Brussels Trip Day 1

I arrived in Brussels in the morning and as it was a fairly long 'overnight' flight from Dallas, I needed to take a nap before setting out for my photoshoot. Fortunately during my rather long layover in Chicago a few days earlier I managed to pick-up a guide-book for the region and actually read the book prior to coming over, so I felt fairly well prepared for the next four-days before my next flight out.

After my nap, I headed out to look for the Centre Belge de la Banda Dessinee (Belgian Centre for Comic Strip Art). Apparently there are huge strret-art comic strips painted on the sides of buildings around the city. I didn't have time to go hunt them down but as I'm sure to go back to Brussels soon I decided to leave it to my next visit. You can see one of the examples in the pictures accompanying this post.

I was hoping for good weather and I did get my wish... in spurts... There were times during the afternoon when i thought the photoshoot would come to a premature end but fortunately there were enough windows of sunlight to allow me a pleasant afternoon. I decided to visit Parc de Bruxelles, the nearest 'big' park to my hotel and wasn't disappointed. Surrounding the gardens were the Royal Palace and some nice churches, as you can also see from the photos.

Unfortunately the fine weather didn't last forever and I packed it in when the rain started to fall heavily, returning to the hotel and hoping for better weather the following day...

What's Next??

If you're wondering what else is around the corner, picture wise, I've just finished editing some pictures taken locally which are posted on my Flickr site and am about to start on my Brussels and Chicago pictures. Stay tuned to this blog for more updates. In the meantime... here's a quick preview...

Cheers.

End of the Road

New Town at night
Originally uploaded by M@cAlfie.

Well... that brings me to the end of the Prague Diary. I hope you enjoyed my narration of some of the more interesting things that happened and also all the photos that helped tell the story. We definitely had a good time and a sense of sadness overcame us as we started packing and getting ready for the trip to the airport on the last morning. There was a little excitement remaining though.. someone, who shall remain nameless, forgot to inform the owner of the apartment that we wanted a later check-out so when we came back from a long breakfast, we were surprised to find that the cleaner had already started preparing the apartment for the next occupants and wasn't too pleased that we hadn't left yet.
About the photo... well, its one of the last shots taken as we made our way back to the apartment after our dinner on the last night. Quite a fitting picture as it was taken on our last walk through Charles Bridge and its a shot of a path we walked along quite often as we used to take the tram to the National Theatre to start many days journeys.

Prague Diary Day 7 & 8

Church of St. Barbara, Kutna Hora
Originally uploaded by M@cAlfie.

On day 7, we went on our second excursion. This time we decided on a ‘guided’ tour to a nearby ex-mining town called Kutna Hora. The tour started-out fairly strangely as we had to shuttle around the city to the various pick-up locations before finally changing buses just outside the city. To cut a very long-winded story short, the excursion was a disappointment… probably the only one of the entire holiday as the running commentary was almost non-existent and when the guide did try to explain things it was all garbled. The tour through the town was also very rushed (as can be expected) and because of an added stop at the ‘Bone House’ everything was cut short. Adding insult to injury, the trip back into Prague was also a disaster as we got stuck in a massive jam just outside the city. All I can say is that at the end of the trip we were both happy to get off the bus!

Day 8 was the final shopping day and we only had two big events planned, both in the evening. The first was a concert in St. Georges Church within the compound of Prague Castle and the second was a dinner at a theme restaurant. The concert was very nice and we suspect that it was being used as a warm-up session for the upcoming concert season in Prague. The dinner was held in a Medieval-style setting. Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures to show as the lighting wasn’t conducive and we were also more intent on focusing on the food and atmosphere. We did however take the opportunity, between the two events to take pictures of the city as seen from the castle grounds.

Prague Diary Day 6

Day 6 marked the first of 2 days of excursions outside Prague. Today's trip was to Olomouc.. A small but quaint town near the south-eastern border of the Czech Republic. There were 2 options to get there.. Train or bus... We decided bus as it was supposedly more scenic. Wasn't too bad a choice in the end as we passed through a few of the major towns, including Brno.

So what's in Olomouc? Well, as the picture shows.. fountains. Six to be exact, all with interesting histories which you should be able to read if you access the exif data of the photos in my Flickr site. In addition, not pictured in this blog post is the Holy Trinity monument which was added to the UNESCO list of world heritage sites in 2001.

We also arrived in the city on a day when a group of European students were holding a 'Cultural Day' in the town square. Another thing we realised was that outside of the major cities, not many locals spoke English so getting from the bus station to the city centre was also an exciting event. Fortunately we found a guy in a bar near the station who spoke sufficient English to point us in the correct direction.

Hope you enjoy the pictures of our visit to Olomouc.