Vacation: July 18th Part 1

This day was bittersweet. Just after lunch time we had to say good-bye to Cindy, Jirka, & Jakub. Because of the difficulties we had flying to Paris, we missed out on the day of exploring Prague. Cindy said we couldn't come to the Czech Republic & not see Prague... even if that meant leaving them a day earlier than planned. So Cindy found us a hotel on the internet & Jirka called & booked a room for us at the The Hotel Beranek. And by the way, if you're ever in Prague, I'd recommend the hotel. It was recently remodeled, has air conditioning, is close to a subway station, & just a few subway stops away from all the tourist areas. Here's Cindy, Jirka, & Jakub. And if you've been wondering, Jirka is pronounced more like "year-ka" not "jerk-a" & Jakub like "yeah-coo-b" not "jay-cub". Or at least they weren't correcting me from saying it like that. Actually Jakub was called Cuba ("coo-ba") most of the time.Here's the bus station in Prague & the yellow bus was the one we were on. I was very impressed with the bus company that Cindy recommended. We got a movie & a couple of episodes of Friends. Unfortunately we spent most of the trip trying to unlock the lock on Trina's backpack. She had a combination lock & apparently what she thought she set as the combination was not the combination. Finally I was able to muscled the lock enough to slip it off. Getting to the hotel from the bus station was very easy, we just went around the corner, bought a 24hour pass for the subway & took the subway 3 stops (didn't even have to change trains). Once we got checked in, we took off for Staromestske Namesti (the old town square). The subways in Prague were very easy to use... even with the language barriers. We actually took the subway to Vaclavske Namesti (Wenceslas Square - a very important place in the end of communism) & walked over to the old town square. We were walking down a narrow street from Wenceslas Square... just following all the other tourist when suddenly the street opened up to this scene... the old town square. Breathtaking! The Astronomical Clock in the square. There's quite a show at the top of the hour. We actually had a very late dinner at an outdoor cafe in front of this around 10pm. Very cool.
This was my favorite building of the entire trip. I somehow took about a dozen pictures of it. I later learned that it's called Dum u Minuty ("the house at the minutes").
You can't really tell, but that's me in the pink shirt. The Astronomical Clock in on the left, The Church of Our Lady Before Tyn is behind me, and the cafe we ate at is behind all the people on the right.
Jan Hus Memorial. Hus was apparently burned at the stake for calling for Church reform - of course all I really knew at the time was "oh pretty statue must take photo." It stands right in the middle of the square. The little red things are bicycle taxis. Maybe I'll try one on my next trip to Prague. And I do plan to take another trip. There was so much in this city that I didn't have a chance to see.
Another view of the square. The Jan Hus Memorial is at the right. And pretty buildings all around. I would've loved to just spent a day exploring this area. But unfortunately there was much more to see.
And here's Trina taking a photo. If I had to guess it was probably the Jan Huss Memorial.

I have so many pictures that I'm dividing this day into 2 parts... not to mention the photos I have of Prague for the 19th. Stay tuned for photos of Karluv Most & Prazsky Hrad.

Chickidee Randomness

To get a few more posts on here, I've decided to post my "random thoughts of the day". I hope it will be at least a semi-regular occurrence.

• Does anyone else confuse Jack White & Jack Black? I'm constantly using the wrong name. So just to help. Jack White: strange pale musician. Jack Black: strange funny actor. Maybe I'd do better at keeping them straight if they both weren't so strange.

• The coolest video I've seen recently... OK Go's "Here It Goes Again". The Gnarls Barkley video for "Crazy" is the second coolest video. I was a bit disappointed the other night when I surfed by MTV's Music Video Awards & saw that OK Go was recreating the video... and therefore completely lip-synching. I hate lip-synching!

UT Football

Let me just say, I refused to drink the orange kool-aid this off season. Why get your hopes up only to be dashed again by another terrible season? But I must admit Tennessee looked really good today... especially the defense. I'm not ready to say the season's going to be wonderful just yet. Cal may have just been extremely over-rated. Now we'll just have to wait a couple of weeks for the next big test.

TV ramblings

Wow, 20/20 is having a really happy fun show tonight. What's the topic, you ask? Oh only various ways that the world may end. You know, super volcanos, black holes... why am I watching this?

I can't believe it. ABC is moving one of my favorite shows - Grey's Anatomy to the exact same day & time as one of my other favorite shows - CSI. Do these people just want to torture me? Then again, I'll be spending a lot of my Thursday nights over the next few months down at the GEC watching hockey. So no need to worry.

Rock Star: Supernova. Well I was wrong. They sent Ryan home tonight... the guy that I had decided had displaced one of the other singers in the top 3. It's down to the final 5 & I really don't know who they're going to send home next. By this point in the INXS show last summer I had already picked out the final 2... & ended up being correct. I just can't decide with these guys.

(I love the blogger spell check... who would ever want to replace volcanos with folksongs?)

It's Football Time in Tennessee!

I've often heard that here in Tennessee the 4 seasons of the year should be called winter, spring, summer, & football. I however believe there are only 3 seasons: football season, post football season, and pre football season.

Football season begins with the first football game played of the season... high school, college, or pro. During football season nothing else exists. Local TV sports coverage begins & ends with football. ESPN is either showing a game, analyzing last weeks games, or breaking down next weeks games. The sports section of the newspaper consists of 11 pages of football with everything else squeezed onto the one remaining page. And unless something earthshattering happens, the big photo above the fold on the front page of the entire paper on Sunday morning will be a shot of the hero or goat of the UT vs. whoever game.

Post football season begins 10 seconds after the end of the last game of the season. This is a time of navel gazing. It's a time to decide what went right & what went wrong. The fans call into the sports talk radio shows to whine & complain about the coaches & players. Or on that rare instance, there's a lot of celebration. Occasionally you can find someone willing to talk about basketball & hockey during this time of year. Only 5 pages are devoted to football in the sports section with all the other sports sharing 3 pages (& notice the sports section often shrinks during this time of the year).

Pre football season begins on signing day for college football & on draft day for the NFL (I'm a little more uncertain when it begins for high school). This is the time all the fans stop whining about the last season & start dreaming about the next. It's the time of year that everyone's drinking the "kool aid". Everyone's going to go undefeated because their team signed or drafted the one missing piece to make their team the champion.

Well it's that time... football season. High school started a couple of weeks ago. College starts next weekend & then the NFL the following weekend. Let's hope it's better than last year. But if it's not (& I have my doubts especially with the Titans), I still have pre season hockey starting in about a month.

Vacation: July 17th

On Monday Cindy, Jirka, Jakub, Trina, & I hopped onto one of the city trams & traveled into the city center of Brno. They got us as far as the tourist information center when Jakub decided that he had had enough of all the traveling & site seeing that he had been doing the past few days. So after pointing out a few points of interest on the map, Trina & I were left to discover the city center all alone. Don't worry we were very brave big girls... and Trina's great sense of direction was very helpful. Cindy made sure to point us toward a yummy pizza place for lunch. When I asked the waiter if he spoke English, he asked me if I spoke German. So I ended up using the little German I remember along with pointing at the menu to place our order. After seeing some wonderful sites, we safely made it back to Cindy's where Jirka finally got to pull out his new toy to grill some chicken for dinner.

A view down a street in Brno.

Mahen Theatre. This was our starting point into the city center. I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the trams that took us into town. I just read that this was the first theater in Europe to use Edison's light bulbs.

Namesti Svobody (Freedom Square). This is the main city square... and wouldn't you know it... there's construction going on. It's just one more reason why I know I have to visit Cindy again.

Another photo of the city square. I noticed that the buildings in the Czech Republic seemed to be very old or very modern. Notice the buildings on each side of the white building.

Petrov (Cathedral of St. Peter & Paul). This was an absolutely beautiful cathedral. We went inside & just sat for a few minutes. Once again we weren't allowed to take photos of the interior but I will say it was stunning & awe inspiring.

Even Lady Luck loved the Cathedral

An up close photo above the main entrance into the cathedral.

Surprise, that's Trina taking more pictures of the cathedral. Here camera's battery died shortly after this & she took over taking pictures with my camera.

The pink building is the Capuchin church & crypt. If we had been feeling a bit more morbid, we could have gone in to see the bones.

I thought this was funny. I just can't escape country music?!

The entrance to the Old Town Hall. The tourist information center is found here along with....

The famous Brno Dragon and wheel. I realize that the dragon looks a lot like an alligator... go here for the story of the Dragon. And here for the story of the wheel. They are both entertaining

And I had to share this one. This little boy was just too adorable. But it just shows you that kids are the same all around the world... when you start to let them dress themselves you never know what will happen.

For the science geeks out there, I forgot to mention that on Sunday we drove by the actual gardens in Brno where Gregor Mendel did his genetic experiments with pea pods. You can go here to see some photos. This is a great site for general info of Brno... and there's a web cam too.

My new obsession

When I was at Cindy & Jirka's, we made sandwiches one day. I don't know if it was a joke or not but Jirka suggested Cindy put out some Thai sweet chili sauce along with the mustard & mayonnaise. Trina & I didn't exactly know what it was but all Jirka had to say was it was spicy... and well... we are our mother's daughters after all. So of course we had to take the challenge & put some on a sandwich. And it was yummy! A little bit spicy & a little bit sweet. It was perfect on a turkey sandwich.

I found some at Kroger last week & am now obsessed with trying it out on everything. I love it on sandwiches, salads, crackers, Thai food (ok so it was a frozen meal). I'm trying to think of what I'm going to try it on next...

Vacation: July 16th

Let's try this again. On Sunday, Cindy & Jirka took us to Lednice... a beautiful chateau near the Austria boarder. This one quickly became Trina's favorite of the 2 castles we visited in the Czech Republic. I'm still hanging on to Pernstejn as my favorite. But I will agree that the inside (which we unfortunately couldn't take any photo's of) were beautiful. The staircases in particular were amazing. Try this link to see some photo's of the staircases. A view of the chateau from the gardens. A view of Lednice. I think this was the middle part of the chateau.
A different view of the chateau. This was the start of the tour we took. And once again we got to carry around scripts. You know, you get some strange looks when you have them.
Just to prove I was really there. Here I am in front of the stables. Yes I said stables. There were some lucky horses that got to live in this place. And just to keep up with the construction trend of our trip... it appeared that they were beginning to renovate the stables.
An upclose pic of the stables. I was just drawn to it... can't explain why. The required photo of Trina taking a picture... this time of me! Jirka's in the background on the phone with Cindy. Cindy was hiding out somewhere in the gardens taking care of Jakub.
A view of the gardens.
Lednice has a huge greenhouse. Yes those are full size palm trees. I started to guess how big it was but decided to look in a book I bought. It's 92 meters long, 13 meters wide & 10 meters high. Let's see, in feet, that's um... 100 yards long, 14 yards wide & 11 yards high. You know I did think it was about as long as a football field.
I took a lot of pictures of flowers because I know how much mom loves flowers. This was one of my favorite flowers in the entire greenhouse. Can anyone tell me what it is?
And one of the strangest flowers I've ever seen in my life. I'm including the photo with Lady Luck so you can tell just how large it is as well as to have the required photo of Lady Luck.

Rock Star: Supernova

They finally came to their senses last night. Zayra was voted into the final 3 & after she sung a song no one had heard, she was voted off!

I think Patrice will be next. She's a really good singer but she has a bit of a Ani DiFranco vibe which I don't really think meshes well with the Supernova vibe. So that combined with the fact that she's been in the bottom 3 several times means that she's gone.

After that, I think there's a shift in the top 3... Ryan's in & Lukas is out. In the end I think it's Dilana's to lose.

(And how in the world does this spell check not know the word "vibe"??)

argh!!!

I just spent an hour working on a vacation post. I click on the publish post button & suddenly it can't find the blog????? WHAT!? Sorry, but I'm giving up for the night. I'll try to get it posted tomorrow.

By the way, I think it's funny that the spell check in blogger doesn't recognize blog as a word:o

Rock Star: Supernova

I missed several shows while I was on my trip so I'm just now getting a good feel for the show. And all I really want to know is who are these idiots who keep voting for Zayra??? She's not terrible but there's nothing that really stands out about her voice... especially when there are some really great & unique voices on the show. And don't even get me started on her outfits.

Tonight was another elimination show. Lowest 3 vote-getters have to sing a song of their choice & then the band decides which one to send home. Last night I decided that I would rank the 10 singers in order of how I thought they did. Only 1 of my bottom 3 matched the actual bottom 3. Strangely enough, the band decided to send 2 people home this week. The one that got to stay was the one that I had in the bottom 3.

As much as I like some of the singers (& the 2 that were sent home), I don't really think some of them are right to front a band that has Tommy Lee as the drummer. Right now I'd have to say it's a 3 person race: Dilana, Toby, & Magni. That is unless the idiots keep voting for Zayra...

Vacation: July 15th

Well after Jirka tracked down my luggage, we were off for our first sightseeing trip. We visited Perstejn Castle & I completely fell in love! This is the type of castle that I always think of when I read Hamlet... or fairy tales. Ok, so I haven't read Hamlet since college but it's still what I would imagine. This is the area where we started a tour of the interior of the castle. For some reason they don't get a lot of English speaking visitors so we were given scripts of what we seeing in each room & followed a Czech speaking tour. The only problem was that my script didn't match Trina's but we were smart enough to realize which was correct.
A few years ago when Trina went to Peru on a mission trip, the gnome travelocity commercials were just starting. I thought it would be fun for her to take pictures in the same way only she was very limited on her packing space so I bought her a lady bug PEZ dispenser. We call her Lady Luck. I have several pictures of her enjoying the sights.
This is the other trend of photos I have... photos of Trina taking pictures or maybe video. You never know with her.


The gates going into the castle. The scaffoling you see at the upper left of the picture is from repair work they are currently doing because of a fire last year. It also was the beginning of trend we encountered all throughout our vacation.
This is inside a little chapel on the castle grounds... and the only interior place we could take pictures.

After leaving Pernstejn, Cindy & Jirka tried & tried to think of a restaurant in Brno that served traditional Czech food... we ended up having Italian. But it was wonderful.

Vacation: July 13th & 14th

If I were superstitious, I would have to say that it's unlucky to travel on the 13th. I'll just say, if something has to go wrong, it's good to get out of the way early. And that's exactly what happened.

It's amazing to think how much chaos a single person can cause. Our flight from Nashville to Cincinnati was already a bit late pulling away from the gate and one man had to create a scene with the flight attendant. Just a warning... don't do this... especially when the flight attendant doesn't seem to be in a good mood. Suddenly we were going back to the gate & the man was escorted off the plane by 3 police officers. And then to make sure we were good & late, all the paperwork had to be filled out right then & there. I knew right away that this was not a good thing. We only had an hour lay over in Cincinnati . This little incident put our flight 1 hour & 7 minutes late. I know that because when we landed, I booked it off the plane to talk with the airline who told me that the flight we were suppose to be on left 7 minutes before I called. When I was told that they had re-booked me for the same flight the next day, my look must have made the woman I was talking to think twice because she quickly started to look for alternatives.

We got lucky, she was able to get us on a flight to Paris at 7PM (the original flight was suppose to leave at 4:30). Unfortunately, it meant that we would have nearly a 4 hour layover in Paris. She even did something very nice in the process which I didn't really realize until we got on the plane. She gave one of us a window seat & the other an aisle seat which meant we had a empty seat in between us. The flight was uneventful except I couldn't sleep... at all. I even took the bendryll. It didn't help.

I will just say, NEVER book a trip going through Paris. It may not be so bad if Paris is the final destination but a lay-over is not recommended in that airport. It was all very strange, the plane didn't go to a gate. We were met by a bus that took us to a gate. The driver of that bus knew 2 speeds... fast & stop. And I should mention that seats were very limited, most of us were standing & since our bodies thought it was the middle of the night, we weren't too coordinated. Once we arrived at this gate, we were told to go to a certain area... where we were put on another bus to get to another part of the airport. Guess what? This bus driver apparently went to the same driving school. We get there only to find out that we are much to early to have a gate assigned. So we went looking for a place to sit only to discover there are no places to sit. All the places to sit are at the individual gates & you have to have a ticket to the flight boarding at that gate to sit there. And as you know, we were too early to have a gate assigned. We finally bought something to eat & just sat down beside a staircase. Yes, we got a few stares but that point, I don't think either of us cared.

Finally we were able to get out of there, & yes, we had to take one more bus to our plane. We decided that we just wanted to get on to Brno when we arrived in Prague. The original plan had us sightseeing in Prague all day. So with an uneventful flight, we arrive in Prague. We go to wait for our luggage... and wait... and wait.... and wait, until we finally realize that no more luggage was coming out. Trina had her suitcase but me & about 7-8 other people were missing luggage. I was told at lost luggage that my bag didn't make it on in Paris & was being put on the next flight out. I still don't know how something sitting in the airport for 4 hours doesn't make it?? When I told him that we were going on to Brno he said they could get it on a late night flight to Brno so we didn't have to stay in Prague.

Thankfully, the rest of the day was uneventful. Cindy had given us wonderful directions to the bus station & everyone we had to talk to very quickly switched to English for us. I was reminded of middle Tennessee on the ride from Prague to Brno. We finally got to Cindy's around 11PM. Cindy had thought of everything. They put a mini fridge in the bedroom with lots of drinks & snacks just in case we got hungry in the middle of the night. Then for the first time in what felt like forever, we slept.

I'm Home!!!

Ok... so I've been home since Sunday evening. Between work & jet lag, this is the first time I've felt like posting. I'll get into more details later but I had a wonderful time. The Czech Republic, London & Scotland are all beautiful. We had lots of fun and adventures along the way. But at the end, I was very glad to get back home... to sleep in my own bed... to see my family & cat again... and strangely enough, to get back to work.

On a side note, I think this jet lag is doing strange things to me. I'm actually liking the new Christina Aguilera. Surely, this is just temporary.

Bye For Now

Sorry I've been so lax on posting. The last minute details & packing have me very busy. We fly out early in the afternoon on Thursday. Please keep us in your prayers for a safe trip. And say an extra prayer that I'm able to communicate in Czech when we arrive in Prague. But even more important to me, keep our family in your prayers that they don't worry too much. Also, say a little prayer for my co-workers who have to do my job while I'm away... and that they don't hate me by the time I return.

Check back here around the 1st of August. I plan on posting pictures & recapping the trip so much that everyone will beg for more hockey news:)

Later!

Cat Blogging

Scully's in rare form tonight. On top of the usual stuff she does to irritate me, she somehow shut down the computer at the power strip... she's never done that before. I think she knows she's going to visit her grandparents for a few weeks & is letting me know that she's NOT happy about it.

I missed it

The first episode of Rock Star... that is all except the final 3 singers. :( I thought the show started at 8:00 so I didn't think to record the show since I knew I'd be home at 8. Unfortunately it started at 7:00.

Last summer, when they were finding the new lead singer for INXS, my cousin finally convinced me to watch the show. I didn't want to at first because you just can't replace a lead singer of a band. But there were some really good singers on the show & I got hooked. Granted I just didn't think some of them, especially the women, were right for the band.

So when I saw the commercials for the new season, I was excited. This time, I can actually pull for the best singer including the female singers. That's because it's a new band, so I don't feel like the singers have to have a certain kind sound. Actually, that's not true, I do think there has to be a certain sound. This is a band formed by former members of Motley Crue, Metallica, and Guns N Roses... the lead singer of this band has to really rock! I did get to hear the reminder snippets at the end of the show. There were a few that I knew right away are not right. You just can't sound like John Mayer (& I love John Mayer) and front this band.

Another signing

While I was posting about the Mason signing, the Predators were taking care of the biggest hole on the roster. Word is that Jason Arnott, previously with the Dallas Stars, is now a Predator!

Now I can happily go on vacation knowing that all the big glaring needs are filled. Anything else they do will be icing on the cake... at least in my eyes.

Mason Re-signs!

I guess the birth of your first child changes things? A few weeks ago, Chris Mason, the Predator's back-up goalie, had decided to test the market to see if he could get a starting job elsewhere. So I was a bit surprised to see that he had decided to re-sign with the Predators just hours after the signing period started yesterday.

I'm having mixed feelings about this. As much as I like Mason & wanted him to stay, the fact that the Predator's went so hard after him after saying they would let him test the market makes me more worried about the starting goalie's health. Then again, maybe the Predator's just didn't like any of the other back-up goalies that were available and were willing to offer a bit more money to entice the new father to stay in town.

On a side note, I'm shocked that the word "goalie" is not a part of blogger's spell check!

For the Nashville Area Folks

We lost a very good local reporter yesterday. Dana Kaye at WTVF lost her battle with cancer.