outside upper deck. This focker is fancy.

Dylan and Juergen are the designated captains on the trip, so while they were being trained to drive this crazy boat several of us rode rented bicycles three different times with backpacks up to the grocery store. We loaded up the basket with tons of wine, Irish whiskey, Old Lady's gin and a ton of food. Back and forth to the store for more things... bottled water, t-p, beer, bread, eggs, cheese and tons of other fixins.

Actually I hauled two very full and heavy bags back the first two trips. On the third trip I was in charge of pouring a bon voyage shot for everyone that we would drink when they got back. Carole however wanted her shot early, so I told her to drink hers and when they got back I would refill it for her. It so happened I drank mine too. I extended my hand out to her which had my glass in it and she went to give me her glass. The glasses smashed together and BOOM. My glass shattered into a gazillion little shards. Absolutely everywhere.

We're rushing around trying to get all the glass off the upper deck of the boat, Gary in his bare feet. Right then one of the boat guys comes up to help us with some things we had asked about. Ugh. We're making a very good impression on these people already. The grocery trippers got back and were laughing at us; not really even knowing what had happened.

So we have groceries, we have drinks, and we're ready to start this sucker. We're off to travel about 12 km per day and duck into these little villages as we go. We've got four bicycles for eight of us, so we're taking turns running around when we stop.

There are 29 locks involved on our trip down the canal. I have no no idea how many we've gone through in the first two days now, but we've stopped at places along the way and we're enjoying the boat ride and the views of the vineyards everywhere. This is serious wine country.

We had power issues on this boat, meaning a place to plug in our various electronic items. Things like cell phones, this here computer I'm typing on, ipods and camera battery chargers. There is an outlet on this crazy boat but it only works when the boat is plugged in at shore. That doesn't work well for Carez to keep up the blog. The battery on this computer lasts about five minutes these days. So we didn't know the outlet didn't work and we spent a long time trying to figure out how to get power to our devices. We actually ended up getting a boat guy to come out and meet us. He jumped on the boat and pretty much told us we were out of luck. Then twice jumped back on the boat with other ideas of things to try. His second idea of jimmy rigging the power inverter to essentially be an outlet itself worked. YEA! We're back in the 21^st century.

We're having a great time so far cruising the canal and little towns in the day, and last night we played cards well into the night. We've met wonderful people including Sheila, this incredible British woman who lives on her own boat. She drives the thing all by herself and navigates the locks alone. We're having quite a time trying to steer the boat to the right place and not screw anything up, and that's with nine if us trying to manage the ropes and everything. She's doing all of this alone, no sweat. We went though several locks with her and she has such a sweet boat. Solar panels all over it too. Ixtla pointed out she's our new hero. I agree. Pics from the first day or so can be found here. Beer on shore is calling me.

Until next time.

Carez

Travel lessons learned...

Our two days at Jamie's place were delightful. It was nice for a short time not to have an agenda other than relaxing at her beautiful Czech estate. Our last night some of Carrie's English students made us a traditional Czech food. It was sooooo good. Pork and dumplings covered in a creamy vegetable sauce. YUM. The teenagers were so respectful too. Here they had already spent hours cooking for us, then the passed the dishes around and cleared our plates when we were done. PS, I'm getting the recipe. :-)

I took a short nap after dinner to eventually be disturbed by two crazy women jumping on me yelling, “come play with us!” Uh... ok yeah. I was in such a food coma from lots of stick to your ribs Czech food a little sleep felt great. I needed the short shut-eye break. My only regret about it was that I didn't get to say goodbye to Carrie, who had retired to bed before I got up. Bye Carrie! I don't doubt we'll see you again soon. Keep on Czechin' on sister!

The night got later and Hemingway and I had to get packed for our big day of travel ahead of us to France. I unfortunately ended up staying up all night with Jamie, Jillian and Cain. I only say unfortunately because I paid the price trying to sleep on long stints of various transportation.

We left the castle at 4am when our ride came to take us to the airport in Prague. We fly Sky Europe to Paris which was a particularly miserable flight. We were seating at row 11, which does not recline because of being the row in front of the exit row. Then the row in front of us reclined and I was a sleepy sardine for the entire flight. Except I couldn't sleep being packed in there so tight. Row 11 is not where you want to be on a 747-400. Travel lesson learned #1.

We get to Paris and navigate to the baggage, getting our bags fairly easy. Now we need to get to the train station via bus. We get a ticket for the bus and say “bonjour” to folks we encountered, also trying to learn how to say the name of the train station. We maybe should of done this ahead of time. Hmmm...

Hemingway slept for most of the bus ride to the train station. I was looking around at all the crazy stuff in Paris. At one point we did see the foggy outline of the Eiffel tower We saw more McDonalds, (in every town we've been in so far except Chotoviny), a HUGE Pfizer building and the bustling of French city life everywhere. I kept thinking about Bugs Bunny being in Paris and all the sites he took in while here. Bugs of course being my first reference I can remember in my life to Paris.

We make it to the train station and good lord is it crazy. Its not organized chaos. Its chaos. I was surprised to see military soldiers in fatigues with machine guns patrolling the station. The station is essentially outdoors too, so it was windy and cold in all the chaos of the trains going in and out and all the people milling around till they sprint to a train.

It seems to be a popular method of boarding transport in Europe to wait till the last second to post ina public place where you are supposed to be and then the entire mob bolts at the same time to the same place, knocking over everything in their path. My rolling bag is incrdibly unstable and I had a very hard time keeping up with Hemingway and her little bag once we (and a gazillion others) found out what train we were supposed to be on from the big board.

On the first five hour train ride though the French countryside I began to realize that our travel plans were less than efficient. For some reason we couldn't fly directly into the any town in southern France from the Czech Republic and ended up flying into the north end of the country to take a day traveling south by train. Travel lesson #2 was when you need to traverse an entire country on a short schedule, use another plane. It would be like flying from Spokane to Chicago so you could take a train to New Orleans. Not exactly the best move.

We did get to see a lot of the French countryside and rode right though the heart of the wine country. Saw a million vineyards in Bordeaux and all alone western France. It was beautiful. We also took in some podcasts, one being of Bill McKibben on KQED's Forum. Last time we were in Europe we read his book "Deep Economy." This was interesting cause we saw a bunch of big wind generators and also some nuclear plants. Bill is amazing and I would plead for you all at some point to visit 350.org. We also took in some Bill Mahar and then some John Hodgeman reading “of actuaries and their tattoos.” As you can see we keep well informed.

Another train transfer and we finally arrive in Carcasone and are greeted by Carole, Gary, and Dylan. YEA! A short walk from the train station gets us to the hotel, and we meet up with Ixtla, Juergen and Carola. Yea Again!

We all went out to a FABULOUS dinner at a basement restaurant Carola and Juergen found in a back alley somewhere. OMG, the food was amazing and we did it up. I had duck, but there was all kinds of dishes on the table and everything was sampled by everyone. I was told I must have been talking to Craig, cause I sat next to Carole and ordered something she didn't like. I didn't exactly know this ahead of time but I guess it worked out ok. She got the lamb and very graciously still let me try some.

The long day lead to an early night. No bars or anything. I just CRASHED. Now up up and have rented some expensive air time on a wireless network so I can upload to the blog. We're about to eat breakfast and then go get our boat, which we'll be on for the next four days. I will be blogging on the boat but I might be off line for a while. I will haul the computer into towns we stop in and see if I can find an internet cafe. Keep watching the blog, but I'm waring you there may be some downtime in the near future. We've had such great luck with internet access so far. Off to the boat.

Johnny Canal.

Lookin for a Chateau...

Hemingway and I got up yesterday, said goodbye to Sue, and met our driver for the trip out to Chotoviny. It was a nice ride though the countryside and we arrived in perfect form, although we were a bit shocked at the cost. I thought the estimate we got back in the states from Jamie seemed VERY low, but I definitely wasn't expecting a 500% increase. Oh well, live and learn.

Carrie, Jamie's executive director for the castle, greeted us and we chatted her up for a while. She's been here for months working on getting this place ready for all the crazy thing they are going to be doing here. She's mentioned several times how nice it is to be able to communicate in English. Carrie made us a very nice lunch, which was great because I was overly hungry. She also talked about the local Easter whipping tradition she experienced.

After getting settled in we went to the nearby town of Tabor to get some grub, pivo and a bottle of booze. We also stopped on the way back at a little shop actually in Chotoviny. This town is very small and when we were here last October we had no idea about the shop and even a few little bars in town. Carrie promised that later on in the evening we would make our way to her favorite pub.

A few hours after we got back from the shopping, Jamie and Amy arrived. It was exciting to see them and I was glad they made it safely. Amy looked fairly beat up from the travel but it didn't stop her from eating dinner (pizza we picked up at the store earlier) with us and then heading out to the pub.

The great thing about the smallness of this crazy town is you can walk pretty much anywhere in no time at all. This is especially god cause if you get caught drinking and driving here, you might as well say goodbye to your life. They are very strict about that.

So we all walk over to the pub and we meet up with some of Carrie's friends. This pub has no sign and a dark hall leads to the room. Pretty much you have to live here to know about it. Carrie teaches English at one of the nearby schools and some of her students also met us at the bar. In this country you can drink at 16 and its really no big deal for kids younger than that to be in the bar hanging out. It depressed me somewhat that I saw the kids smoking too. You can smoke here at 14 or 13. American tobacco companies have little to worry about for future business.

We drank, talked and learned more Czech words from the locals. There was a hockey game going on between two rival Czech teams and occasionally the place would erupt with screaming anytime someone would score. There was a small room in the back with a pool and foosball. Amy made a joke early on about flying half way around the world to play pool. I didn't get in on the pool games, but I did team up with Jamie to have our asses handed to us by two 14 year olds. They whooped us every single time. I chalked it up to several facts including 1. they were sober, 2. they knew how to play and 3. we weren't sober at all. It was funny too cause the kids would scream just like the men watching the hockey game when they scored goals on us over and over again. When Amy played she would spin the little dudes around wildly and she got yelled at in Czech by this kid.

This is a shot of the group with the bartender and her boyfriend. We closed the joint down and walked home. Had a great time. The kids are cooking a big traditional Czech dinner which I'm very excited about. Then about 3:30am we'll be leaving for the airport to fly to Paris and will meet up with the Hemingway gang of thugs there. I'm glad we're going to France. My brother needs a new hat.

Carez...

justice is served

First it has been asked which urinal woman I ended up in front of while I did my business. Well, the answer is the one who was asking for a light. I explained to the young lady that I had not had a cigarette since December 19th, 1998, and besides, Gary pocketed my lighter. Sorry, I've got to pee and I got no flame. Not sure why I chose that one exactly but I guess its better than the broad with the binoculars.

Today Hemingway and I didn't brave the morning snow storm and she got some much needed rest wile I worked on things. It was crazy though at one point there was a huge bolt of lightning that lit up the room and crashed really loud. I have never experienced lightning in a stow storm before. That was very strange.

After her rest and the snow seemed to die down, we took the tram down to an old section of town and I had one of the biggest meals of my life. It was a sampler of Czech food and pretty much had the first five menu items from the Czech section, along with cabbage, dumplings, gnochi and bread. I ate it all and good lord I was full. One of the items was 1/4 duck, which was fabulous.

Hemingway for some reason isn't eating all that much and she just had a big bowl of potato soup in a hearty bread bowl. However, she is drinking a lot and had water, OJ and hot chocolate. Funny thing was, when we got the bill, her small bottled still water was twice as much as my large Czech beer. That's the way these Czech's roll. Water is twice as much as beer. My solution of course is to drink more beer.

We made it back to Sue's flat due to Hemingway's expert map navigation and Sue showed up from work about 15 minutes later. She told us about a great vegitarian place and said we could try it out. We were very open to the idea but I knew I wouldn't be eating all that much since I just had the huge plate only a few hours ago. But hey, no skin off my back. I would go to the restaurant with the girls and have drinks. I also knew I could eat off Hemingway's plate too later on. Sue makes reservations for 8:30 and we head out the door with plenty of time to make it to the restaurant.

I need to now mention that at Sue's recommendation we purchased a three day Prague transportation pass from the airport right after we got our bags. With this pass you can use the trams, metro (subway) or buses an unlimited amount of times for three days after you first use it. Now we did use the trams and the metro a ton of times and it costs a little over a dollar every time you need a ticket if you don't have a pass. Our passes were about 24 dollars a piece and I'm not sure we got our total money's worth, but it was nice to not have to scramble to find money and a ticket machine all the time for transport. That being said we used the excellent public transportation quite a bit and I feel that the passes for us were worth our time. Especially when I tell you this part...

We were on our way to the restaurant and head down with Sue to take the metro. We're standing on the platform where the trains pick you up and a guy asks me for our tickets. Hemingway has both of our tickets and unfortunately Sue had no ticket. There really isn't a monitoring system for people to pay except the very occasional dude walking around asking random people for a ticket. 99 times out of 100 you aren't going to get caught. Well when the guy asks me for our tickets I stop Hemingway so she can show the metro dude. Sue keeps walking, tries to act like she didn't hear the guy or whatever and attempts to disappear into the crowd. Train dude looks at our tickets and high tails it after Sue. He stops her and they are talking and Hemingway and I have no idea what to do, but we see them get on the train. So we jump on the train too and I barely make it, Hemingway is in a different car in front me and I can see her and Sue talking to the train guy still. We head up to the next stop and he takes her off the train and we follow at a distance. He drags her to an ATM and makes her withdraw money, and charges her 700 crowns for the violation. That's about 45 dollars. Yikes. This also made us late for the reservations and I was teasing Sue about being in the "700 club". She got caught and had to pay the big bucks. Doh! I seriously wondered how or if they ever monitored the system cause I never before this saw anyone checking ever., not this time or our last experience in Prague. Moral of the story. Pay the dollar, don't forget.... or you too may join the "700 club."

We finally made it to the restaurant, they had great food, but probably the worst service I have experienced in a long damn time. Tomorrow morning we say goodbye to Sue and head out to Jamie's castle. We've very much enjoyed our stay in Prague and we're already talking about figuring out how to come back.

This picture is us on the metro on the way home and yes, Sue bought a ticket this time and of course we were not asked by anyone to see it.

beware of book

Yesterday was great. Our first full day of Prauging around. Sue graciously took the day off and she, Hemingway and I traveled all over town and hit three museums, a park with a giant metronome, a coffee shop and a restaurant. Late night we ended up at a blues show. Holy nixon it was a fun day. Select shots from the day can be seen here.

The first museum was a Czech Cubist showcase in the House of the Black Madonna, featuring cubist artwork, furniture and architecture. The crazy Czechs were doing this in the teens of the 20th century and the whole idea centers around no right angles. The art is very abstract, and sometimes we were wondering what the hell was going on. in the paintings or sculptures. The furniture and architecture however, were really cool. Almost art deco looking. With no right angles, nothing is square and it really stands out.

Next we hiked over to the Museum of Communism and I can tell you this place is a trip. The Czech Republic was occupied by the Soviet Union and was a satellite state from 1948 until 1989. It was really neat to read about and see the effect on the Czechs being under control of the communists. The museum did not paint a very pretty picture either. Above you can see the logo of the museum, a cute Russian doll with the vicious teeth of a communist regime. It's not all that long ago this country was very different, though its hard for an outsider to believe spending time here now. Seems like a fun, modern, capitalistic and democratic environment.

We also visited a modern art museum. Not much to say here other than my upbeat attitude about beating jetlag in a single day was a little misguided. I was hitting an energy wall from walking around all day packing my camera bag. More floors of art to see and more stairs to climb. I was getting tired but I knew I had to push on. No sense in letting jetlag beat me now.

After the last museum we made out way up to a clearing perched on a hill overlooking the city where a gigantic metronome now stands. This metronome is there to mark the city's musical heritage and to replace a massive stone statue of Stalin that was knocked down in 1962. I saw a picture of the Stalin statue at the communist museum. It was impressive. Too bad he wasn't so grand. Also at the top of this hill were tons of teenage skateboarders practicing their tricks and enjoying the nice weather. Can't blame them either. Funny though, those kids swarming around on their boards like flies, looked just like any smooth surface seeking American kids. No difference there.

We had a bite to eat at a decent restaurant and then we did some shopping at a mall to pick up a few things we needed. There was a fancy liquor store in the mall and I thought about picking up some nice tequila for the castle. They had a impressive variety considering it is so hard to find tequila in Europe. So I go to the shelf and I'm so pleased to see all my favorite flavors. Hemingway is asking me which kind I'm going to get. I tell her we need to leave and I don't buy any of them. We're walking to the next location in the mall and I asked Hemingway if she saw the prices. She said no, and I told her they were averaging 1500 crowns per bottle. Since the dollar is at an all time low, that works out to be just over 100 dollars a bottle. OMG. Now I LOVE tequila, but there's no way I am going to pay 100 bones for it. I'll just have to accept that I am way too far away from Mexico and when I'm back in over taxed Washington, I'll never bitch again about the prices of good tequila.

In this same mall I made my way to the bathroom on our way out and I had the biggest laugh of the day. Above each urinal was a picture of a life sized woman, looking down at what you were doing. I'm alone in the bathroom and laughing as I do my business, and then I get out my camera. You can see some of these urinal women in the above picture gallery link. It was also funny to see the look on some dude's face as he walks into the bathroom and I'm putting away my camera. What's up with tourists these days huh?

We took the subway back to Sue's place to rest up a little before we went out to a Prague jazz club to hear Stan The Man. Czech blues in a Prague club. We had such a fun time. Sue knew to call and get reservations at this place and we lucked out with seats right next to the band. The room was VERY small and was dug out of stone in the basement and the joint was packed to the gills. Sue and I had wine, took shots of Becherovka, and the three of us met a delightful couple from Australia. They are on a trip up here and going on to France (like us) celebrating thirty years together. Small ass club, great music and meeting super fun people. What could be better? Here is a link to some of the Stan the Man shots. Blues is a fine American export. :-)

Its snowing today and we're about to head out to explore the city more on our own. Sue had to work today, though we will get to go to dinner with her and do something fun when she gets off work tonight. Until next time...

Carez

time shifting, blood and cancer

We seem to have made the time shift fairly easy. Maybe it was the alcohol but I slept very well last night and now I'm ready to TOUR. When Hemingway was sleeping I convinced Sue to go down to where the action is late night and get some Smazeny (pronounced schmoznee) which I guess means "fried" in Czech. Sue introduced us to these "fry" stations that are all over Prague the last time we were here. They are like carnival stands with deep friers and they sell all things fried as well as huge sausages and shots. Yes, we went looking for late night fried drunken food and ended up taking shots right there on the street along with our fried things on a bun. Sue loves the fried cheese on a bun. I had some kind of chicken thing, and then another one and then I talked a reluctant Sue into more shots of this wacky Czech liquor. She said if she were to take another shot, we would have to go somewhere to get her cigarettes too. We then saw a casino and ducked in to get her some cancer. I waited in the lobby while she was getting the smokes and I noticed that I was standing next to a huge pool of blood on the ground. This looked like someone had been shot or stabbed and hung out in the lobby for a while and let their blood drip everywhere. Maybe they had a friend who wanted cigarettes after watching their friend get stabbed and leak their guts out all over. I don't know. Nor do I know if its really a good marketing gimmick for the Casino to look like it has mob style enforcement on site.

ok, off to TOUR!

We made it...

We arrived in Prague after a LONG trip in the skies. Spokane to Seattle, Seattle to London, London to Prague. Flying "east" is a drag cause you essentially lose a day. So we're tired, yada yada yada... yeah, its a long damn way here. I'm sure you get it.

Anyway, Hemingway was sick on the way to London. She barfed before we even got off the ground, but lucky for everyone she had a barf bag from the earlier plane. The flight attendants gave her more bags with the official "British Airways" logo and took away her current debris. She slept a lot but generally seems to be feeling better.

We made it to Sue's house (how fun is it to have a friend in Prague) and now I'm writing this blog and drinking. What am I drinking you ask? Well, my dad told me about how they went in Tennessee to the Jack Daniels distillery and learned that JD makes JD Silver Select. Apparently JD only exports Silver Select, so for some very lame reason you can't buy it in the states. I picked up a bottle in the duty free shop in London and I can tell you its good. It was $63 American, and I'm not sure its that much better than regular single barrel, but I"m glad I tried it. You gotta do what you gotta do, right? I mean, why the hell would Jack make a whiskey and not sell it in the U.S.? Its a strong whiskey with a very complex flavor. I'll keep drinking it and let you know if my opinion changes.

Tomorrow we have the "perfect" day in Prague planned. Sue doesn't have to work so we're going to search for remaining easter eggs and generally have a kick ass time.

Hemingway is asleep, getting adjusted to the time change. I'm wide awake and contemplating how I'm going to make her angry at 3am Prague time.

Till next time,

Carez

Team EH leaves tomorrow

Hemingway and I are heading across the pond and our first stop is a visit with Sue in Prague. Packing, laundry, camera gathering, Lunaing, and getting the joint ready for Patti. Hope we've got enough time.