幾鬼秘的部落格

Every time we go to take a bus, there is always an element of the unknown as we never quite know which platform to wait at until we go to the station and check out the posted schedules on every platform one by one.  There’s probably a more efficient way if we knew how to read the timetables.  Oh well…

While we were waiting, CL noticed that the tripod head plate was missing from her tripod.  I could only assume that I’d lost it while we were out taking photos on the first night.  I felt so bad since she had to carry it for so long and I basically rendered it useless on the first night!

The bus ride to Prague was uneventful.  We arrived at the Roztyly metro station and took the subway for a few stops to I.P. Pavlova, a few hundred meters from our hotel.  As soon as we got out of the metro station, 2 people approached us to ask if we needed help.  We must have looked pretty lost :)  Unfortunately, when we told them the name of the street we were looking for, neither of them knew where it was, even though it was right in front of us as we later found out.

After a much needed lunch break, we walked to Wenceslas Square.  Although called a square, it’s actually a very wide and long boulevard, reminiscent of Paris Champs Elysées, especially considering the many high end overpriced stores that line the street.  From the National Museum at the top of the boulevard we strolled down towards the old town.  Before we got there we stopped by Havel’s Market.  We arrived at the Old Town Square at around 5:30pm, and it was already dark.  We continued on to Charles Bridge for a few photos before returning.  As all the attractions were closed, we spent the rest of the evening window shopping.

I’d originally planned for us to visit the C.K. castle on the first day.  I didn’t write down the reason, and now having deviated from my plan, I realized that it’s because the castle is closed on Mondays :(  So this morning we spent time exploring the castle grounds and walking around its garden.  But all was not lost as CF noticed people up in the castle tower.  It was indeed open so we all went up for some nice views of the town, as well as the bears in the bear moat.

Before splitting for the afternoon, we visited St. Vitus - it was a forgettable visit.  While BH and CF stayed in C.K. for some shopping, CL and I took the bus to Český Budějovice, famous for the largest square in Central Europe, as well as its Budweiser brewery.  It’s a big city and we needed a map to navigate to its various sights.  On the way to the town square we stopped at a local supermarket to find all kinds of unexpected things - tea leaves by the entrance; a jewelry/watch area right beside a bookstore; pharmacy; TVs and fridges surrounding mini stoves.

After stopping for lunch, we arrived at the huge town square under the sunniest sky.  I wanted to go up the Black Tower, but as with most of the country’s attractions, it’s closed on Mondays.  We spent the afternoon walking around town, window shopping and visiting a few churches.

Back in C.K., we met up with BH and CF for dinner.  Tonight we finally got to dine at this popular restaurant which was full the previous two nights when we tried to get in.  Last night, we finally made a reservation for tonight.  Just after we walked in, a group of French tourists, which must have numbered at least 20 if not more, followed us and went down to the basement.  The restaurant features an open fire grill where your food is cooked right in front of you.  We had a filling meal and ended our night early to pack for our "move" to Prague the next day.

Last night we were debating what to do for today.  Should we wake up early and head to Ťreboň for a daytrip, so that we maybe able to add Český Budějovice as an extra destination if we come back early?  Or should we sleep in a little, walk around town in the morning, and make our day trip in the afternoon?  We decided on the latter and agreed to meet for breakfast @9am.

When we went down for breakfast I was a little surprised that we were the first ones there as breakfast was supposed to start @8.  Around 10am we arrived at the tourist info center to confirm our bus schedules.  But for some reason the place wasn’t open even though it’s supposed to open @9.  We didn’t think much of this until we went to the bus station to wait for our 12:00 bus.  We were at the station before noon, along with 3 other people who were also waiting for the same bus.  I had such low expectation of the buses’ punctuality that even after one hour of waiting, I still didn’t clue in as to what was wrong.  It was only after BH mentioned that it was already past the time of the next scheduled departure that we started to really complain.  Two of the other persons were also discussing this and not long after, one of them opened up his cell phone and mentioned daylight saving time!  I couldn’t believe it!  I’d known about this even before we left for the trip and was so happy that we’d be gaining an hour to do more sightseeing.  But on this day it the topic didn’t even cross my mind!  Now all the questions of timing from this morning were answered :)  I felt so cheated and stupid.  Arrrggghh.

We changed bus at Český Budějovice and arrived at Ťreboň before 2pm.   I could see Ťreboň’s town square being pretty if there were people in it!  On this day the square was completely dead and quiet.  After checking out some shops we decided to try and go up the town hall tower, even though it’s supposed to have unpredictable opening hours in low season according to my guidebook.  On the second floor we saw an old lady who was trying to tell us something, that the tower was closed, most probably.  That was what we assumed but when we walked down, she followed us out to the square and showed us a door.  I think she originally wanted to tell us to check the entrance by the square but that it’d probably be closed.

After making a quick stop for food, we went to the town’s "castle" which could easily be missed as it was hardly visible from the town square.  And even if it were, it looks nothing like a castle.  As with many castles in the country, one is required to join a guided tour to visit the interior.  There are 3 tours posted on a board, each with 3 photos.  I thought that they were just showing examples of what we would be seeing.  But as we later sadly found out, the tour really consists of only 3 rooms in the castle!  It was a tour in Czech; we were handed out English information sheets.  Our guide was so talkative that we quickly became bored when we were in the second room.  It didn’t help that the descriptions of the rooms on our info sheets didn’t match what we were seeing!  When we were in the last room it was simply becoming unbearable (don’t miss BH sleeping while standing in this room in my photo album).  And just when we thought this would be the last room, the guide went back into the second room to talk some more!!!

The only silver lining was that while we were inside touring the castle, it rained outside.  So at least we didn’t "waste" any good weather.  We thought about having dinner in this town before going back to C.K., but we didn’t have enough time (and we couldn’t find anything with an English menu).  We took a leisurely stroll around some back streets before heading back.

We arrived at the Prague airport early in the morning.  While we were waiting for our luggage I walked around to check out the exchange rates.  I usually get local money from ATMs or use credit cards on trips, but this time my dad gave me a large amount of USDs left over from our cruise last week, and CL also brought some CDN money.  I was this close to changing my USDs at the airport before CL convinced me that airports generally have unfavorable rates.

We took a taxi for 500Kc (~25CDN) to go to the bus station to catch the 10:00am bus to Český Krumlov.  Taking a bus + subway would’ve been cutting it too close as it was already after 8am, although it would be much cheaper.  We called this a luxury tour as I’ve never taken a taxi in all my previous trips to Europe

When the taxi driver dropped us off, we were kind of worried as the place looked nothing like a bus station.  We went down to the metro station at the spot and came back out following the "bus stop" sign.  We were heading where the crowd was and finally found the ticket counter.  I also exchanged my USDs nearby, at a better rate than at the airport.

As we were killing the one hour we have wandering the local "market", I realized that we could’ve got on the 9am bus.  It never occurred to me that we could be at the station so early.  But then we wouldn’t have been able to get a reserved seat - I don’t think standing for 3 hours in a bus would be acceptable to my friends The local "market" is small and is run exclusively by asians.  I later read in my guidebook that Vietnamese is actually the largest minority living in Czech.  Quite an unexpected fact.

As we waited for our bus at the station, a few pairs of fighter jets blew by us overhead.  By the time I decided to get my camera out, they stopped coming

It was all chaos when the bus finally pulled up.  You could see that everyone who actually lined up was a foreigner.  Luckily it didn’t matter to us since we have reserved seats.  The rest of them couldn’t bother with the lineup since they didn’t want to stand for a long bus ride, or worse wait for the next one if this one became full.

There was a disproportionately large number of Asians on the bus.  And as we would later find out, they were all headed to Český Krumlov like we were.  Of the four of us, I was the only one who was wide awake, camera in hand, snapping away at anything that looked remotely interesting.  The rest of them was dozing off for the better part of the ride.

In 3 hours time we arrived at our destination.  From the bus station one could see the beautiful castle and that was where we would head for as our hotel is right at the base of it.  To get there we had to walk through the old town.  We were all taking photos along the way to take advantage of the good weather.  We took a quick break at the hotel to drop off our bags before heading out again.  Since we were all tired we decided to take it easy and just walk around the old town for the rest of the day.

It was work until the last minute today as I was in quite a hurry to meet up with CL, BH and CF at the airport for our trip to the Czech Republic.  Compared to my previous backpacking trips I feel totally unprepared for this one.  I did the itinerary planning more than a month ago and only had time to review it the last couple of days.  I was still looking up the weather, and bus and train schedules late last night. A last minute check of the weather forecast revealed unexpectedly low temperatures for the latter part of our trip, with temperatures hovering around the freezing point.  I immediately packed a couple of turtlenecks and long johns in my bag. I never had a chance to listen to any of the Czech language audio CDs that I borrowed from the library.  It’s kind of scary when you know that not many locals will speak English, and that the Czech language doesn’t resemble any other language that you know!

Even though I only slept a few hours last night, I could not sleep much on the plane as it was pretty cramped for space.  I must be getting old as I used to be able to sleep under the most uncomfortable settings.

On the last day of any trip, I’m always torn between wanting to go home to look through all my photos and not wanting to return to my daily life (ie. work )  This is no different.  I had my doubts about going on a cruise, like I did about resort vacations 2 years ago.  But this turned out to be more fun than I expected, even though it could’ve been even better with more people.  The food is quite good in general, the soups and desserts in particular are exceptionally delicious.  The nightly productions are huge and of high quality.  There’s so much to do and everything is generally available with no lineups (the FlowRider being the only exception).  If I were into gambling and shopping, I wouldn’t know how to divide my time!  I definitely wouldn’t rule out cruise vacations in the future.

There is no more port of call as our ship is heading back to Miami.  So I finally have some free time to try out the FlowRider again.  I went early, soon after it’s open around 8 and there was virtually no lineup.  At 10 am, all four of us went to the towel folding class to see how they make all those cute animals that are in our stateroom every night.  After lunch we went to deck 11 to watch an ice sculptor turn a plain block of ice into a mermaid in a matter of minutes!  I tried to go back to the FlowRider again but the lineup has become just too long.  So instead I filled my afternoon with rock climbing, pool volleyball and ice skating.

In the evening my sister and I went to a trivia pursuit game and did respectably, although we didn’t win anything.  Right after we headed to the last show of the week, a magic show.  My parents were very impressed by the show.  I thought it was good, but not perfect.  It was probably a mistake for them to tape the show and have the live feed blown up for everyone to see in the theatre as I could clearly see the magician "working" his hands at times.

My sister and I ended the night with another game - Family Feud.  We didn’t do very well but still came away with a lanyard/keychain for prizes.

This morning I woke up early and got out with my mom to see the sunrise.  The sky was relatively clear, with a few clouds.  I took a few good photos. But since we’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s really no real subject to focus on, except for the sun itself.

Today’s port of call is Labadee, a private part of Haiti owned by Royal Caribbean.  Most of the offered "excursions" are water activities, so we decided to just chill on the beach.  The first place we visited in Labadee was Dragon’s Rock.  Due to the peculiar formation of the rock cavities, the crashing waves against the rock create sounds like a dragon’s breaths.  It is really quite awesome how "real" it sounds.  Too bad I forgot to take a video clip.

We went to the local artisan’s market for a quick round of "window" shopping before having lunch.  Afterwards, my parents slept on the beach while I went swimming.  My sister and I headed back to the ship early to join the Friends trivia game.  And we actually won by answering only 11 out of 20 questions, beating the 2nd team by one point!  We picked a couple of Royal Caribbean hats as prizes.

As our ship left the Labadee port, the sky became very gloomy and one could see clouds and rain completely covering the island.

Tonight’s show was a standup comedy, so of course my parents didn’t go.  Instead they waited for the Culinary Gala Sensation which took place near midnight!  Rows and rows of desserts were presented along with ice sculptures and fruit carvings, first for viewing, then for dining one hour after.  I’ve never had to line up for so long to LOOK at food!  My sister and I decided to grab our late night "snacks" and have them in our stateroom.  But before I could finish my plate, my parents walked in with 2 more plates!  We couldn’t finish everything and had to leave one plate for breakfast

Today’s port of call is Montego Bay, Jamaica.  We signed up for another bus tour.  We were driven up some pretty narrow roads up a mountain to our first stop, a banana plantation.  After being shown various fruits besides bananas, a coconut tree climbing demonstration was given, followed by sampling of some coconuts and their juice.  The next stop was a bird sanctuary, which could’ve been very interesting if the birds actually showed up.  A hummingbird did show up after a long wait.  It was pretty cool to see a bird "hang" stably in the air up close.  The last stop was pretty lame, a visit to see a big waterwheel at the base of an aquaduct.

Tonight’s show was another large production, Once Upon a Time, a comedy musical.  It’s based on many classic fairy tale favourites, such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Pinnochio, etc.  I must say that the quality of the entertainment so far has been over my expectation.

Today’s excursion is a lot more exciting than yesterday’s.  First we visited the town of Hell, which actually is more famous for its name than its limestone rock formation IMO.  This was followed by a visit to a turtle farm, which is a lot bigger than the one I visited in Cancun.  We got to pick up some huge turtles.  I was surprised that they didn’t resist by madly flapping their feet.

The highlight of the day has to be Stingray City.  I could see the stingrays under the clear water even before our boat was anchored.  I did try to feed them squids but quit after one stingray tried to suck more than the food out of my hand :)  They are really strong as I was easily pushed around by a swamp of them charging at me at the same time.  The stinger and spine are very rough to the touch - every time one swam by my feet I’d think that it’d scraped them.

We took a quick walk around downtown after the excursion, before heading back to the ship.  At night we went to the only ticketed show of the cruise, an ice show.  The skaters were quite impressive.  I didn’t think they could do much on that little skating rink.  But they did all kinds of jumps during the show.  The most impressive act has to be one with the hula hoops.  Keeping tens of them up at the same time must be tough enough, and to do that while skating seems impossible.