Birthplace of Pilsner

We woke up and tried to finish packing. We have way too much stuff. Even with my bag extended, Sheila had to sit on it so I could get it closed.  We left the hotel at about 10:45 AM with the goal of going to Pilsen and touring the Pilsner Urquell Brewery before heading to Mainz, Germany for the night. The traffic was horrendous and it took us about 40 minutes just to get out of the city of Prague.

We made it to Plzen by 12:45 PM and tried to buy tickets for the tour. We were told the tour was completely sold out and the earliest they could get us in was for the 2:45 PM tour. We still had a long drive ahead of us and so were sadly forced to decline. It was still good to be in the birthplace of good pilsner beer and we headed to the beer museum instead. The beer museum is sponsored by Pilsner Urquell but is a little weird and run down. There are lots of beer-related artifacts and the museum itself is housed in an old building with some visible medieval ramparts. It was mildly interesting and not bad. Along with the entry fee, adults get a beer voucher for a small unfiltered Pilsner Urquell at an adjoining tavern. We stopped there and I really enjoyed the beer. We also decided to eat lunch there and we had Bavarian Sausage, pretzel with mustard. I also had a fantastic garlic soup.

We then headed to Mainz where we were staying at the Hyatt Regency Mainz. Somehow, when we booked this place, we thought the hotel was 15 minutes from the airport. However, when we drove here, we found it was a good 35 km away. Still, it’s a beautiful hotel, right on the River Rhine. We got put on the Regency Club floor with access to the Regency Lounge, which was nice.

I had a glass of nice Riesling in the lounge and we headed out for a walk to the City Center. Managed a few Pokelstops on the way. The Old Town Square is fantastic, like every other one we have seen on this trip and the walk through the quaint streets was delightful. When we got back to the hotel, we printed our boarding passes and Sheila insisted I go for a run. I headed out at about 10:30 PM and rain in very warm and muggy conditions for about 2.7 miles. I then came back to the room, had a bunch of potato chips (a bag we had bought and need to finish before leaving) and a glass of beer (I had bought a bottle of Kolzen in Prague for 7.90 crowns – yep, about 35 cents!). It’s already midnight and it will be a while before I get to sleep – I’m watching the coverage of the Republican Convention.

We plan to leave for the airport by about 8:45 AM tomorrow morning, bringing this amazing trip to an end.

Bone Church and Mozart in Prague

We tried to wake up early today to head to the Bone Church, about an hour and a half out of town. We talked about trying to get there as soon past the opening time of 8 AM as possible. I told Sheila to set the alarm and “take the lead” on the morning plans since she was very keen on visiting the church. She finally decided to set the alarm for 7 AM and we decided we would go there, come back and then shower and clean up for the day. Well, the alarm went off at 7 AM, but Sheila showed no sign of getting out of bed. I prodded her a couple of times verbally, but she just grunted and rolled over. I decided to leave her to it and stayed in bed. She finally got up after 8 AM and we left for Kutna Hora a little after 9 AM. Driving in town and the surrounding highways was awful. Terrible traffic left us crawling most of the way, but we got there around 11 AM. The church was fascinating, but the famous bone chandelier, which includes at least one of every bone in the human body, was dismantled for cleaning and refurbishment.

We then wandered through the town of Kutna Hora which, as an entire town, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a beautiful little city that seems frozen in time. We wandered the cobbled stone streets for a while and I bought a couple of records. I realized too late that I really should have bargained a lot more before just shelling out $20 for these two records. But, it’s too late for that, so I’ll mention it here and move on.

We then headed back to the hotel. The drive back was slow and painful, but we finally made it back about 1:15 PM. We then headed out for a walk around the Old Town. We did some shopping and got back to the hotel a little before 4 PM so I could shower and dress up for a 4:30 PM meeting with the Hotel sales manager to get a tour of the meeting space in the hotel. Since I was in Prague, I thought I may as well do a tiny bit of ACR work. I realize that I made a huge mistake when I did my flying trip through Frankfurt, Dublin, and Prague in four days some years ago. When I’m evaluating a city for the ACR conference, it’s not just about the hotel, but also about getting a sense of whether the ACR membership will like the location. I was reminded on this trip that Prague is a spectacular city and would be a fantastic location for an ACR conference. I really do need to try and find the time to visit a city and spend a few days getting to know it rather than flying in, touring the meeting space and flying out. It’s not fair to the city or to the ACR membership. I think another longer trip to Prague may be necessary in 2019 or so.

I met Konstantin, the hotel sales manager and we discussed the organization’s needs, the meeting capabilities of both Hiltons in Prague, and did a tour of the hotel. Of course, the other Hilton is the big one and I was happy to learn that it is only about 10-15 minute walk from this hotel because I LOVE the location of this hotel.

I got back to the room and soon after, Sheila and I left for our show of the evening. We had scheduled a “Mozart Dinner” at The Grand Hotel Bohemia. It was just a few minutes walk from our hotel and we found ourselves as the first people at the beautiful Boccacio Hall. We took some photographs and were seated at a private table right up front. We had paid for a couple of seats at a table of eight, thinking it would be fun to engage in conversation with others. When we arrived, however, we were told that even though we had paid for a table of eight, we had been upgraded to a private table for two up front. Oh well, there went our plans to be sociable with strangers. Still, these were lovely seats right in front and we enjoyed the show. The evening included a three course dinner and many performances of Mozart’s pieces. There was a 5-piece orchestra, a baritone and a soprano. The evening started with a selection of arias from Don Giovanni interspersed with movements from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Then, we were served pea soup before the second music interlude started. The second concert before the main course consisted of arias primarily from The Marriage of Figaro. The main course was then served – beef cheeks with mashed potatoes. Finally, the artists sang arias from The Magic Flute, after which we were served apple strudel for dessert. Overall, it was an extremely enjoyable evening.

On our way back, we wandered into a few toy shops and even a mall, just to explore. We then came back to the room and watched the nomination of Donald J. Trump as the party’s nominee for President. Sheila packed while I worked on this blog post.

Segway and Don Giovanni

We woke up to a sunny day. Strange to see what that feels like. The weather remained near perfect through the day. It was warm and sunny, but not hot – probably in the high 70s.

Last night at Old Town Square, we were approached by one of the many folks on Segways and offered a discounted rate for a 2-hour Segway tour of Prague. There are so many of these companies crawling all over the square that it appears to be the entrepreneurial venture of choice here. I checked TripAdvisor and there was one clear top choice for Segway tours. I thought I’d call them and see if they will negotiate on their price to match (or come close) to the 1299czk offer from the guy at the square. But, the guys I called said they were booked and reiterated that they’re almost always booked and so offer no discounts. Since we were really looking at getting an overview of the place, we decided to give the cheap guys a shot.

We met “Michael,” a friendly Russian boy outside the Powder Tower about 10:15 in the morning. He had a great sense of humor and we had a blast riding the Segway all around town for a couple of hours, but we got little to no useful historic information about the place during our travels. When we drove through Old Town Square, he said, for example, “You’ve seen the clock, right? Well, this is the square where do protests and stuff. It used to be a horse market at one time, now it’s a Segway market.” Then he moved on. That’s it. That’s all the background we got on Old Town Square. Prague Castle wasn’t much better. Still, for about $50 per person, I thought it was a worthwhile fun time.

We were left at the bottom of the hill leading to Prague Castle at about 12:30 PM and had to walk fast all uphill to get to the Lobkiewicz Palace for our Midday Concert in the Palace. We huffed and puffed our way up to the castle and made it to the palace with minutes to spare. The concert consisted of several short pieces in a beautiful music room of the palace. I particularly enjoyed the incredible pianist who blew everyone away with her exceptional performance of Mozart’s Turkish March. After the concert, we walked through the Lobkiewicz Palace museum and then headed back down, going over the Charles Bridge and back towards the hotel. I found a record shop and picked up a few interesting records. They were a lot cheaper when I was here in 1998.

We got back to the room a little after 6 and I headed for a quick shower before we changed into fancier outfits (I wore a suit and tie and Sheila wore a dazzling red dress), grabbed a minor bit to eat in the Executive Lounge, and walked over to the Estates Theater for our evening show. We were particularly excited about this. The Estates Theater was built in the early 1780s and, according to Wikipedia, “remains one of the few European theatres to be preserved in its almost original state to the present day.” It was here that Mozart premiered Don Giovanni in 1787 where it was extremely well received. We had booked a luxury box and were fortunate enough to get a great box right in the center (one of the larger Royal Boxes) of the second balcony.

Fortunately, I bought a program and read a summary of the opera before it started. There were no supertitles and it was performed in its original language of Italian. But, I was able to broadly follow the plot because I had read the summary. The singers playing Donna Anna and Leporello were particularly impressive. Overall, it was an extraordinary experience.

We got back to the hotel room and watched some CNN coverage of the Republican convention as I finished this blog, past 1 AM again.

Prague: Best City in the World?

When I checked my phone after crawling out of bed this morning, it was already 9:45 AM. Goal of sleeping in was achieved. Surprise, surprise, it was pouring with rain in the morning. Good thing we had decided to do Heroes Square last evening. We decided to take it easy in the morning and head out for our long drive to Prague at about noon. We had a wonderful time just relaxing and chatting with Sam, Anita, and Sid in the morning. By the time we finally packed up and headed out, it was a bit after 1 PM.

We drove through Slovakia before landing in Czech Republic. We were really hoping to stop at the Sedlec Bone Church on our way, but because we left so late, we found that by the time we got there, it would have been past the 6 PM closing time. So, we just headed straight to Prague. We got to Prague a little before 7 PM and checked in to the Hilton Prague Old Town. The hotel is located right near Republic Square, only a few minutes walk from Old Town Square.

I had to wash a few socks to survive our remaining days and then we headed to the Executive Lounge (one of the perks of being a Diamond Hilton Member) for some food and drink. I had a Pilsner Urquell and a glass of local champagne. Both were great. We also had some dessert at the lounge before deciding to explore the surroundings for a bit.

It had started raining as we headed to the lounge, but it had stopped by this time. We’re still hoping tomorrow and day after will be nice days. We wandered out to the beautiful Republic Square and were immediately enchanted. Prague has all the charm of Salzburg in terms of architecture and ambiance as well as seeming to be a bigger city like Budapest. We stopped by a small stall and bought some chimney cake with ice cream (somewhat like a large, hollow churro).

The walk to and the actual Old Town Square were equally incredible. Spectacularly beautiful buildings had our heads on a swivel and I finally find myself completely torn about whether I consider Salzburg or Prague to be my favorite city in the world. We walked through the Powder Gate on the way and Wikipedia informed me that this is one of the original gates still standing from the 11^th Century. Can you imagine? They have massive towers with cars driving through them that are still standing from the 11^th Century? If Columbus had visited Prague before setting sail for the Americas, he would have considered the tower as ancient to him as we consider him today. That’s old. And, did I mention it’s still standing strong – not in ruins.

We watched the astronomical clock strike 10 PM and then just wandered around the square, popping in at interesting, touristy souvenir shops looking for a keychain for Sheila and admiring all the schlocky Bohemian Crystal, some of which is quite lovely. Random guys on Segways stopped us to ask if we wanted a Segway tour and we got a brochure from one of them. He started bargaining even before we got a chance to ask him about prices. It is probably something we’ll do tomorrow morning. We also stopped at another stall for a sausage and a beer (Staropramen). We then slowly made our way back to the hotel.

Tomorrow, we have a midday concert at 1 PM and the opera (Don Giovanni in a historic style performance in the original opera house in which Mozart premiered the opera in 1787. Yes, the original wooden opera house from Mozart’s days is still intact and standing tall. Sheila and I can’t wait to attend this performance tomorrow. I was serious enough about this that I carried a suit and tie with me all the way for this one evening. We’re going to see if we can squeeze in a Segway tour in the morning. It’s already shaping up to be a busy day.

It is 12:30 AM and I still have several things to do before going to bed (like copying my pictures from my iPhone to the laptop as I’m out of room on the silly 16 GB iPhone). I’m excited to explore Prague tomorrow.

Budapest (in the pouring rain, of course)

Well, this time I’m STARTING writing my blog after midnight. Luckily, we plan to sleep in tomorrow morning.

We woke to the alarm and 7 and I went and got ready for the day. Of course, it was puring with rain when we looked out the window. Sam made us some excellent scrambled eggs – I had mine Indian style (egg bhurji) while Sheila had plain, but with some Hungarian mild paprika sprinkled on top.

We were dropped at the tram station and headed to Szell Kalman Ter to meet Zsofi, our Budapest tour guide at 10. She was a delightful, tiny, bubbly, pretty young lady who spoke perfect English and was not just knowledgeable, but fun. We spent a fun 4 hours with her visiting the Castle District, Mattias Church, Pest, St. Stephen’s Basilica, all in driving rain. But her personality and entertaining patter helped keep our spirits up despite feeling wet and cold. We hadn’t packed for 50-degree weather and the damp and cold winds kept us chilly. Still, we really had a great day. The cathedrals were just spectacular – each one besting the one before. The decorations and sculptures are truly breathtaking. We ended the tour at the original Ruin Pub. Apparently, there was this area of Pest that was run down and crumbling. Previously graceful classical buildings were falling into ruin. A couple of entrepreneurs decided to rent one of those crumbling buildings and open a bar. Since this was a derelict area, they decided to keep the place in its ruinous form that served not only as an interesting artistic statement, but a practical cost-saving measure. It was a hit. More and more bars opened up in the area (Ruin Pubs), making it the hippest nightlife in town for the younger crowd. Interestingly, the success of the ruin pubs have led to a great restoration and revitalization of the area.

After the day tour, we said our goodbyes to Zsofi and had lunch of goulash and pork loins at a local restaurant in the area called Kazimir. It was excellent. On our way to the Parliament Buildings, we went by the Budapest Opera House and stopped in to find that their final English tour of the day was starting in 15 minutes at 4 PM. We paid for the tour and a “mini-concert” (involving a singer singing a couple of quick arias) and enjoyed touring the spectacular opera house.

We then headed to the Alexandra Book Shop that has an incredible café on the upper floor. The café is housed in a beautifully restored hall decorated in detailed classical style. It felt like we were drinking coffee in a palace. We also had some great cake at the place before heading to our next destination.

We took a tram to the Hero’s Square which all made a lot more sense after getting the great history lesson from Zsofi. I now know the significance of 96 (896 AD and 1896 AD) to Hungarians, the role played by Istivan (St. Stephen) and Mattias in their history and why there are seven horses on the chariot at the square. We wandered around the square and the palace grounds behind it before heading home.

Sam, Anita, Sanjukta and Sid were home for a great Indian dinner and excellent conversation. We had a great time joking and reminiscing while polishing off a couple of bottles of wine.

It was almost midnight when the party disbanded and well after midnight when I started writing this blog.

We had another great, busy day and plan to sleep in tomorrow morning and taking our time before beginning the long drive to Prague. Yes, it rained all day, but I can confidently say there is nothing we couldn’t do or chose not to do because of the weather. We spent the entire day walking around Budapest and proved up to the challenge thrown down by Mother Nature. All in all, a great day.

Salzburg-Budapest - Road Trippin'

We slept in this morning. We must have been tired after all our walking around town. We woke up only about 9:30 AM. Since the Sheraton was a beautiful resort hotel on the shores of Schloss Fuchlsee, we decided it would be a pity to leave this place without even having a little walk around the place. After we got ready (Sheila took an extra long shower for some reason), we checked out and tried to drive down to the lake, where there is a luxury resort on the shore. We decided to drive instead of walk. We were stopped at the entrance by a guard who didn’t speak English. After trying some sign language that implied to him that we were guests at the resort (I think), he just waved us on in frustration. We drove all the way down to the lake front confidently, even though there was clearly some event (a Mercedes-Benz event since there were tons of Mercedes cars and people in Mercedes polo shirts) and parked on the side of the path and walked around the dock. It was spectacularly beautiful as, it seems, is all of Austria. After we wandered for a bit, some lady came over and asked if it was our car and when we said yes, she said cars are not allowed there and we had to move it. By then it was time to go and we gladly left. By the time we got up to the gates, we found several barriers had been set up to prevent car traffic down that road. We had lucked out.

We drove next to the beautiful lake village of St. Gilgen. This is where Nannerl (Mozart’s sister) lived and is also where some lake shots in the Sound of Music were filmed. We had lunch at a restaurant in the quaint little town (some of the best Wiener Schnitzel we have had) and then got back on the road to visit Mondsee Cathedral where the famous Sound of Music wedding scene was filmed. It was really quite beautiful and it must have been before the tour groups got there as the place was quite empty. Of course, just as we were leaving, hordes of tourists were arriving, so our timing was great.

We then started the long drive to Budapest. Since we were so late leaving (it was almost 3 PM), we decided to skip Vienna completely and head straight to Budapest. On the way, we got stuck on the highway at a massive traffic jam (our route was already extended since the GPS had rerouted us a couple of times due to “standstill traffic”). We were completely stopped for about 35-45 minutes. Still, we made it to Sam and Anita’s place in Budapest by about 9:30 PM.

Anita had a great Indian dinner waiting for us and we all ate together and reminisced for a bit. Tomorrow, Sam has arranged a half-day walking tour of Budapest. Rain is in the forecast (of course), but we’re determined to go ahead with it using our umbrellas.

It is again almost midnight. I need to get ready for bed and sleep (alarm is set for 7 AM), but didn’t want to skip writing my blog for the day.

Listen to the pouring rain ...

We woke up when my alarm went off at 6:45 AM and I headed straight for a shower. We got ready, headed for breakfast and then headed out. We had initially thought we would just take the bus into town today and return to drive to our hotel for the night – Sheraton Fuchlsee-Jagdhof which is about 45 mins from our pension. But, we had tickets for the Salzburg Marionette Theater performance of Sound of Music which started at 7:30. I assumed it would be about 2 hours and the thought of taking a bus back and then leaving for our 45-minute drive seemed too much. We decided to drive into town and find a parking garage near the theater. We found one and walked all day.

It was raining quite heavily when we left and our first stop was the Mozart Wohnhaus (the house his family lived in) on the way from our parking garage to the old town. It was another fascinating museum and both Sheila and I enjoyed it. We then walked to the old town and found ourselves in front of St. Peter’s Cathedral, which was on our list of sights to see. The cemetary was beautiful and the iron gates to many crypts served as the inspiration for the Church escape scene setting in the Sound of Music. We walked up the catacombs, carved out of a sheer rock cliff and saw the graves of Nannerl (Mozart’s sister) and Franz Michael Haydn (good friend of Mozart and brother to Josef Haydn). We visited their on-site bakery where the bread is made using traditional methods and purchased some rolls.

Then, we slowly wandered towards the Hohensalzburg Fortress. We took the funicular up to the top and spent a few hours wandering through all the museums there. What fascinating history and amazing artifacts. Plus, the views from the top of the fortress are just amazing.

From there, we walked to Nonnberg Abbey, which served as the outside setting for several shots in Sound of Music. We saw the gates where the von Trapp children went looking for Maria and even wandered into the chapel. We could hear the nuns practicing their choral singing in the background and it was just magical.

We walked down the mountain and headed towards the Monchsberg lift to get up to the terrace on the other side of Hohensalzburg. On the way we saw a café selling Salzburg Nockerl and decided we had to try it despite the €14 price tag. Let’s just say it’s not something we’ll readily order again. Maybe if there were 5 people to share it. It has a strong egg taste (it is whipped egg whites, after all) and is quite sickeningly sweet. We had our fair share and left the rest for the starving kids in Africa. We got to the terrace, but didn’t stay long as it was pouring with rain.

We walked to the Marionette theater after walking around Mirabell Gardens for a bit and then enjoyed a very interesting performance of Sound of Music at the beautiful theater of the Salzburg Marionette Theater Group. It was an abbreviated version of the show and was extremely interesting. Totally cute and enjoyable.

When we got in the car, we discovered that the Sheraton Fuchslee resort was only about a 25 minute drive and got here around 10:30 PM. We dropped our bags off in the room, headed for dinner of Stiegl beer and pizza (Sheila had Almdudler as usual) and got back to the room well after midnight. Again, I’m staying up to finish this blog post.

We got to see a lot of Salzburg, but the weather didn’t cooperate as much as I would have liked. The Sheraton is in the mountains on a lake and seems beautiful. We had originally talked on the drive of going to St. Gilgen (Lakes district where several Sound of Music scenes were filmed) followed by a stop at Mondsee cathedral (site of the wedding scene in the movie), and completely cutting out Vienna. Now, we’re thinking we may even cut out those two Sound of Music sites if the area around the hotel is as beautiful as it seems.

According to weather.com, today was a nice day in Budapest. But, it also says there’s going to be two days of rain (Saturday-Sunday) before returning to sunshine on Monday. Of course, the only two days we have in Budapest are Saturday and Sunday. We certainly do seem to be jinxed.

However, Sheila is the best travel companion ever. She kept our spirits high throughout the day. She seemed to be having fun and soaking in the ambiance of the city. I tend to be a demanding traveler in the sense I want to soak in as much of my environment as possible when I travel. It’s all about the experience of being there, so I prefer to do a LOT of walking, wandering into churches, museums, cafes and stores that catch my eye. So we end up walking for several miles, usually without any fixed itinerary or goal other than to enjoy the pleasure of just “being there.” It is part of the arbitrary wandering experience I enjoy so much. Sheila is game for everything. She never complained or whined about the weather – she shut me down if I ever started. She was game for anything even though she must have been exhausted at times during the day. I couldn’t ask for a better person to travel with and someone as gung-ho and genuinely seeming to enjoy every part of the trip despite the depressing weather.

Tomorrow is another day. Actually, today, since it is almost 1:30 AM.