Snow in Prague, Romance in Paris, Rain in Scotland = Perfection

It’s another half-term break for me here in High Wycombe, which means I’m at the beginning of another week-long break; consequently, I have time to blog! My roomie, Jess, and I leave for a five-day road trip along the southern coast of England tomorrow. We’ll be going to Brighton, Bournemouth, the Isle of Wight, Devon, Cornwall, and all the beaches we can manage along the way.

I have decided that the absolute best thing about the English educational system (one of the only perks, in fact) is the fact that I have at least a week off every 5-7 weeks. Yes, this means that we’re in school all the way through mid-July, but we still have a six-week summer holiday, which is plenty of time for a summer vacation anyway. These breaks are perfectly spaced for both students and teachers to rejuvenate and recharge. From a teaching perspective, the breaks also split the year up into perfect 6-week units of study. It makes the planning really nice. When I become Secretary of Education in the United States of America, my first act will be changing the national school schedule to include a week off approximately every six weeks, with two weeks at Christmas and Easter and six weeks of summer vacation. Trust me America, you’ll love it.

Prague:
In honor of my February half-term break, I accompanied my Canadian friend Val to go visit her friend Joanne in Prague, Czech Republic. Prague has been a destination goal of mine for a long time. When Eric and I were in Europe two summers ago, we were really disappointed to get to the end of the trip and find that we didn’t have the finances to make one last jaunt up to Prague. I was bummed. I have always heard such amazing things about Prague; I was anxious to visit. Val posted a message on Facebook about a month before half-term break looking for volunteers to accompany her to either Italy or Prague. It was a perfect opportunity, especially since she has a friend living there who could give us travel tips. I sent her an enthusiastic “Yes!” in response to her request, and we got in contact with Joanne to get the ball rolling.

Prague in February is just what you would expect: Cold. Snowy. Completely gorgeous. We arrived in the evening after a surprisingly short (less than two hours) flight with Ryanair. I was hesitant to use this small European airline, because I had definitely heard mixed reviews. But I found the flight and service perfectly adequate considering the flight was dirt cheap. Val and I also got to enjoy being shamelessly flirted with by a couple of British chaps headed to Prague for a fun weekend. They gave me their phone numbers and told us to call them later that night and they’d buy us drinks. Haha! Yeah right! That didn’t happen.

We followed Joanne’s perfect instructions to our hotel via Prague’s excellent public transport system, and got to our lovely little hotel (which was, once again, dirt cheap) with no problems whatsoever. Joanne met us at the hotel and we went out for a night on the town in Prague. She took us to the most visually stunning place in Prague: Old Town Square. I walked into the Square with huge, fluffy snowflakes falling from the sky, and literally had to catch my breath. It was positively stunning. We spent the next 30 minutes just wandering around the square, trying to capture our absolute rapture of the place in pictures. We got some beautiful shots, but they can’t compare to what it looked like there. Of course, I have no basis for comparison, but I as long as you can handle the cold, I would definitely recommend seeing Prague in the winter.

When Joanne could finally drag us kicking and screaming out of the Square, we hit the surrounding area full of trendy bars and restaurants looking for a place to eat. We settled on a restaurant called Kolkovna that serves traditional Czech food and beer. A few tips about Czech food: they like meat, garlic, and dumplings A LOT. The food is very heavy and filling. They also seem to serve rye bread with everything, which I find really gross. Generally speaking though, the food is very flavourful and I liked it. We hung out at Kolkovna for a while, then went to a really cool hole-in-the-wall Irish pub for a couple drinks. We had planned on having a full-fledged night on the town, but ended up getting tired and going back to the hotel pretty early. It worked out though. We did plenty of drinking for the rest of the trip.

Val and I spent the next couple days exploring all the sights of Prague, and the evenings hanging out with Joanne and her friends. Jo’s two best buddies are an Australian named Justin and an Italian named Alessandro. These guys were AMAZING. They were a blast to hang around with and made the trip so much fun for me and Val. Prague’s reputation for its beauty is no mere rumor. Every place we went in the city, I found myself constantly tripping over something because my eyes were permanently fixed on the buildings above me. We visited Prague Castle, of course, and the incredible St. Vitus’s Cathedral within the castle walls. The castle grounds are an extensive network of chapels, halls, squares, towers, and cottages weaving through cobbled streets and lanes. It’s like its own small city atop the hill in the middle of Prague. St. Vitus’s Cathedral is by far the grandest part of the castle. It has some of the most intricate and beautiful stained glass I have ever seen. Further up the hill was my favourite sight in Prague: the Monastery at Strahov. The outside of the Monastery and the panoramic views of Prague from the back garden would make this place impressive enough, but that is nothing compared to what’s inside. Granted, this may just be because I’m a dork. The reason I loved this place so much is that it had the most mind-blowingly gigantic and gorgeous libraries I have ever seen! Thousands and thousands of books that are centuries old, in rooms with arched ceilings as intricately painted as the Sistine Chapel. These libraries were out of a dream for me. I could have stayed for hours if we’d been allowed inside the actual room. Unfortunately, we couldn’t even go all the way in. The libraries are extremely well-preserved by the fact that they are only accessible by the monks who live there. For the public, it’s “Lookie, no touchie.” Super lame. But it was still awesome to see.

Other highlights of our Prague sightseeing include the Charles Bridge, the Church of St. Nicholas, the Little Quarter Bridge Tower and the Little Quarter, and the Jewish Quarter. The Jewish Quarter was fascinating. We toured three Synagogues, one of which (the Klausen Synagogue) has been converted into the Czech Jewish Museum. On the inside walls of this Synagogue are written the names of every Czech Jew who died in the Holocaust. Thousands upon thousands of names are inscribed on the walls. Even more fascinating (and just as sad) is the cemetery outside the Synagogue know as the Old Jewish Cemetery. For over 300 years, it was the only burial ground permitted for Jews. Because of lack of space, people had to be buried on top of each other, up to twelve layers deep. You can see over 12,000 gravestones in this very small cemetery, but around 100,000 people are thought to be buried there. We couldn’t take pictures inside the Synagogue, I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the cemetery. Check out my Facebook album to see them.

The last major adventure to report from the Czech Republic was the night we ventured outside of Prague…about 5 hours outside of Prague, to be exact. We crossed most of the country by train and went to a city called Ostrava for a party night. Ostrava is known to be similar to Bourbon Street, with one main drag that is basically solid bars and clubs. Joanne, Alex, and Justin had never been before but had heard reports that it was a crazy good time. Let me just say…not so much. I’m not going to tell you the whole story in writing because it’s a LONG one, but it ended up being a very weird night. Some of you know that I have a tendency to attract weirdos, but it turns out that Joanne’s knack for this is ridiculous. It started on the train out to Ostrava and did not end until we finally got back to Prague at 9:00 a.m. the next day. Add to the weirdos a lot of alcohol; an eerie, almost deserted street of bars and clubs; the coldest weather I ever remember being out in; hours and hours of train delays; and you have the basic ingredients of our night in Ostrava. I was grateful to get out unscathed. All I can say is that it was an adventure that taught me patience and tolerance for discomfort. If you ever want to hear this story, I’ll tell you over drinks when you’ve got quite a lot of time to kill.

Oh! One last thing that I loved about Prague: it had really amazing Mexican food! It was such an unexpected and pleasant surprise. I ended up eating more Mexican food than Czech food, if I’m honest. I’ve missed it soooo much.

Overall, Prague gets an enthusiastic thumbs-up! Ostrava, thumbs-down!

Paris:
My trip to Paris didn’t exactly fall on a half-term break, but when my boyfriend, Aaron, decided he wanted to take me, I suddenly found that I was just not feeling well enough to go to work one Friday in March (*cough cough*) and he and I took a three-day weekend in Paris to help me…uhhhh….recover. Ok, look! Mental health days are completely legitimate reasons for skipping work! Don’t judge me!!

Anyway, I played hookie and we went to Paris for three days. Let me say right away: I love Paris. LOVE IT. Paris has a vibe and an energy to it unlike any other city I’ve ever visited. It’s also breathtakingly beautiful. Yes, it’s cliché, but I really believe that you can’t help but feel romantic in Paris. I know I felt that way, even when I was there in an unromantic capacity. I had been to Paris before about five years ago, but Aaron had never been, so I had the pleasure of imparting some tourist tips to someone else for once! Not that he really needed them. I mean, what tips could I really give him? “Uh, you should go to the Eiffel Tower.” I’m guessing he could have pretty much figured this stuff out on his own. It was lovely, though, to be in such gorgeous place and be able to share it with a boyfriend-type person for once. Usually, I visit these locations on my own, take a self-portrait in front of some historical monument, and move on to my solitary enjoyment of some other beautiful place. Don’t get me wrong; this doesn’t bother me at all. I really love travelling alone most of the time. I generally prefer it. Every now and again though, I have wondered what it would be like to be able to have a romantic dinner in a romantic city, or be kissed on a spectacular bridge, or have my hand held while I wandered through a museum. It was really quite pleasant to get to do all that stuff this time.

We visited the standard Parisian sights: The Louvre, the Arch de Triomphe, Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame, and The Moulin Rouge (which was very near our hotel). We made several trips to the Eiffel Tower, including taking the lift to the top at night and being up there during the hourly light show. We wandered around the fancy Champs Elysees for shopping and had an amazing, fancy dinner there. We took a boat tour down the Seine and met a really helpful and fabulous older French couple who tried very hard to give us tips about the best places in Paris to visit, despite being able to speak a minimal amount of English, and Aaron and I speaking even less French. We also went looking for Jim Morrison’s grave, but nobody seemed to know what we were talking about and we didn’t have internet access to look it up. This two-hour fruitless search ended up with us saying, “Screw it. Let’s go drink some wine instead,” which we did. I guess we’ll have to try to find Jimmy next time. We walked through some gorgeous parks and strolled down Paris’s enchanting avenues and lanes. We ate cheap and delicious Nutella-filled crepes purchased from the street vendors that line every Parisian street. We stood on bridges and looked out at the city. We drank wine. We started conversations with the French just to see if they’d be nice to us. They were. We spent three days thoroughly enjoying ourselves. The weather was cold, but bearable, and being there during an off-peak season made it so much nicer since we didn’t have to deal with millions of tourists. Our hotel - located in the exciting and vivid neighbourhood below Sacre Coeur known as Montmartre - was reasonably priced and quite lovely. I would definitely stay there again. Coincidentally, it was one block away from the hotel where Chrissy and I stayed when we were in Paris five years ago. I actually felt like I knew my way around a little bit!

The one thing about Paris that was NOT enjoyable (and that I don’t remember being this bad the last time I was there) was the absolutely EXORBITANT amount of money it cost to feed ourselves. While the tourist sights in Paris were very reasonably priced (if not free) and accommodation expenditure was perfectly acceptable, the price of food and drink was infuriatingly high. A can of coke, for example, cost an average of 3 Euros…that’s around $4.50. Going out to dinner at a pizzeria one night cost us over $100. I was staggered. Feeding ourselves for three days nearly cost us as much as the rest of the expenses for the trip combined. If you’re going to Paris any time soon, be warned! Unless you’ve saved a fortune, you’ll be living on street-vendor food.

Glasgow:
Easter came, and though I had originally been planning to go to Spain and Portugal for my two-week vacation, I suddenly discovered that I just did NOT have the money for that extravagant of a holiday. For a couple weeks there, it was looking like I was actually going to have to stay in High Wycombe for the whole vacation. But my soul screamed out against the idea, so I knew I had to find a way to travel. The solution came in the form of my Scottish buddy, Dominic. Not only did he generously offer to transport me to Glasgow when he headed back there for Easter, but he arranged two nights lodging for me with his mother, found me cheap and decent hotel accommodation for the other nights, let me hang out with him and his friends for the week, gave me tips about all the best sites, pubs, shopping, and museums, and to top it all off, he spent the first four days of his vacation driving me around to all the places I wanted to see. He was invaluable to me while I was in Glasgow. He’s been a good friend to me since I’ve been in England, and I’m going to miss him very much when he moves to Qatar in August. You know, he could move some place where I want to visit and could actually use him for a place to stay, but I can say with some certainty that I have no plans to visit him in Qatar. Sorry, Dom!!

Scotland is one of my favorite places. In fact, Edinburgh is in my top 3 favorite cities ever. Since going there five years ago, I had always hoped to come back and see more of the countryside and the other cities. I was so pleased to finally get the chance, and what I saw on this trip did a fantastic job of living up to my very high expectations! Glasgow was not at all what I had expected. It was quite a bit larger and much more cosmopolitan. It was much more like a “city” than I had expected, having only been to Edinburgh which is quite historical and lacks the look and feel of a modern city. Glasgow does not. While still being quite beautiful and boasting some noteworthy historical tourist attractions, it is also a bustling metropolis, complete with a subway system. Granted, the subway system only has one line that makes a big loop around the city, but still!

One of the best things about Glasgow and the surrounding area is how many beautiful bodies of water there are. Glasgow and its suburbs are built along the banks of the River Clyde. Perhaps 20 minutes outside of Glasgow is the absolutely breathtaking Loch Lomond, and two or three more lochs are within easy driving distance. In case you don’t know, I should clarify that Loch Ness is nowhere near Glasgow, so going hunting for Nessie was unfortunately not an option. While Loch Lomond is significantly less famous than its fellow Ness, I can’t imagine Loch Ness being any more serene or beautiful than Loch Lomond. I was pleased that Loch Lomond is still relatively unspoilt and natural. I was disappointed at first because at one end of it there is a visitor’s centre, shops and a café, which are all quite tacky, and this happened to be my first view of the Loch. Thankfully though, as we stopped off at other points around it, I saw that it was just that one area that had been built up to support the tourist industry. The rest of the Loch’s shoreline was subtle and uncluttered, allowing lovers of nature like me to imagine that the Loch would have looked very much the same hundreds of years ago. I strolled along the beaches and through the trees at various places around the Loch. Got cold and wet, and didn’t mind at all.

Aside from Loch-walking, the other part of my trip to the Southwest of Scotland that I couldn’t wait for was the historical sights in the area. Stirling, in particular, is chalk-full of fascinating Scottish history. I went to Stirling and toured the castle, which was AMAZING and I loved it. One of my favourite castles ever, actually. I also went to Stirling Bridge to see the place where the great battle between the Scottish and the English took place. The bridge obviously looks a bit different now than it did during Wallace’s time, but it was still pretty cool. I went to Bannockburn, the famous battlefield where the Scots once again kicked the crap out of English. I went to Wallace Monument, which is a humongous tower that sits atop a large precipice a few miles from Stirling Castle. I about died walking up the steep slope to the top of the hill, and (silly me) I wanted to climb to the top of the tower to see the panoramic views of Stirling and the countryside, but I got there right as they were about to close and they wouldn’t let me go up. My lungs were happy about that, in any case.

My final bit Scottish adventure that I’ll tell you about (though it was actually one of the first things I did on the trip) was to go to a real, live European football game. That’s “soccer” to you Americans. The Celtic are one of Glasgow’s two football teams. The Rangers are their arch-rivals. Glasgow is a city divided when it comes to this sport. Half the city worships one team, and despises all the supporters of the other, and visa versa. It’s quite intense. Dom is no exception to this. He is an avid and passionate Celtic fan. When they lose, his day is ruined. We Americans love our sports, but I’ve never seen fanaticism like this. Americans are passive spectators compared to the football fans I’ve seen out here. Of course, I wanted to go and see what all the ruckus was about. Dom leant me some of his precious green and white striped apparel and we went to the game. It was so much fun! The energy and atmosphere were intoxicating. The crowd was such a blast to watch and listen to. They sing! European football fans know tons and tons of…well, I guess you’d call them “fight songs”…that they sing loudly from the stands for almost the entirety of the game. There’s sometimes several different songs coming from different sections of the stands at once, and sometimes, even more spectacularly, the entire stadium will break out into the same lively tune. It appears that everyone knows all these songs! And every team has different songs. It was fascinating. It’s a culture so unfamiliar to me, not being a sports fan, but I really enjoyed partaking in the excitement for the day. Luckily, “our” team won. It made for a pleasant, celebratory rest of the afternoon.

Still to come:
Okay, I’m leaving a few sections out of this blog because it’s been so long since I’ve written that a whole lot has happened. I simply can’t get it all into one blog, and people are rather forcefully requesting that I get something posted. So, the next blog will include: Easter with my boyfriend and his family in his hometown; Liz and Jon’s visit; other local travelling like Oxford and Blenheim Palace; May half-term break road trip with my roommate to the South of England that I mentioned at the beginning of the blog; school updates, and MORE!

Theatre:
Here is a quick review/explanation of each of the shows I’ve seen recently.
Taming of the Shrew: Badass! Performed by The Royal Shakespeare Company. Completely hilarious. Loved it.
A View from the Bridge: Beautifully performed. I sat in the front row and cried my eyes out. Especially moving performance from Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio who was Maid Marian in the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Spring Awakening: Sooooo incredible. One of my favorite shows ever. Loved it so much that I saw it again the very next weekend, and I plan on going to see it again. It’s coming to Denver in December. If you can go, you must.

In other news:
1) After careful consideration, including several “pros and cons” lists, talks with my friends and family, praying, and debating whether or not I will kill my boss if I work for her another year, I have finally come to the decision that I am staying in England for another year. More than anything else, it all came down to the realization that I’m simply not done here yet. My original plan when I came out here was to stay for two years. That still seems like the right amount of time. So, you’ve all still got plenty of time to come visit. Start planning now.
2) I moved. The new house is about ¼ mile down the road from the last one. It happened suddenly and the circumstances sucked. I am very very angry at our former landlady. She’s evil. If you need the new address, just let me know.
3) It was so great to have Liz and Jon out here to visit. In fact, I’d really like it if some more people would get their cabooses to the U.K. I’ve got one more coming as of now. Hooray for Fitz!! Still, there’s plenty of time now for other people to plan their visits as well. Get on it people!
4) I want to take this opportunity to say, “Congratulations Mike and Steph!!” who are getting married this Saturday, June 6th. I am incredibly sad that I won’t be there, but I wish you the very happiest day out of all the days you’ve ever had! I love you both.
5) I’m coming home for Christmas. There. You are now warned in advance. I had better see you. Details later, when I have some.
6) Did I mention that I want visitors? ‘Cause I do.