In an unprecedented occurence, I have two videos to share in the same week.  You can thank the Queen for giving us a public holiday on Monday.

This one is from our Wedding Anniversary weekend trip to Dublin.

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With less than seven weeks until we head home, I’m running out of time to finish editing my videos.

So here’s the next one.  This one features a couple of the country houses we’ve visited, the QE2 arriving oustide our old flat in Newcastle and some impressions of what winter was like.

It’s not the most exciting, but if I’d gone straight from Episode 8 to 10 you’d be wondering what I was trying to hide.  Next up, Dublin.

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It must be some sort of a roll, but I have another video for you.  Somewhat shorter this one features the video I took when we went to our two rugby world cup games in Edinburgh and Cardiff.

It’s taken a while to get to the point where I felt like I could make and publish this video.  Looking at my “diary entry” at the end I think “how melodramatic am I” until I think back and remember that this is a 100% reflection of how I felt.  I honestly felt like the world had ended.

Anyway, check it out here.

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The jetsetting and half (i.e one of us) pregnant couple were in Prague a few weekends ago but for some reason neither of us got around to writing a post on it. We loved being there, so I’m not sure why we didn’t feel passionate about writing a post, but I doubt it will become one of life’s great mysteries.

As has become our habit we left on Saturday afternoon and flew to Prague, arriving in the evening on Saturday. We had been expecting it to be really, really cold (Prague being landlocked in Czech Republic get’s well below freezing in winter) but it was incredibly mild and was in fact warmer than Newcastle.

We were really stoked with our accommodation, we had had to rebook due to Easyjet cancelling our return flight and we had gone from a budget hotel to a room in a hostel. It wasn’t particularly quiet (annoying loud Korean girls next door) but the room was really big, had it’s own bathroom, was situated about 200m from Charles Bridge and was really cheap. Good work Megan.

We arrived in time on Saturday to have a wander around, along some quaint streets and had dinner and a beer (well, half of us had a beer).  A quick comment on prices.  We had been expecting things to be really cheap but things weren’t quite as cheap as we had been expecting.  You could easily eat for the same sort of money as we could in our local restaurants in Tynemouth (i.e. not city prices) but you really had to hunt down the cheap eateries where you could really get some good value.  Also, tourist attractions worked out to be almost exactly the same as what you would expect to find in other tourist cities (i.e. about £12) so they were very expensive in local terms.

On Sunday we got up and just started wandering around.  We explored Charles Bridge and then went up to the ‘castle’.  Megan managed to find something with pineapple in it for lunch and we went home for a nap and for me to get engrossed in my book.

In the evening we decided to go along to a ‘Black Light Theatre’.  It’s not the sort of thing we would normally do, but I figure that’s  what a holiday is all about.

The next day we went in a slightly different direction and took a cable car up a hill opposite to us for a view of the city.  Unfortunately, the observation tower was closed as it’s only open on the weekend, so we had a nice walk through a very peaceful garden, through the monastery and back down to the cathedral (we hadn’t gone into the cathedral within the castle on the previous day as it was too busy).

That afternoon we also explored some more of the city.  We were very fortunate as when we were there the Easter Markets were on.  This meant that in the Old Town Square and Wenceslas Squares there were stalls selling great food, pictures and Easter souvenirs.  Our favourite was the ‘trdelník‘ thin strips of bread coated in cinnamon and baked on a metal rolling pin.

On the final day we went for a day trip to Kutna Hora, where there is a famous church filled with bones.  It’s about an hour’s train trip away, and we found it really easy to get tickets and cheap as well.  We probably would have paid more than five times as much if we had gone on an excursion operated by the hostel.

I forget the exact history, but basically they had too many bones for their graveyard, so they decided to dig them up and put the in the church.  It was quite fascinating, and quite a nice way to spend the final day, though it was really cold waiting at the train station to come back.

We picked up our bags (which we had left free of charge at the hostel) went and spent the remainder of our money on a picture and too many trdelniks and headed for the airport.   Another very enjoyable extended weekend.

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