There are a lot great exhibits and some real treasures. There is a tooth which was found by the side of the road which gave birth to the study of dinosaurs, the first adult skull of a Neanderthal ever discovered, the first edition of the “On The Origin of Species” by Darvin, a dodo skeleton, […]
To your average creationist this place is hell and Darwin is the devil, to the rest of inquiriting minds this is a place of amazement and wonder. The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 70 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology. Each exhibit hall is more splendid the the […]
It appears that whatever the French have found first or did not lose in war is at the Louvre in Paris, the rest of the world’s treasures are in London at the The British Museum. The Rosetta Stone, the oldest chess set, the Portland Vase the precursor to Wedgwood China, The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, Colossal red granite statue […]
After London Eye we set out for a walk across the river towards the Trafalgar Square, Oxford Street and the British National Museum with a quick stop at a pub for some fish and chips.
Just the Hogwarts castle – so real and so close you can almost touch it, if it wasn’t for the barriers and the security and the CCTV…
The second studio is dedicated to animatronics, the concept art, prints, magic wands, the entire Diagon Alley and of course larger then life model of the Hogwarts Castle which was used for all of the outdoor scenes and fly by shots. The size of this model is hard to describe because words like huge and […]
Once you take it the splendid wonder of all the indoor sets, in the courtyard between the two studios are some of the outdoor sets which were used in the movie. Those include the Hogwarts Bridge, No. 4 Privet Drive, The Night Bus, The flying ford Angila, Little Whining and a few more chess pieces. […]
This adventure took about 4 or 5 hours to get through but as Boris said, it was the best day of his life. Harry Potter Studios just outside London are well worth the time and the money for any Harry Potter fan. Even before you enter the studios, you are immediately impressed by the […]
Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. This building used to serve as a royal residence, the Treasure for the Royal Jewels, a defence building and a prison. There has been more blood […]
It is hard to say what is more iconic in London – The Big Ben or the Tower Bridge. I think we would be hard pressed to pick between the two. After a bit of rain, the sun come out which made for some spectacular looking skyline.
First thing on our agenda today was to see the Tower Bridge and the area around it. We stopped by the City Hall and a bit of modern London before heading for the iconic bridge. There are some really stunning buildings here, all made of glass and steel, which provides a great contract to the […]
We are heading out for another busy day today. This one is almost entirely dedicated to what kids want to do. Here are some streets around our hotel on our way to the tube.
Until the 17th century the street was known as Portugal Street. Piccadilly is a famous road in London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to in the east. It is completely within the City of Westminster and it is one of the widest and straightest streets in central London, and it is always busy.
We wondered towards Piccadilly and took a shortcut across St. James’s Park where there seems to be hundreds of thousands of spring flowers and hundreds of birds of all shapes and sizes. Every year millions of Londoners and tourists visit St James’s Park, the oldest of the capital’s eight Royal Parks.
Here are a few shots from around the Parliament Building and the Big Ben which we will be coming back to when we go for a ride on the London Eye. There are many beautiful places in London, each one more grand then the next, so we can’t wait to see more of it very […]
We are exploring London bit by bit. The weather went from sunny to drizzle, so we are taking a bit of a break and shelter from the rain.
These were done just right with mushed green peas. Not only did we have a Polish waitress her uncle lives in Edmonton. Small world.
We constantly aim to elevate the amateur way of traveling – this trip is no exception. We set off from Nuremberg to Frankfurt on the train. We did not want to chance getting stuck in traffic or a snow storm or getting stressed about getting there on time. We would arrive in Frankfurt with 2.5 […]
It’s Spring Break. The kids are officially out of school for a week. On Boris’ request we are going to London. It is one of the cities he really wants to see. We are setting off to Frankfurt on a train, then we are catching a flight to London on Ryan Air. We are packed […]
There are many ways to look at this story, whether it is a coincidence or a fluke or whatever, it is one we are going to remember for a while. It all started on a mild Prague evening on February 16th, it was dark but not a stormy night. After a great meal, we got […]
Starting your day off the proper way with a nice light breakfast and a hot coffee. We love coming to Paul when in Prague.
We made it across the parking lot before our first stop – a whole 50 m. Can you guess where we are?
It is another weekend and we are setting off to Prague for another day trip. It is an amazing city, and we love it there. In the caravan following us are Mozejkos, we are going to explore this town a bit more.
Our incredible Christmas cannon ball run to Warsaw was fun, our trip back to Nuremberg not so much. The traffic laws over holiday season are more strictly enforced, as it turns out, and the 20km/h over speed limit buffer does not apply. On our way home from Warsaw to Nuremberg, out of nowhere, in […]
And now for something completely different.
Once a normal wall, since the 1980s it has been filled with John Lennon-inspired graffiti and pieces of lyrics from Beatles songs. Young Czechs would write grievances on the wall and in a report of the time this led to a clash between hundreds of students and security police on the nearby Charles Bridge. The movement these students followed was described ironically as […]
After a lovely dinner on the Prague Castle side of town, in the same restaurant we ate last year, we went for a stroll to walk off the 4 tonnes of food we consumed before heading home. Let me see if I remember the meal. Beef goulash soup in a bread bowl, fries, potato mushroom […]
Tyn Church, or The Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, dominates one side of the Old Town Square in Prague. The two 80m spires of this powerful looking, Gothic church (with a Baroque interior) can be seen from all over Prague. The oldest pipe organ in Prague stands inside this church. The organ was built in 1673 by […]
I have to say that after Paris, Prague is our second favourite city so far. Copenhagen is a close third. We mainly came back here to relax and of course to eat more fried cheese, and oh boy was it ever good. I think we are going to be back here at least one more […]
This is a city of Kafka as seen from the top of the City Hall Tower. Absolutely no one there, and unlike most towers we visited so far, this one has an evaluator! Naturally we elected to take the stairs – on the way down, to save a bit of time as we had to […]
Introduction to Life 101 in the Communist Block. We drag our children around these odd places to show them how we lived when we were their age. No iPhones or iPads or laptops, no video games and no internet. However, if you were lucky you could buy a block of chocolate once a month if […]
It’s a day out. A couple of hours in the car and just like that we are in Prague having pastries at Paul. Getting here was not a lot of fun: fog, a bit of rain and generally slow going, and by slow I simply mean we took it easy.
We are slowly thinking of what our summer might look like and here is our wish list. We did not include the cities we already visited because Google Maps is very difficult to deal with when it comes to dropping pins in the same city. A quick calculation shows: 9214 km and about 99 hours […]
In short awesome. On our way back after a bit of wondering around Paris we settled in our comfy seats in the first class. This time we were served dinner which was: pasta salad with tomatoes, goat cheese and broad green beans. Grilled beef with rice and vegetable ratatouille. For dessert lemon tart. Wine, water, […]
We had dinner at a local bistro, half a block away from our pad. Once again we did not get the picture of the best dish we had which was a trio of steak tartar. I will say this, and I am saying this for both of us – best steak tartar we had since […]
This is our third visit to Paris, and our first visit to the Museum of Modern Art. A bit different than the Louvre but with its own merits. There was an intersting exposition of Azzedine Alaia dresses in the Matisse room as well as a whole host of other art that is just oh so very […]
We are out for a midnight stroll. It is absolutely crazy how many people are out. We decided to go towards the Eiffel Tower to ring in the New Year There were 1000’s of people and just as many Champagne bottles popping their corks at midnight. We had a nice walk along the Seine, saw […]
Yesterday was dedicated to culture today we are going shopping. On the agenda are BHV and ‘Galeries Lafayette’. In between the two is the City Hall from which you can see the Notre Dame. There was a huge ice ring in front of the city hall and despite the fact that it was +10C it […]
After a quick coffee at Carrousel du Louvre and a bit of well deserved rest we headed out to the Marais. This once again is a place we really loved last year so we went back for more this year. We had a wonderful dinner at a little Italian bistro for something different. L’Alimentari had some wonderful […]
While we spent more time last year looking at the paintings and the Egyptian exhibits, this year we looked at more sculptures. This is but a fraction of what the Louvre has to offer, from rooms full of tapestries large enough to cover a small house, to unimaginable amount of ornate gold trinkets large and […]
The beauty of the Louvre, or at least one of them, is that you can see a lot of stuff from any particular part of the world all in one place. The Louvre, does not have just one of something, it has 10s if not 100’s of these things. Be it old Roman vases or […]
While not a huge exposition – it certainly is a decadent one. Monarchs like nice things and these nice things are beautiful, exqusite and extravagant.
Part of The Louvre is dedicated to Napoleon, a man who collected a lot of the art that is currently on display here. I am not sure if opulent and ostentatious are words that do justice to his pad, but it is a start.
This was our favourite place at the Louvre this time around. We did not get to see this last year, this year then this was a double treat because there were almost no people here which was a nice change from the rest of the museum and the place is absolutely beautiful. This was also […]
Today was a long day, we spent almost 12 hours out in the city. We had two objectives for today The Louvre for art and Le Marais for dinner. The Louvre is a place that is extraordinary in and of itself. Priceless works of art aside, The Louvre is magnificent on its own merit. […]
We have settled in, unpacked and relaxed a bit. Then, once the restaurants opened we went out for a nice dinner to a local bistro down the street called Le Cercle. Great food, great service and a typical Parisian ambiance.
German and French countryside as seen from a train moving at about 340km/h on the French side and about 230 km/h on the German side. Green and sunny and most importantly no snow in sight.
We are so un-familiar with train travel in Europe. We set an alarm to make sure we don’t miss our stop this time, which would have been hard to do since it was the end of the line for the first train. We had a nice lunch in Stuttgart, and 10 min into our trip […]
We have boarded ICE. We are on our way to Stuttgart where we are going to have a little lunch and change trains. TGV, the French train will take us to Paris.
We are setting off to Paris. Being here, we can’t think of a better city to be in for New Year’s Eve. We are going by train just to mix things up, and because having a car in Paris is absolutely useless, this just makes sense.
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