Category: My blog
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Almaty wanderings
Executive summary (Charlie, please let me know when I can stop doing this.): As professional sightseers we are rubbish;Almaty is a young, cool city; not being able to read or write the lingo means we get surprising food; Kazakhstan is the world’s largest manufacturer of shoe horns. (Probably) In the grand scheme of things, today…
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Almaty Arrival/ Butakovskiy Waterfall
Executive summary: Yandex rules, we are living in Fort Knox but the surrounding area is great, the waterfalls are average but we love the people, go out to eat before you are really hungry, chocolate is very nice. After a chilly morning in Nur Sultan searching for a local sim (surprisingly difficult to come by)…
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The Silk Road. (Some of it anyway)
Astana or Nur Sultan. It’s all the same Inspired by TV programmes showing the various countries that make up the Silk Road, a trip to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan to see the highlights seemed like a good idea. We’ve had to plan everything in advance this time rather than our usual bumbling about as transportation…
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Gummersbach/Home
We’re on the home stretch now. We stopped in Gummersbach overnight as it was just over half way between Dresden and Calais. Pleasant little place with a lake. The hotel we stayed in suggested a Croatian restaurant down the road which turned out to be a complete meat fest. A slightly strange and melancholy meal.…
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Dresden
The weather was a bit of a surprise when we arrived here yesterday. I had to wear jeans and a fleece and I was still cold! Prepared for similar conditions today, I sweltered in jeans, what is happening to the world? Despite the strange weather, Dresden gets a big thumbs up from me. It’s had…
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Sky Bar/Spindleruv Mlyn
The Sky Bar at the Hotel Horizont proved to be a real treat. High up on the 18th floor, it had a comfortable, retro yet communist feel of the 1980’s, before the Velvet Revolution. I could picture communist bigwigs relaxing on the huge leather seats, drinking their choice of destilat. We also relaxed on the…
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Walk to Snezka, Czechia’s highest mountain
It’s our 35th wedding anniversary today and we laid in bed until 11am, sipping champagne and giving each other expensive gifts. Yeah right. I got the very bent card I had packed before we came and hurriedly wrote it out. Obviously Steve hadn’t gone to such trouble but did appreciate the sentiment on the front…
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Hubraskala /Pec pod snezkou
Google said our drive to PPS was going to be around 2.5 hours so we decided to stop off at Hubra Skala where there are some interesting rock formations. It was a warm day and combined with the holiday weekend , HS was somewhat busy. Nice to see families out and about though. The rocks…
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Prague/Praha
Box ticked. Done. We won’t be back. Sorry if that sounds harsh but Prague did not float my boat. The crowds made Cesky Krumlov look deserted. People seemed to be in some sort of zombie trance, anything seemed worthy of staring at even if it was someone blowing bubbles. The architecture is interesting but it’s…
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Karlstejn Castle and Dobrichovice
Firstly I must apologise for calling our lovely host in Cesky Krumlov Steven. His name is Petr. No idea where I got that from. In order to make amends, I am posting pictures of his beautiful breakfasts that he delivers to his guests. Today we headed off to Dobrichovice, a very small town about 40minutes…
Middle-aged flash packers 