Jenni

We got up at 9, stomped on our suitcases to close them, and said bye to the mushrooms in the bathroom.

I think I saw them waving back!

Stephanie goes to visit my brother, Scott, and his family in Florida at least twice a year. I was down for a weekend trip, so I decided to join her over Memorial Day.

Saturday, I had enough time to drink coffee, clean my house, and finish packing, and then it was time to head to the aeroport. I felt a little bad about the fact that I was in first class and my sister was in coach, but she said she didn’t mind as long as I brought her back something good. So, having never flown first class, I was kind of enamored of the novelty. The seats were huge (I sat crosslegged most of the flight), and had footrests. They got us drinking before the flight even took off (FYI: Northwest Airlines serves Jack Daniels), gave us snacks and a full meal. However, the first class restroom did not have a Jacuzzi, as I was led to believe. I’d never pay to be up there, but it was pretty nice to exploit them for once.

Staying with my brother and his family was awesome; I don’t see them anywhere near often enough. Kaitie is four years old now, and Melody (aka the smilingest baby on earth) is one.

Kaitie

Melody

While it’s fun to be around the kids, it stresses me out immensely, and I’ve begun to appreciate the little maintenance involved with my cats, who I’ve sometimes considered too demanding. Also, I happened to notice that when you have children, it’s difficult to stay out until the ante-meridiem hours; in fact, Scott and Ali were often in bed before 9pm. ACK.

Stephanie with the nieces at SeaWorld

On Sunday, we all went to SeaWorld, which I hadn’t visited since I was a little kid. Aquariums have never interested me much, but I loved SeaWorld, probably because you can get up close to the animals. We even got to pet a bunch of stingrays (they’re slimy and bumpier than one would expect).

In the dolphin exhibit, we saw a very excited boy-dolphin swimming around with his schlong out for all to see, and then we saw manatees doing dirty dirty things, which has left me scarred for life as regards sea creatures.

Scott and I went to ride the Kraken, which I’m pretty sure is the most awesome rollercoaster I’ve ever been on. I rode the whole way with my arms in the air, screaming my head off, and I was hoarse afterwards. My mom called right as we were exiting the ride to excitedly inform me that they were flipping through the newspaper that morning and found a picture of me making a feather-angel at pillow fight club occupying the top half of the front page of the outdoor section in the St Paul Pioneer Press. Holy crap.

We spent most of the day there, and were all drenched in sweat and overheated in the low-90s humidity. Scott took the kids home around seven, and Stephanie and Ali and I headed right over to Downtown Disney without so much as a reapplication of deodorant. We were stinky, and we were fine with it.

We had dinner at the bar in the Rainforest Cafe, one of the very few restaurants there that knew the word ‘vegetarian’. The wait was an hour and a half, but we were lucky enough to sneak into the bar right at the time that a couple people were leaving. As we were sitting there eating, a dude and his girlfriend came up behind me more than once to order drinks; he’d order a Jack and coke or something similar, slam it while he was standing there, then order another. I finally turned around and said, “Dude! You’re hardcore!” He replied, “That’s how we roll in Tennessee!” I told him of my love for Nashville, and we talked about Tennessee for a while. As they walked away, his girlfriend said in a horrible drawl that my sister and I imitated for the rest of the night: “Ah think she likes you.” Hahaha. I LOVE SOUTHERNERS.

After dinner, we headed over to the location of the evening’s main event: PLEASURE ISLAND, or ‘PI’ to those in the know. Now, I have trouble explaining just how funny a Disney-sponsored group of nightclubs is, but it seriously amuses me. It’s Disney, and yet there’s nothing Disney about them, except for the fact that drinks are served in plastic buckets and jello shots arrive in big plastic syringes, and that for most of the night I was carrying around drinks with a big blue-flashing ice cube in them, which enhanced the dancing at least 125%. SO FUNNY. We started at Mannequins, the ‘gay club’ with the rotating dance floor, but it was only 9:30, and the place was nearly empty. We checked out the top 40 club and the BET club and found that the only one with people dancing in it was the 80s club, because that’s where all the old people hung out. Ali and I didn’t care; we went in and started flailing to Wild Cherry and Run-DMC. After twenty minutes or so, Stephanie had rolled her eyes so far back into her skull that we decided to go elsewhere, and by then the other clubs were filling up.

We spent a lot of time at Motion (I am not ashamed to admit that top-40 dance and hiphop is my preferred shakin’-it medium, and the funniest moment of the night was when they played ‘We Like to Party’, the song my sister always sings when she’s imitating dancing on the rotating dance floor), more time at Mannequins on the rotating dance floor (I had one of those beautiful back-home moments when they filled the room with fog while playing Madonna’s ‘Hung Up’, a song you’re guaranteed to hear at least four times every time you go dancing at the 90’s), and ended the evening at the BET club, where we met a guy who told us he’d worked as a sous-chef at one of the restaurants in the Contemporary Resort for 9 days, working 30-hour days (yep!), and that one of his jobs was to go out and meet people as an ambassador of magic, or some such crap. We figured hitting on every chick in a club probably wouldn’t count towards his magical-ambassador award as far as Disney was concerned, but it was pretty funny. He kept welcoming me to Minneapolis. I told him I was glad to be there.

The next morning, Alison was moaning about her hips and thighs, and I realized that I no longer get sore after dancing all night. Clearly, this means I must go even more often, ALL THE TIME.

Monday morning, we were up bright and painfully early, because we had a convertible to pick up and take to the beach. I had reserved a Sebring, but when the guy told me there was a Mustang available, how could I resist? I had even considered buying one at one point, but realized a RWD car is kind of retarded in Minnesota.

Anyway, I loved driving that car. It wasn’t as fast as Miguel, but it was powerful, sounded awesome, and was heavy like a muscle car. We spent the day driving along the coast with the top down and laying on the beach at Melbourne. I wore very little clothing, which is something I’m rarely brave enough to do, but holy shit! I was in a hot convertible driving along the ocean. It was the right thing to do.

And oh, we were sunburnt. We reapplied sunscreen several times, but I think the sun there is just too much. I had the awesome raccoon-like mask from my sunglasses, and parts of my body that rarely see daylight, like halfway down my cleavage, were pink. But, man, it was great.

We drove back to Orlando and I called Alina for dinner. It was so awesome to see her again; I can’t believe how long we’ve known each other. She reminded me of the time we saw a midget riding a Segway in Celebration. I hate how I can spend an hour or two with someone and feel like they’re part of my life on a regular basis, and then realize I don’t get to hang out with them all the time. That’s so strange to me. However, the really funny thing? The condo she just moved into is three blocks away from my brother’s house. AWESOME.

Taking the car back to the rental agency, my sister was driving Scott’s car, so I was alone. It was dark and had cooled off quite a bit; I was blasting the radio with the top down and the wind in my hair and it was so fucking perfect. And then I drove by the creepy sheriff’s car with the coconut head in it and freaked out just a little. What the hell??

It was sad to say goodbye to everybody, especially my brother, because he’s so great and I only see him maybe twice a year. Stephanie was staying for the rest of the week, so she took me to the airport, where I discovered I’d been bumped up to first class again. SCORE.

The return was uneventful except for the fact that we landed on the new runway, and I realized it doesn’t actually go directly over the mall (more like over 24th Ave), which means we’re unlikely to see an A330 go plummeting into the Mall of America anytime soon (still undecided about whether that’s a good or bad thing). Also, right as we landed, a woman across the aisle started yelling, ‘NAVY! NAVY!’ to our massive confusion, until she excitedly began to proclaim that she could always tell the difference between pilots who came from the Navy vs the Air Force, because Navy pilots stopped short as if they were landing on an aircraft carriers. And here I was thinking they just had to get to the right taxiway because that’s what the control tower told them to do.

Huh.

[If you want to just view the entire Flickr photoset for this trip, here’s the link!]

doesn’t really inspire the respect it used to.

at the corcoran

zero-mile marker. i like the dude posing, the security truck, and the garden party at the white house.

the j edgar hoover fbi building

the capitol lawn says ‘penis’.

capitol steps

library of congress reading room

You’re not supposed to take pictures in the reading room. You can only get to it if you’re on an official tour, and then you’re supposed to be very quiet and respectful and take NO PHOTOS. Well, we attached ourselves to a tour group and ducked into the viewing room. It was a group of fifteen-or-so Russians who couldn’t have cared less about the rules. The very loud tour guide described the scenery, and the gist of her talk was ‘Americans are all so wealthy, they can afford to have buildings like this everywhere’.

supreme court building

The security guard in front of the Supreme Court got extremely nervous when I laid down on the steps to take photos.

the northern end of the tidal basin

The cherry blossom festival was at its peak that weekend. We couldn’t have been there at a better time. It was warm, sunny, and crowded. So unbelievable. If you ever have the opportunity to be in D.C. at that time of year, you must go. You won’t regret it.

My photos can’t really do it justice.

One of the places we saw that day was the National Gallery of Art, which I’d always skipped before. The regular collection wasn’t terribly thrilling, except for the impressionists. Also, they had an exhibition of Cézanne’s work in Provence that was very cool to see.

I should also mention the food that day, since it was beyond awesome: one of my favorite DC restaurants is Andalé, totally incredible Mexican food. Before dinner, we wandered and shopped in Georgetown (mmm, Diesel), and then had dinner at Papa Razzi, to which I had been before. The food was great and the drinks were better. I rode back to the hotel on the metro with my head on my knees, giggling.

edgar allen poe house

Did you know the Baltimore Ravens are named for the poem? It had never occurred to us. So, Edgar Allen Poe’s house is in kind of a dodgy neighborhood. The rest of the townhomes are boarded up, but I guess they’re doing a lot of ‘renewal’ in the area. Which is code for ‘fixing things up and selling them to white people for a lot of money’.

I stopped to use the bathroom at a gas station in this neighborhood. The supernice guy at the counter passed me the key, which was attached to a spatula, through the bulletproof-glass double-plate window and pointed towards the back room. I had to roll a mop-bucket away from the door first. There was blood on the wall.

I hope I didn’t get herpes in there.

The harborfront area in Baltimore has been very much renovated in recent years and looks identical to the tourist-zones in any other city: Honolulu, Santa Monica, Houston, Chicago. It’s bright and depressing.

We drove back to the district and the parents dropped us off at the National Museum of Health and Medicine at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. We had to go through security, which included undercar-mirroring and ID checks. It was awesome. My dad, a former federal agent, got really squirmy about it.

The museum is located a couple blocks inside the complex. It’s a very unassuming-looking building. We went inside and the dudes at the counter took my picture and made me a sticker-badge. I fell in love with them immediately, because they were super-laid-back Latino guys with gothic-script tattoos up their forearms. I bet they and the army guards didn’t have much to say to each other. They were giggly, and we stood around talking with them for a while before entering the museum, which we had decided to visit for the sheer creepiness factor. It’s very highly rated in Roadside America.

lincoln’s bullet

these masks represent the expression on the faces of people who have been through chemo

Because they’re really creepy, I’ve put most of the photos from the museum over here. I’ll warn you that they’re pretty icky and include a lot of dead, malformed fetuses. If you have a low threshhold for gross, I’d skip it. FYI, the ones at the top are now officially known as the SKELETON BABIES FROM HELL.

Oh, despite what the tour books may tell you, the museum is only about 6-8 blocks off the metro. They warn you to take a bus or cab. You should only do this if you’re lame, because it’s an easy walk.

In the evening, we had dinner at Rosa Mexicano, an even better Mexican restaurant, known for their pomegranate margaritas. Hey, I discovered that I liked good tequila. And that, rightfully, is the end of THAT particular story.

fdr memorial

I had never seen the FDR memorial, either. It’s very extensive, and very serene. Also, it’s surrounded by cherry blossom trees, on the south side of the tidal basin.

in the breeze, the petals were falling like snowflakes

the parents!

not a great photo, but i don’t think many people realize you can see the capitol all the way from the tidal basin.

african-american civil war memorial

We ended the day with the other building of the National Gallery of Art, and saw an amazing Dada exhibit. It gave me fond memories of my Russian-constructivist days.

In the afternoon, we headed to Reagan airport to catch our flight that was delayed by over 6 hours because of a huge storm. It left at the last possible minute before cutoff, and we got home around 12:15am.

I skipped over a ton here, but I think at this point I’ve seen pretty much everything in Washington DC. It’s an odd city. However, the cherry blossom festival is absolutely worthwhile. Therefore: SEE IT.

[If you want to view the entire Flickr photoset for this trip, here’s the link!]

Since we only had a 4-day weekend in the Bahamas, I booked us the earliest flight possible: 5:15am. That meant getting up at 3:00, but it would get us into Nassau by noon. The flight to Atlanta was uninteresting; the one from there to Nassau put a little fear in our hearts as apparently Delta is in the habit of overbooking every single flight ever. When we got to the gate there, they were offering people vouchers to be bumped. We finally got seats assigned, but they were separate.

I ended up as the exit row girl, bravely offering my services to save everyone’s life in case of a water landing. Stephanie ended up in the back row between two of the nastiest dudes on the planet. They were part of a group of five who were going to the Bahamas to celebrate a 50th birthday. These five very large men were already drunk and offensive, asking the flight attendants for help with their safety belts. Stephanie had the window seat, but the guy who had claimed it wouldn’t give it up; he insisted she sit between them. She spent the next two hours trying to keep from vomiting in disgust. I, of course, was happily oblivious, peering at the ocean from above.

clouds over the atlantic ocean

I never realized how close the Bahamas are to Florida. I was also really surprised to see the color of the ocean along the coast of the islands. I expected it would look like Hawaii, but it’s totally different.

providence island from above

We flew over Grand Bahama and were shortly over New Providence Island. The island isn’t very big at all; it’s only about 20 miles across. We landed and climbed out of our little plane onto the tarmac (something that will always be immensely charming to me). I waited for Stephanie to exit the jetway, irate. She was preceded by the slimy guys, who were oozing the scent of alcohol and sweat.

We went through customs and found our shuttle to the hotel. Though the airport is only 12 miles from Nassau, the drive through town takes forever. Our driver, Charles (‘in charge’), told us that the roads hadn’t changed since colonial times: narrow streets, sharp turns, driving on the left (as Charles put it, “the left side is the right side, the right side is suicide”). Add to that the fact that half the traffic is made up of jitneys (little buses) and minivan-taxis, and driving there is insanity. There’s no way I’d rent a car there.

Charles in Charge forgot that we were staying in Nassau, so he went right across the bridge and started dropping people off on Paradise Island, so we got a free tour of the resorts. Of course, we didn’t realize he had passed our hotel until we actually left Providence Island. He realized his mistake and got us on another bus (driven by Frankie) that was headed back across the bridge. Of course, Frankie had to make a few stops, too. We quickly learned that Bahamaians have a very, very different concept of time. ’15 minutes’ is code for ‘a half hour, if you’re lucky.’

We checked into our hotel and headed into downtown. It was in the mid-70s and sunny, that warmer-climate sun that I’ve started to crave on a regular basis: the kind that requires those not-from-there to wear sunscreen at all times. We walked up Bay Street and peeked into a few tacky tourist shops before finding lunch at a second-story restaurant with a patio overlooking Bay Street.
Another discovery we made quickly, but not unexpectedly: it’s hard to be vegetarian in the Bahamas. It’s all about seafood. We picked the only thing on the menu that didn’t include meat: grilled cheese. We listened to a couple Canadian guys macking on two cruise-ship employees at the next table while we ate and watched the activity on Bay Street.

nassau parliament

We decided to vaguely follow the walking tour in the travel guide to get a sense of Nassau, except they forget to have street signs a lot. Once we figured out the scale on the map and realized that everything in downtown is within about 6 blocks of everything else, we were set.

palm trees and blue sky!

We walked up and down Bay Street, saw all the parliament buildings (they follow British law, so it all seems a little more formal than in the U.S.), and then headed uphill to find the Queen’s Staircase.

‘the most famous sign in the bahamas’

We found a set of stairs that didn’t really seem to be anything spectacular, except it took us up to the top of the hill to Fort Fincastle. It was so similar in looks to the citadel in Budapest, it was freaking me out, except for the absolute lack of snowstorm. There was a drive circling it, and the back portion was lined with little carts selling souvenirs. It was some really weird deja vu.

We decided that probably wasn’t the correct staircase, so we went back down to the bottom and noticed what looked like a ravine to the right of us. We looked down into it and found what we were looking for.

queen’s staircase

We climbed up and down the stairs and declared the Queen’s Staircase mission complete. The stairs go from downtown Nassau to ‘Over the Hill’, which is the area where people actually live, outside the touristy areas. Not that Nassau itself is super-touristy; there’s Bay Street and the wharf where the cruise ships dock, but apart from that it’s mostly just a regular city one would expect on a little island: it’s poor, run-down, and dirty. Which I like, because that means it’s authentic. It’s the kind of place that would make my mother very uncomfortable, clutching her purse in fear.

We went back down the hill to Bay Street, then walked down to Prince George Wharf, where the cruise ships hang out, in the harbor between New Providence and Paradise Islands. What should we find there but Starbucks?

We sat there on the balcony watching the ships and the people walking up and down to the Straw Market. We were tired, having arisen at 3am, and we were very confused about the time. We knew we were in the eastern time zone, but weren’t positive that they followed daylight savings. It was either 5 or 6pm. Stores were closing, but the ferry was still running, so we figured it had to be almost 6.

We walked back to our hotel and looked through the book to find a place for dinner. We weren’t sure where most of them were located and didn’t want to take a taxi or walk too far in the dark (the travel guide only warned us not to about 40 times), so we decided to check out the restaurants at the British Colonial Hilton a few blocks down the street. Our hotel was across the street from the beach, so every time we walked along it, one of the women permanently stationed there offered to braid our hair, and some guy offered to give us a free tour of Atlantis, presumably in exchange for being sold timeshares.

We went to the fancy restaurant at the Hilton. We’d have felt really out of place there, except everyone else was dressed in semi-beachwear as well. The food wasn’t great, but it was easy. And I got to try Kalik, the Beer of The Bahamas. Which was really good stuff.

By the end of dinner, we were giggly and sleepy. We walked back to the hotel, and stopped short as we turned the corner into the alleyway: there were three wild dogs there, chasing each other. We had a moment of fear, but the dogs ran past us without paying us much heed. We went to bed early and slept hard.

Friday morning, I awoke at 5:30 because the sun was already up. We put on bathing suits and sunscreen under our clothes and went to breakfast in the hotel. From the dining room there, we could watch the cruise ships pulling into the harbor.

A shuttle came to pick us up to take us to the harbor on Paradise Island, and we were not surprised to see that it was Frankie again. Watching Frankie drive, I was surprised we arrived anywhere safely; he only seemed to be watching the girls on the street, turning to look back at each of them as we passed. We got a tour of the Paradise Island hotels again, and then he dropped a busload of us off at the marina.

on the catamaran

We boarded the boat and went up to the top deck, even though it was only in the 70s. There was sun, dammit, and we were going to enjoy it. We laid in deck chairs and watched the islands disappear into the distance as we went out to sea.

It took about an hour to reach Rose Island, a little sliver of land that seemed to have only one property on it apart from the tour company’s outpost. On the side where the boat docked was a stairway leading down to a little inlet, which opened out onto the reef where we could snorkel. The other side of the island was a beautiful white-sand beach lined with palm trees with hammocks. On the top ridge of the island was the large deck where they served lunch. They had bathrooms, changing cabanas, two bars, and an equipment house with snorkels, sea kayaks, and floaty things for kids. That little island was hooked up.

island dog

We got masks and snorkels and headed down to the inlet. The water was cold, but it was just a matter of dunking a couple times and yelling loudly to get used to it. A couple showed us how to use the snorkels correctly; they didn’t allow flippers because they damaged the reef.

snorkeling

I thought it would be really disconcerting to breathe underwater, but it was fine. We could even talk to each other through the snorkels. We both had trouble getting the mask to seal completely, so water would slowly seep up around our noses as we swam. It didn’t really bother me to have water in the mask until it started fogging over, and then I discovered the real fun when I went to empty it: for some reason, whenever I came out of the water, I’d automatically breathe in through my nose. Salt water up my nose and out my mouth; I nearly threw up (we called it chumming the waters). After doing that three or four times, I finally managed to force myself to not breathe in while I ripped the mask off my face. YUCK.

Besides that, though, I loved snorkeling. It was amazing. Yeah, I know all those fish I see in aquariums actually live in the ocean, but I didn’t expect to see them right there. I didn’t see fish at first, and then I started to notice them hanging out in the shelter of corals, looking at us. Then I saw them everywhere. We saw friendly blue fish and nervous green fish. We saw eel-like fish peeking out of holes in the coral. We saw purple fan coral and yellow brain coral. I was experiencing the Discovery Channel live. When they called us for lunch, I didn’t want to go.

Here are several of the shots I took with my disposable underwater camera. The composition isn’t great, but I was kind of wearing a mask at the time. If you look closely, you’ll see a bunch of fish.

one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen

rose island (reef side)

We had lunch up on the deck, from which we could see both sides of the island. It was really windy, but the sun was warm. We ate beans and rice, bread, and bananas from a giant pile of fruit in the center of the complex. We took advantage of the ‘unlimited free wine’, which was served from gigantic glass jugs (but was totally boxworthy).

perfect beach

After lunch, we went down to the beach side of the island. The waves were huge. I stood in the surf laughing my head off as each one hit me and I stumbled to stay standing. After getting knocked down twice, I followed Stephanie down the beach to explore.

exploring the beach on rose island

She disappeared on one of the secluded beaches down the shore; I decided to head back and lay in the sun. A couple guys from New York were swimming nearby, but otherwise we had the whole thing to ourselves. Right as she got back, it clouded over, and even rained for a few minutes. We gathered our things and wandered around the island for a while, then finally decided to hang out in hammocks. A bunch of the older people from the boat apparently spent the afternoon on the deck drinking the unlimited free wine, which seemed kind of silly to me when there was ocean and palm trees and hammocks to be had. You can sit on your own porch and drink cheap wine whenever you want, really.

in a hammock

The sun is out in full force until around 3:30 or 4 in the Bahamas, and then clouds start to come in the closer it gets to dusk. Stephanie insisted on riding on the top deck of the boat again on the way back, even though it was cold in the wind, without the benefit of the sun. I was wearing my bathing suit, tshirt, board shorts, hoodie, and I had wrapped myself mummy-style in my beach towel, but I was still cold. I demanded to know why we always have to be hardcore (even though I already knew the answer). We didn’t go downstairs until it started to rain.

The entire group of 25 or so were down on the first deck. The female half of the couple who had given us snorkeling advice was beyond drunk, presumably on unlimited free wine. She was demanding loudly that her husband get her another beer, that she needed help in the bathroom, and that she really really wanted to hold one of the New York couples’ babies. She sounded like a loud, whiny four-year-old, and it was something to behold. New York guy came and talked to us for a while, and he was drunk on unlimited free wine, too. There was a dad dancing in a really frightening way with his teenage daughter at the back of the boat. So, boat ride back to Nassau? Quite a spectacle.

We got back to Paradise Island, and everyone shuttled back to their hotels, saying bye to everyone else as they left. All the old people were pals, and as each couple got off the bus, the others would review their life stories out loud. I was glad we were the last ones off the bus.

We hurried to change at our hotel, because we wanted to go back to Paradise Island, but we weren’t sure how late the ferry ran. The sign said 6, but that was Bahamas time, which meant ‘whenever we feel like it’. My hair was turning blonde, and was completely straight from swimming in the ocean, but it looked awesome. It’s unfortunate that I cannot reproduce that look at home, but there is sadly no ocean about.

We walked down to the dock and waited for the ferry. It was about 5:45. At ten after six, we gave up and walked up to Bay Street to get a taxi. It costs $8 plus the $1 bridge toll to get from downtown Nassau to Paradise Island. The fares are set by the government because they used to have so much trouble with tourist-overcharging.

paradise island

We planned on exploring Paradise Island the next day, so that night we were just in search of dinner. There were four or five restaurants in Atlantis, but they were all really upscale and we were underdressed. We walked the length of the resort, then followed signs pointing to restaurants that were located outside; they turned out to be located in Marina Village, a cute little walk lined with shops that really, really reminded me of Downtown Disney.

We picked a restaurant called Bimini Road, and it was exactly the right choice. I fell in love with our server right away, an older woman who called us ‘honey’ and ‘baby’ (of course, everyone in the Bahamas calls you ‘honey’ and ‘baby’, but from her it was actually charming). She put a basket of plantain chips on the table, and we ordered drinks: I had an orange mojito I’m still fantasizing about to this day, and Stephanie got the pina colada she’d been wanting since we got there. I had a mushroom wrap with taro chips that was awesome. We stayed there a really long time, for once appreciating the fact that everything moves at such a leisurely pace there. I had a drink with rum and tamarind that I could barely touch, so Stephanie played wounded soldier: no one left behind. We tottered back towards Atlantis, weaving through a bunch of women dressed like showgirls, representing the Junkanoo Parade later that night.

crazy glass sculpture at the atlantis casino

I wanted to play video poker in the casino for a while, because I’m totally cheap and $20 lasts forever in that game (in Vegas, you can sit there for two hours playing $20 and get $25 worth of drinks, just FYI). The machines didn’t take Bahamian dollars, so I played the $6 American I had on me. I while later, I cashed out with $10. Oh, I am a high roller indeed. IN YOUR FACE, ATLANTIS!

We went out front of the resort to get a taxi back to Nassau. Our driver introduced himself as Gilbert, and proceeded to ask the usual questions: where we were from, how long we’d been there, first time in the Bahamas? By the time we got to the other side of the bridge, he had cranked the music as loud as he could, and announced that we were riding in The Party Taxi. For a minivan-taxi (as all taxis are in the Bahamas), it was pretty pimped. He even had XM radio.

Gilbert next announced, “Did you know that it’s legal to drink and drive in the Bahamas? We never have any alcohol-related accidents here because they don’t test for it!” He asked if we wanted to party, and made a move to pull over in front of a liquor store. We said no, no, we were tired and going back to the hotel. He tried to convince us otherwise. Gilbert liked to party. Everyone in the Bahamas liked to party. He had a cold six-pack of Kalik up front, and a case in the back. Gilbert was prepared for ANYTHING.

His conversation got more and more suggestive, and I could tell Stephanie was about to throw punches. I, however, was in hysterics. Gilbert was trying SO hard. He had his routine down. And as long as he got us to our hotel and didn’t take us to an alley to rape us, he could talk about it as much as he wanted.

I asked him a bunch of questions to try to distract him. We talked about the clubs downtown. He said they were frequented by an equal mix of tourists and locals; he liked to go there because he preferred white women. He then made some statement about why he preferred white women, but luckily it was drowned out by the music and I missed it. He tried his best to convince us to stop somewhere with him, but I told him we weren’t up for partying. Stephanie said she wanted to go to bed, so he announced that he could hear her bed calling his name. Gilbert was AWESOME.

We got to the hotel, and he opened the door for us. As I handed him his ten bucks, I went to shake his hand, because every shuttle-and-taxi driver there shook hands. He grabbed me instead and hugged me; I moved to allow him the least body-contact possible, and as I did so, he swung around and kissed my neck. He handed me his card, and told us to call if we wanted to have some fun tomorrow.

And that, my friends, is the last time I saw Gilbert. But if you want to have some fun in the Bahamas, he’s your man.

Saturday morning, we got up and walked downtown. We got coffee, and since breakfast food is hard to find, we stopped into the supermarket. I got a banana and some apple-and-sultana-filled crackers called ‘Go Ahead’ that I ended up buying a ton more of and bringing home. YUM.

straw market

We braved the straw market, which even without a hundred tourists inside was chaotically crowded. It was the typical souvenir schlock, but there’s always something charming about the constant pestering to stop and look, the ‘baby’, ‘honey’, and ‘beautiful’. I found a big straw bag to tote my hoodie and travel guide around in, and offered the boothkeeper $8 for it. I didn’t realize til later what an awesome beach bag it is, too.

carving a parrot

We shopped up and down Bay Street, then walked all the way down to East Bay, about a mile from downtown. We went down under the Paradise Island bridge to Potter’s Cay, a market made up of booths selling seafood and produce. The mail boats make their deliveries down at the end of the dock, so the items for sale at the market are truly fresh off the boat. Apparently, most of the restaurants buy their supplies there.

fresh conch: this guy asked for a hug for this photo

Their most popular item is conch. You can get conch in endless forms everywhere in Nassau, and several of the booths were serving it at picnic tables out front. We looked at all the booths and headed towards the East Bay side of the bridge, looking at the harbor.

this thing goes in the ocean?

A couple blocks down, we reached our destination: the Poop Deck. Yes, we totally went there because the name made us laugh every time we said it. And also because it got good ratings in the travel guide.

the poop deck

We got there at 11:40, and the guy there told us they didn’t serve lunch til noon. We asked if we could hang out, so we ordered drinks and waited. The restaurant looked out on the harbor and Paradise Island.

kalik: the beer of the bahamas

We ate a small lunch, because there wasn’t much on the menu that wasn’t seafood. I had a coffee with rum, because I’m still nostalgic about comfort coffee in Prague. We left the place giggling and headed back towards the bridge. Because we’re hardcore, we had decided to cross to Paradise Island (PI, for those in the know) on foot.

look hard at this photo to see a sunken ship, a sinking ship, and a bunch of cruise ships docked at port.

paradise island bridge with the famous mail boat

paradise island from the bridge

We headed east on Paradise Island, towards the portion that was not part of Atlantis. I was glad that the map’s scale was a little off, or we wouldn’t have walked it in the heat; it was quite a ways further to our destination than I expected. We passed the entrance to the only public beach on the little island, and headed up towards the One & Only Resort, which hosts the Versailles Gardens.

the cloister

At the top of the hill at the south end of the gardens lies the Cloister. It was imported piece by piece from France in the 1920s by William Randolph Hearst, but not reassembled until it was purchased by the A&P heir and placed on that site. They didn’t have any instructions for putting it back together, so they guessed.

the cloister

It was a remarkably serene and beautiful place, and seemed so in a more authentic way than the rest of the island. Everything else there is so manicured and well-maintained, it has an air of unnaturalness to it. Some people enjoy the luxury and exlusiveness of those fancy resorts, but I am not one of them. I like authenticity.

harbor from the cloister

We walked down through the Versailles gardens, which reminded me a lot of some of the gardens near Lake Harriet, only much more over-the-top. Some of the statues were beautiful, and they were all very different from one another.

water lily

in versailles gardens

versailles gardens with cloister

um, fdr.

We tried to cut through the One & Only Resort, but were denied. We went back to the main road, and turned at the public beach sign. Near the entrance was a neverending line of taxis, and a woman directing us to the beach. The path was lined with cotton trees, covered in puffs of cotton.

public beach on paradise island

We didn’t have our beach stuff with us, so we didn’t spend much time there. The waves were even higher than they were the previous day on Rose Island. There was a huge crowd of college kids sitting on the steps to the beach bar.

We walked over to Atlantis, this time to actually see the resort, since everyone makes such a big deal of it. It’s very much like one of the fancier Vegas casinos, Caesar’s Palace or the Bellagio. I wanted to get a peek at the beach there, but it’s nearly impossible to get anywhere on the beach side of the complex without proof you’re a guest. We had the sense that we’d be thrown in the brig if we tried to slip past security.

yachts parked in the marina

We went back down to Marina Village to cool off and relax. We had been in the sun for several hours, and were feeling it. Stephanie got ice cream, and I got iced coffee. We sat outside on the wall and watched the passers-by, gawking at the insanely hootchie outfits on some of the women. Again, I was reminded of how much Atlantis is like a Disney property: it’s totally perfect and clean. Bright colors, friendly staff, the smell of a lot of money. Considering the conditions in Nassau, it’s kind of ridiculous. It’s like it’s there to shelter people from the reality of a poor place.

We walked around the outside of the building, and ended up back in the casino. We headed out the other side towards the beach. Finally, we saw it. They had a huge complex set up, but of course it was just for guests. The rest of us could walk along the balcony and peer at it, however.

the lagoon at atlantis

While we were standing there taking photos, a woman came up and poked at my arm. She asked, “Are those yours or henna?” I said they were mine. She launched into a monologue about all the great tattoos she’d seen there on the island. She was drunk off her ass, and amusing as hell, as was her husband, Curtis.

We were expressing some frustration over not being able to get nearer to see the beach, so they assured us that there was a way to do it if you knew how. They had managed to sneak onto the beach earlier in the day. They set off with us in tow, following the balcony towards the far end. Along the way, we saw a guy feeding the huge fish in one of their several aquariums.

atlantis: the bridge-like room costs $2,500/night. minimum 4-night stay.

It soon became apparent that Curtis and Jess really had no idea where they were going (even though they were convinced they knew). We didn’t mind, because they were fun to talk to. We walked up and down, and finally it occurred to them that they had probably come into Atlantis from the beach itself, walking down from the public area. It was time for them to head back to their cruise ship, so we said goodbye.

We wandered around Atlantis a while longer, then decided to catch the ferry back to Nassau so we didn’t have to pay for a cab again. The ferry only costs $3 each way, and it’s awesome to be out in the harbor with the cruise ships.

cruise ships

They crowded as many people on the little ferry as possible, and everything seemed a little rickety. I had the seat closest to the back (the stern, duh) so I could take photos as we left. I leaned back against the railing to turn around, and it gave. It was held onto a post by twine. Thankfully, I did not fall off a ferry boat into the ocean.

nassau waterfront

straw market with cruise-people

The big cruise ship days in Nassau are Tuesday and Saturday, so the straw market was mobbed when we reached the dock. As we had several times already, we walked past Señor Frog’s, the notorious spring break bar originally from Mexico, and I asked Stephanie jokingly if we were going there for dinner. She yelled NO again, as always.

We walked back to the hotel and got our beach-stuff so we could enjoy the last bit of sun before the clouds came in. We sat on the beach across the street from our hotel and watched cruise ships leaving port. We gaped in disbelief as this monster of a ship backed out and did a 180 in what seemed to be a way-too-small harbor. It followed the pilot boat out into the ocean, and was on its way. We decided we really needed to take a short cruise sometime, because places like the Bahamas seem especially geared towards that kind of vacation. The hair-braiding woman came over to offer her services just like she’d already done four times since we arrived. We again declined. Someone tried to sell us timeshares, just like they’d already done. We got out of it by telling him we were leaving the next day.

We went back to the hotel and perused our guide, looking for dinner options. We didn’t really want to take a taxi again, lest we encounter Gilbert, nor did we want to pay the $20 to get to PI and back, since we’d just come from there. The British Colonial Hilton was nice but boring, and the several restaurants along Bay Street were primarily seafood or take-out. I said, “So, it’s Señor Frog’s, then?” She didn’t think I was serious. She should’ve known better, since we have a longtime history with this kind of thing: ‘Want to go to THAT tacky tourist restaurant?’ Joke about it 50 times, and all of a sudden you HAVE to go, just because you’ve talked about it so damn much.

we know how to party.

Oh, we made the most of our visit to Señor Frog’s. We ordered normal-sized drinks, but they arrived in yards anyway. We watched a bunch of drunk 19-year-olds dancing on tables near the bar, and girls with the worst voices ever singing karaoke just to get free shots. We ate bad Mexican food that somehow tasted really good. I went to the bathroom at least three times, and the last time I opened the stall door to find the janitor standing there with a mop and bucket. He said, “Oh, sorry, baby.” No problem, dude. I’m kicking it tacky-tourist-style at Señor Frog’s!

We laughed our way out of the place, me clutching most of my second yard of whatever it was. We walked back to the hotel, and met a guy along the way who asked us the usual questions. I suppose I felt some apprehension for a minute: drunk American chicks walking alone along a beach in Nassau. But he was friendly and wished us a good trip home. My drink went into the trash can in the hotel untouched, although I offered it to Stephanie (from the trash can) several times and SHE WOULDN’T DRINK IT. I loudly proclaimed from the bathroom that I was having the best pee of my life, and then I very soon after collapsed into bed.

Sunday morning, we walked downtown for breakfast. This was a challenge, as nothing was really open yet. I had a cappuccino, but I really really wanted more Go Ahead and the grocery store was closed. It was to be expected that things would open late on Sunday in the Bahamas.

well-fed wild dogs in nassau. they mostly hung out at the ‘beachside jerk’.

We walked around Bay Street. About a quarter of the shops were open. I was looking for my usual Christmas ornament souvenir, and we wanted food to bring to the airport in case there was nothing there. We knew we’d probably be sitting around for a while.
We found a pharmacy that sold food and souvenirs. No ornament, but the double-bonus on the Go Ahead. Between the two of us, we bought nine packages to bring home. Score!

We walked back to the hotel, said no to the braiding lady for the last time, packed up, and checked out. A shuttle arrived with a driver we did not know, and that was surprising. I was kind of hoping for Frankie. There was another couple waiting for the shuttle at our hotel, too; the girl looked and acted exactly like Kaia from The Real World, and the guy seemed sullen. There was apparently some ticketing mixup, so she wasn’t going home until the next day. The guy sat down in front of us and was silent.
We made a stop at another hotel on Cable Beach. The people weren’t standing there, so the driver went in looking for them. Our shuttle companion spoke up, without even turning around. He said, “Are you going back somewhere with snow, too?” All of a sudden, we loved him.

We compared vacations, because he had booked a similar package to ours. He was going back to Chicago, and seemed very unhappy about it. He told us he was on a Delta flight to the middle of nowhere; it was the same as ours, to Cincinnati, only his left 15 minutes beforehand.

We had been told multiple times to get to the airport two and a half hours early, and that was for good reason. There was a long line along the front of the building for security, and most of the airlines’ desks were crowded. We were relieved to be able to get seat assignments for our connection back to Minneapolis, considering the trouble we’d had getting there. We got in line for the first security scan before customs, which took close to half an hour.

We cleared customs quickly, I had my suitcase searched, then we stood in another line going upstairs, which turned out to be for yet another security check. I’m not sure why we had to have our stuff xrayed so much, but whatever. We were in the gate area more than an hour before our flight, so we could relax.

The gate area is all in one building, and it was mobbed when we got there. There was a shop, a bar, and a restaurant, so we decided to have a real lunch, if by ‘cheese sandwich’ I mean ‘real lunch’. As we were sitting down, we heard the announcement: our 2:25 flight was delayed until 4:30. Awesome.

Since we only had a 50 minute layover in Cincinnati to begin with, I knew we had a problem. I called Delta, and they said to talk to the people at the gate. Well, everyone was talking to the people at the gate, because it was chaos. All their outbound flights were overbooked. Half of them were delayed. The 2:15 flight to Cincinnati that Chicago boy was on was boarded and then unboarded because they put them on the wrong plane. Our plane was experiencing ‘mechanical difficulties’. We finally got to speak to the guy at the gate, and he told us to come back after the other flight was boarded correctly. We really wanted on that flight, but it was already full. We decided to take the next logical step: have a drink at the gate and enjoy ourselves. That’s exactly what we did.

We went back and talked to a different agent later. He spent about half an hour trying to get us on any flight he could find that would connect back home, but it was impossible. I couldn’t really be crabby with him, because he did his best and I could tell it was pissing him off that he couldn’t work something out. So at 4:30, we got on our return flight to Cincinnati, knowing we’d be spending the night there.

The flight was insane. We quickly discovered that the slimy, nasty dudes from the flight down were on that 48-seat plane with us. They were now accompanied by a couple girls in their early twenties, who they were very happily groping. The smarmiest one of all was seated in the exit row, with the loud, drunk blonde chick next to him. The flight attendant came and told her she had to move out of the exit row, because she didn’t trust her to perform her duties in case of emergency. Personally, I didn’t trust the nasty dude, either. He was clearly disappointed when she moved.

She sat a few rows up, bitching about what had happened. The flight attendant went back up to her and told her she was THIS close to being kicked off the plane. That seemed to shut her up.

In Cincinnati (the airport is actually located in Kentucky, so from then on it became Kentuckinnati), we had the pleasure of being in line behind the Detroit Mafia at the desk where they were handing out hotel vouchers, or trying to make arrangements for people on other flights. The dudes were seriously considering the airline’s offer to fly them to Cleveland and get them a cab to Detroit; they wouldn’t just get them a rental car due to liability. They finally grudgingly agreed to take the vouchers, and of course we were extra thrilled that meant they’d be staying in the hotel with us.

We got our vouchers for the hotel, meals ($7, good anywhere in the airport, whatever), and our boarding passes for the flight the next morning. We hopped on the shuttle with the Detroit Mafia. We cringed as we listened to their conversation. They were truly disgusting.

In the lobby, they all insisted on separate rooms, because Delta was paying for them. They ate a bunch of the hotel cookies and wandered in and out of the lobby, watching some game on TV. They’d occasionally try to talk to us in the lamest way possible: ‘Hello Kitty, huh?’ ‘Yep.’ They asked where they could get dinner, since it was after 9. The girl at the front desk said that the Marriott down the street was the only nearby restaurant, which meant we were going to again end up in the same place. I was dying to ask her to get us a room far away from them, but they were there the whole time. GROSS.

We managed to get to the restaurant long before them, and were almost done with dinner before they showed up. They were seated far away, so at least we were spared that unpleasantess. We ran back to the hotel, called work to tell them we’d be late, and spent probably the only night of our lives in Kentuckinnati.

We got up and shuttled back to the airport, in fear we’d end up with the Detroit Mafia again. Thankfully, they were nowhere to be found. Our shuttle driver was awesome; he told us all about his days traveling around the country playing soccer, and the couple times he’d been to Minneapolis. For once, we met someone who didn’t first associate the Mall of America with our home. He dropped us off and we checked in with no problem. The flight even seemed to be on time!

Since we had some time to kill, we spent our Delta vouchers on breakfast and coffee, and shopped in the airport. I made a beeline for the Kentucky store, because who doesn’t love Kentucky? I got me a tshirt. The girl behind the counter asked where we had come from, then said, “What’s the Bahamas?” Ugh.

When we got to the gate, they were again asking people to take travel vouchers to be bumped, because the flight was overbooked. There was no way in hell we weren’t getting back to Minneapolis on that flight, though. Well, maybe for $500. Apparently you can’t bargain with the gate-people, though.

Dear Delta, you suck possibly even worse than Northwest Airlines, but your in-flight snacks are WAY better. Keep up the good work! Love, Jenni

my straw-market bag!

best bahamas kentucky souvenir ever!

For Bertine’s birthday, we had originally planned on going to Vegas. Then we decided on Paris. Then some poking around my favorite travel site led us to decide on a package deal to Budapest and Prague. Obviously, this was going to be the best birthday ever.

Here’s the entire Flickr photoset from the trip!

Read from the beginning below, or jump to each day:

• 11/20: Leaving Minneapolis
• 11/21: Amsterdam to Budapest
• 11/22: Budapest
• 11/23: Budapest
• 11/24: Budapest to Prague by train
• 11/25: Prague
• 11/26: Prague
• 11/27: Heading home

We hopped on a plane at 6pm Sunday night. Unlike on domestic flights, they did a good job of keeping us distracted. We had pop, snacks, then a full meal. Now, I regularly broadcast my hate for Northwest Airlines, but they did have awesome service on the transatlantic flights. I had an Indian dish with chickpeas for dinner. Bertine ate 1.5 pieces of cake before almost getting sick.

I’m terrible at sleeping on planes, but I did manage about an hour and half straight over the north Atlantic. I fell asleep against the window and woke up thinking I was going to freeze to death.

descending into amsterdam

We saw the sunrise over Scotland, were served breakfast, and I got sniffly as I saw the coast of Europe for the first time in over 10 years.

The Netherlands

We landed right on time in Amsterdam. The pilot deserves a reward for the least noticeable-landing ever. It was amazing.

We were at the back of a DC-10, so it took some time for people to exit. A couple of jovial Dutch men were chiding the Americans for always being in such a hurry, but we had a connecting flight to make in 50 minutes, and they hadn’t been able to issue us boarding passes in Minneapolis. We rushed to the transfer desk, and everything was taken care of efficiently. I wish we’d have had more time to wander in the Amsterdam airport, because it rules.

sculpture in schipol airport

We hurried to our gate, passed through security, and boarded a Malev jet bound for Budapest.

hungarian national airlines

On the flight, they gave us a little snack box with cheese, tomatoes, peppers, herbed butter, and hot rolls, as Hotel California played on the loudspeaker. They broadcast Hungarian TV, and I read an extensive article about Prague in the in-flight magazine.

From above, Hungary looks a lot like Wisconsin. We landed and got to deplane on the tarmac (something which will always be thrilling to me). We boarded fat buses and rode to the terminal. Right away, we got out about a million forint (well, like 10,000) and went to buy Budapest Cards. Besides discounts on attactions, they covered all our transportation for three days, which would make getting around on the metro and trams really easy.

There was a 40-minute wait for the shuttlebus to the hotel, so we decided to be brave and hop the city bus to the metro station. We really had no clue where the bus stopped or where we were going, but we followed everyone else’s lead and just rode to the end of the line.

tram

The bus dropped us off at Köbönya-Kispest, the end of the blue metro line. All three metro lines converge at one station (Deák Tér), and the metro logo looks very similar to the Transformers logo, so that central station was quickly renamed ‘Decepticon Central’.

Magyar is a unique language, very much unlike anything I’d ever studied. Therefore, most signs and instructions were meaningless; I expected to be able to detect some German or Russian in it, but it was completely different. Therefore, we just made up names that sounded similar. Our directions would be something like, ‘OK, we’re going to get on at Nougati, transfer to the red line at Decepticon Central, then get off at Moscow Station.’

We exited the metro at ‘Georgie’ and immediately saw a sign pointing right to the exit for our hotel. Score! Gate 1 had set us up at the Hotel Ibis Váci Út. We checked in, dropped our stuff off in our room, and headed back out to see Budapest. It was around 2pm.

anna, a cafe on váci útca

We headed down to the main shopping area (I have my priorities) on Váci Útca, a pedestrian-only thoroughfare in downtown Pest. We stopped for cappuccinos and sandwiches at Anna, and were soon to learn that restaurants in Budapest do not take credit cards, no matter what the travel guide tells you. We wandered around the shops, stopped into H&M, and walked down to the Elizabeth Bridge. It was just starting to get dark.

royal palace and chain bridge from the elizabeth bridge

We went in and saw the Inner City Church, whose walls were right up against the road leading over the bridge. We had to climb down below the bridge to enter it. We wandered back towards Váci Útca, and Bertine convinced me for the first time in many, many years that we should go into McDonald’s. Why? Because it was a McCafe. It had a separate section just for coffee and pastries.

Things I started learning about food in Hungary, and probably Europe in general: there’s no such thing as low-fat. There’s whole milk and butter. I didn’t worry too much about it. It was simple enough to find sugar-free stuff, and vegetarian food was easy to come by. One of the things I loved right away is that their pastries aren’t like ours: they’re hardly sweet at all. I got to try everything.

We got lattes and a pastry to try, and went to sit in the back corner and study our map. A group of men came and sat down near us, and one leaned over and asked if we spoke English. I got to talking to him while Bertine buried her head in the travel guide, worried he might ask her to marry him or something. He told us he was from Tunisia, and had been in Budapest for a year. It was very hard to find regular work, because even though they wanted people who spoke English well, one also had to speak Magyar, which was apparently very difficult to learn. He said the society was very closed, so the people he knew from North Africa stuck together. I asked if he planned on staying there, and he said no, nor did he have an interest in going to America (he feared the same social exclusion, and the fact he’d probably be treated like a terrorist). He was considering going back to Paris, but never back to Tunisia, because he couldn’t make a living there. I asked him to describe it. He told me, ‘you know the old movies with the desert, and the beautiful oasis? It’s exactly like that.’ Wow.

In the span of 20 minutes or so, I heard basically his whole life story, and a bit about his friends who were with him there. The only thing that made us a little nervous was when he told us, ‘you know, sometimes you have to go out and get a little crazy!! You know?’ We didn’t want to know. After a bit, we said goodbye to our Tunisian friends. We each paid 50 forint to use the bathrooms (complete with receipt), and left the McCafe. The Tunisians waved to us from the window, and Bertine said, ‘I can’t believe we’ve only been in Budapest for a few hours and already you’ve found a Tunisian boyfriend.’

st. stephen’s basilica (e.g. the church of the holy hand)

We decided to wander around and see what we could see in Pest, heading up towards the parliament building. It was cold, but not intolerable. We came across St. Stephen’s Basilica, which I had marked in the travel guide as a must-see because they had a relic: the mummified right hand of King István. Even more exciting than the hand itself was the fact there was a penny-smashing machine outside where one could obtain a 1-forint coin with the Holy Hand impressed upon it. Neither of us had the appropriate coins, so we made a very important note to return later.

We walked up around the massive parliament building and saw about 20 different statues and monuments: Attila József, Imre Nagy, Ferenc Rákóczi, the prince of Transylvania (although we mostly knew of these people from their metro-station namesakes). We walked down to the Danube again, then headed back in the direction of our hotel. We stopped at a little convenience store for pop and gum, and the shopkeeper spoke no English, so we had to figure out currency ourselves quickly, and I got to utilize the only Magyar word I knew: köszönöm (‘kurssurnum’, thank you).

nyugati pu

Near Nyugati Pu, the beautiful central train station, we explored a big department store, then headed across the street to Westend City Center, which was promptly renamed The Mall of Hungary. Because, seriously, it was that big.

We would mainly duck into malls and shops not just because, well, we love shopping in new places, but also because they were warm and tended to be open much later than anything else. Things close really early for those accustomed to the 24-hour lifestyle, so we would time our touristing to get to the attractions early in the day, and do shopping and such in the evening after dark.

We saw a restaurant right by the train station that looked interesting, but decided to walk back towards our hotel to see what else we might encounter. After several blocks, we realized it was a lot further than we thought, and it was cold. We hopped on the metro and took it back to Nyugati Palyaudvar (code name: Nougaty Pie Aardvark), and went to NOA Cafe for dinner.

Like many restaurants we saw in Europe, even though it was well below freezing most days, they still had outdoor seating. This place had a big screened-in patio with large heaters. It was almost tropical. We ordered drinks and I was happy to see they had a few different varieties of grilled cheese, so I ordered the camembert and pears. We watched server-girl dancing to November Rain. When our meals arrived, we discovered that grilled cheese didn’t mean ‘grilled cheese sammich’, just ‘grilled cheese’. It was a big hunk of cheese, fried potato balls, pears, blueberries, and fresh mozzarella. It was so good, if surprising.
After dinner, we stopped at the gigantic supermarket downstairs in Nyugati station for water and such, giggling our way through the store as we examined all the weird Hungarian products. We hauled our groceries back to the hotel on the metro, exhausted from all the walking.

breakfast at the hotel ibis budapest

We got up early and headed down to the lobby for breakfast, which was included with our trip. I figured it’d be the typical hotel breakfast of a bagel and old banana, but they knew how to do it up right with the massive breakfast buffet. We had about 15 choices of fresh bread, cheese, fruit (I loved the stewed plums), unsweetened yogurt with granola, eggs, and coffee with little cancer pellets (techically aspartame). I grew very attached to the pear mug that I was to use three times while we were there.
We took the metro to Moscow Station, got really, really turned around, and finally figured out the direction of the castle. We climbed a very steep hill and went through the Vienna Gate into Old Town, which is enclosed by the castle walls.

mátyás church

We toured Old Town and ended up at Mátyás Church, a massive Neo-Gothic building. The Fishermen’s Bastion behind it offered incredible views of the city, especially of the Pest side and the Chain bridge.

fishermen’s bastion

fishermen’s bastion

There was also a large statue of St. Stephen (Istvan), the first king of Hungary, the very same one whose holy hand lay mummified right across the Danube, and was soon to be immortalized on a smashed forint.

parliament from the fishermen’s bastion

house decoration in old town

old town

chico’s replacement

chain bridge

palace

CUTE!!!

looking towards the elizabeth bridge, gellért hill on the right

the chain bridge with parliament in the background

looking out the window of the fortress at gellért hill

funicular and tunnel through castle hill

We walked down the long cobbled road descending from the castle and caught a tram to the Gellért Hotel, home of the most famous mineral baths in Budapest. It was starting to snow big, fluffy flakes as we arrived; we decided to climb the hill first and then warm up afterwards at the hotel if we needed to.

good old st istvan again

We started up the hill and stopped briefly to see the Cave Church, which wasn’t terribly interesting because it was fairly new. We climbed further up the hill, and the snow was getting heavier. Eventually, we were pretty much hiking up this hill in a snowstorm, and proved once again that we are hardcore.

me, being totally hardcore on gellért hill

It was a hard climb. It was no Mount Hollywood or Sliding Sands Trail, but it was hard. And it was cold. And did I mention blizzarding? We decided to call it Budapest Mountain.

liberation monument

We stopped for a second to take photos for a couple Australian guys who were equally hardcore at the top of the hill, and then proceeded up to see the Liberation Monument, which, from a distance, appears exactly like the waving girl statue in Savannah. ‘Liberation’ in this instance refers to Budapest’s ‘liberation’ by the Soviets in 1945; I heard a rumor that the current construction is to sandblast off remnants of Soviet decor, but I’m not sure if that’s true or not.

We went up into the citadel, and stopped in a little shop to get out of the snow. We found some really cute souvenirs, and bought about a third of the eight-million (well, 60) postcards we had promised to people back home.

we were here.

We started back down the other side of the hill, moving very slowly so as not to slip, tumble, and become giant snowballs rolling down Gellért Hill and plunging into the Danube. We found our way back to the other side of the hill through some scarily-remote areas, and ended up near a really awesome-looking playground with several long slides.

bertine making movies inside the tube-slide [here’s the movie!]

Well, of course we had to do it, even if it meant we ended up with big wet spots on our asses.

We went into the Gellért Hotel on the pretense of looking for lunch, but really we just wanted to use some swank (and free) bathrooms. We walked around the area and saw nothing interesting for lunch, so we decided to take the tram up to Víziváros or Water Town (thus named because it used to flood all the time). There were a few restaurants right near the station. We walked into one, stared at the menu board for a few minutes, then walked back out. We had absolutely no clue what any of it was. Next door, we found a cute little pizza place. It quickly became known as the Luce of Budapest.

Another thing about dining in Europe: they’re just not in a hurry like we are here. Meals take forever. They think it’s unusual if you don’t order appetizers, entrees, and dessert or coffee. You have to catch your server’s eye to get the bill, or they’ll just leave you sitting there until the place closes. Also, there’s no such thing as water on the table. You can order bottled water if you want. Coke Light comes in tiny bottles. Cappuccinos and lattes come in single-shot cups. I’m not sure how Europeans aren’t dying of dehydration on a daily basis, because we were suffering.

We had super-good pizza and coffee, and heard Green Day, Ludacris, and Gorillaz while we were there. We stopped at a pastry shop for cute little breadlike things and took a turn through the mall, which was mostly uninteresting. At that point, we decided it was time: we needed to go to the mineral baths in Budapest.

gellért baths complex

We metro’ed back to the hotel and got our bathing suits, because we’d be damned if even Hungarians were going to see us naked in public. We went back to the Gellért Baths and paid 2400 forint (about $13, discounted with the Budapest Card), and were ushered into the ladies’ half of the complex.

The baths are monstrous, and set up identically for men and women. The only shared area is the swimming pool and large whirlpool. We walked timidly into a giant locker room with cabana-like changing rooms. Two very authoritarian women (Hungarians tend to hold onto their Soviet habits, it seems) were at a table folding aprons and towels. I approached one and asked where we should go. She said, ‘Go upstairs and change!’ I asked, ‘Where do we get towels?’ She said, ‘AFTER!’

We went upstairs and again stood there timidly until another authoritarian woman in a terrycloth smock and slippers came by to direct us to a cabana. We both went in, unsure of whether we were supposed to have our own. We changed and stood there complaining about our lack of towels; if there’s one thing I’m really not thrilled about, it’s parading around in a bathing suit. Even if I am in Eastern Europe.

The lady came back and gave us a token to denote our cabana. She pointed us back downstairs. We approached the front table again and I asked the lady what to do next. I tried handing her the token, and she grabbed the strap of my bathing suit and tied it on. She then grabbed my arm and led us to the showers. She said, pointing, ‘Mineral bath to the right, swimming pool to the left.’ And she disappeared.

We showered and headed into the baths. There were two large pools with tile benches around the edges, so we sat shoulder-deep in the bath. One was 36 celsius and the other was 38 (about 100F), so we sat in the second one. It was so relaxing. It wasn’t very crowded at all. About a third of the women were in bathing suits, a third topless (generally the younger, cute girls), and the other third bare-ass naked; definitely the ones you really didn’t want to see naked, either. We did our best to not look, because it was occasionally alarming. At one point, one of them bent down and squatted to pull up her suit; Bertine was scarred for life.

After relaxing in the mineral bath for a while, we decided to see what was in the other really ornate room with the showers. On one side, we found a steam room, which was 45-50C (about 120F). It was painful to be in there. If you sat on the bench, which was above the vents, you burned your ass. If you stood, your head was in the much-hotter area. I found my best bet was to stand there, not moving, and just focus on my breathing. I felt claustrophobic from the heat and strong sulfur smell, which burned my nostrils. I could only manage about a minute in there before I had to dash out.

On the other side of the fancypants showers was the cold bath. It was a little round thing like a jacuzzi, but it was 18C (64F, although it felt like ice water). Bertine said it was the thing to go dunk in there after the sauna, so I set one foot in it and decided there was no way in hell anyone was getting me in there. We were standing on the steps giggling about it when a topless lady pushed past us to climb into the bath. As she walked down the steps, she started laughing with us, and gestured for us to follow. She grabbed her boobs and bounced up and down, dunking in the water, saying, ‘Wooo! Wooo! Woooo!’ Well, at that point, we couldn’t not do it. We climbed in. We dunked the same way she did it. I wanted to die. We went running back to the warm bath as fast as we could.

After a while, we decided to check out the swimming pool. It’s in this insanely opulent room with marble and mosaics and huge pillars that go into the pool. We joined the others swimming slow laps, Soviet-style. There was even an arrow telling us which way to swim. After doing several laps and talking, we were hanging out in the shallow end, about to head back to the mineral bath, when something happened. All of a sudden, the entire shallow end turned into a giant jacuzzi. Everybody rushed to grab their own vent on the floor of the pool, and we all just bobbed around there while the pool bubbled. IT WAS AWESOME.

I really wish I could’ve taken photos in the baths, because they were amazing. Even the pictures I’ve found online don’t do it justice. We got chased out by a security guard when trying to take photos afterwards.

We went back to the baths for a while, took another turn in the steam room and cold bath, and were finally so prunelike we decided it was time to go. We showered and were still confused about where the towels came from, so I consulted the unfriendly matron at the front again. She led us to a room where a woman was passing out bath sheets. Not towels, but sheets like you’d put on a bed. We had to swear and cross our hearts and hope to die that we wouldn’t take them back into the baths. We wrapped ourselves up and went back to our cabana to change.

We took a tram, then the metro, back to the Church of the Holy Hand to obtain our critically-important smashed forints. Afterwards, we stopped at the big Szupermarket at Nougaty Station again to pick up treats for the people back home: liquor (pear brandy and Zwack Unicum), Kinder eggs, and other candy, as well as water (since we had no intention of dehydrating like the Europeans do).

the mall of hungary (westend center)

We threaded our way back through the mall of Hungary to have dinner at a place we’d seen the night before, called Leroy Cafe. The food was amazing. We had broccoli and gorgonzola crepes, eggplant dip, vegetable toast, cream of asparagus soup, coke light, and cappuccinos.

On the way back to the hotel, we almost got lost in the metro beneath Nougaty Pu. We made it back about 8:30pm and were absolutely exhausted again. We both laid down and promptly dozed off. I woke up an hour later to take a shower, and Bertine was talking in her sleep. All night long, I heard her rolling over to drink water. That hydration thing in Europe is serious business.

budapest has TWO suns.

Wednesday morning, we finally saw the sun in Budapest. I was thrilled.

me in heroes’ square

We took the metro to Hösök Tere, or Heroes’ Square. Because it was sunny, it was also a lot colder than previous days.

heroes’ square

bertine and her serbian boyfriend in heroes’ square

Heroes’ Square was full of busloads of Japanese tourists. I took pictures of them while they took pictures of the monument. While I was doing so, Bertine wandered off and found herself a Serbian boyfriend. It was totally love at first sight. She might deny it, but I know the truth.

ice rink in city park

We walked around the city park, which was created for the Millennium Celebrations in 1896. It had a World’s-Fair feel to it. Lots of lakes and paths, reproduction architecture, and tons of art-deco.

ducks trying to keep open water

vajdahunyad castle

We picked up the rest of the 60 postcards at a little shop. I was just happy to be inside, warming up.

statue of anonymous

There’s something about the Statue of Anonymous that fascinates me. I later bought a really nice black-and-white photo of this to put up in my apartment.

lake heated by mineral springs near the széchenyi baths

Near the back of the park, they have a big amusement park called FunFair, and a creepy funhouse-style thing with clowns on it. In the center of the park are the Széchenyi Baths, which looked to be an even larger complex than Gellért.

We stopped at a bar for coffee (they don’t really have coffeeshops in Budapest; you can either go to a cafe, or the bars all seemed to have cappuccino), then we continued on past the Zoo. Even in the cold, vendors had little booths set up on the sidewalk. We shopped a little and headed back to the metro.

the great synagogue

We went to the Opera stop, and got really, really turned around. I headed off the wrong direction from the Jewish Quarter, and we walked several blocks. After finally finding a main street, Bertine set us straight. We walked what felt like a million more blocks in the cold until we found the Great Synagogue.

inside the great synagogue

It’s a very impressive building, with higher security than we’d seen anywhere but the airport. We toured the synagogue, then circled the block to see the holocaust memorial out back.

holocaust memorial

looking toward the chain bridge from gellért hill

parliament

calvinist church

i call this ‘the vagina of budapest’, and also ‘the big o’

We headed back across the river to Water Town for lunch. Because it was so cold and we’d seen pretty much all the outdoor attractions, we decided to go to the National Gallery. First we saw the rest of the churches we’d missed in the area, and rode the tram up the river. We had lunch at the Luce of Budapest again (I’m all about being a regular wherever I go), and then went back down to castle hill. This time, we took the funicular up the hill!!

looking east from the palace

The Hungarian National Gallery shares the palace with a few other museums. It took us a little while to locate the entrance. We went in the back door and were flagged down by authoritarian coat-check women. We left our stuff with them and toured the gallery.

inside the hungarian national gallery

One of the most interesting things I saw at the gallery was the collection of Gothic altarpieces. I’d never really seen anything like them before, and they sure knew how to celebrate Jesus in a spectacular way. Unfortunately, I didn’t get great photos of such. I also liked the modern art exhibits, because I always like the modern art.

Of course, we had coffee at the little cafe and used the bathroom no fewer than 12 times, because it was free. There were a few really annoying Americans there; one of them seemed confused that they didn’t take dollars. I really hope we don’t come off like that. I doubt it.

We shopped at the gift shop, where I found many awesome things I needed, as expected.

looking north from the palace

the palace (housing the hungarian national gallery)

the chain bridge at night

We once again climbed down the steep hill from the palace and took the metro back to our hotel. We wrote our 60 postcards (Bertine saved us by bringing pre-printed labels), packed our suitcases, and I reviewed the Prague travel guide. We went downstairs and had dinner at our hotel, and once again realized the inevitability of cheese. We ate so much cheese on that trip. Not that it wasn’t good. It was great.

Afterwards, we went and sat in the hotel bar for a while, just because it was really funny to hang out in the Hotel Ibis Budapest bar. I had pear brandy and Bertine had a beer. We watched a Hungarian soap opera on TV, and I interpolated (i.e., made up) what was going on. It was something involving drug lords, Fight Club, and lesbian romance. Resident Evil came on, and watching it in Magyar was entertaining for probably only 15 minutes. The movie is stupid in any language. We went back upstairs and collapsed.

keleti pu

I was awake at 4am, unable to sleep. I was having anxious dreams all night about something going wrong on the way to Prague. We got up at 6:30 and had the usual (awesome) breakfast. I watched a group of Japanese businessmen pouring kimchee on their eggs, and mixing up ramen. One of our favorite games in the hotel restaurant was to pick out the Americans. It was harder than I expected.

We checked out and took the metro to Keleti Pu, our train station. We had no clue how early one had to arrive for a train, assuming it was much like flying. We were wrong, because we were there way too early. We rolled our bags up and down the station, figuring out how things worked. We had about an hour before our train would even show up on the board. We checked with the ticketing lady to make sure we had everything we needed, and we were good to go.

In our wandering, we found the post office. We walked in and were instantly confused. None of the signs had any meaning. We finally found the right window, and waited in line forever. When we got to the window, I was worried we might get beaten up for having so damn many postcards. But the girl there was very helpful. She totalled it all up, we paid, and she pulled out 3 different stamps and an airmail sticker for each postcard. I wanted to die, but I figured we’d found a good way to kill an hour. Only she didn’t give us the postcards back. She said she’d do them herself. Wow.

We went back and sat on the platform with our suitcases. Since the station is open on one end, it was a little cold. I tried not to doze off. I sat there wondering whether they’d have food I could eat in the dining car, and whether there would actually be a dining car at all. I didn’t know! I’d never taken a train across Eastern Europe before. I decided to stock up just in case.

I wandered off downstairs to one of the million bread/pastry shops in the metro station, and returned proudly carrying a pretzel larger than my head. I was set.

our train car

Our train had come up on the board, so we rolled our way down the track and found the car. We had seat reservations, so it was easy. The train’s final destination was Zoo Station in Berlin, and according to the labels, we’d have our compartment to ourselves until halfway through the trip. Rock.

It was a six-seat compartment, with two rows facing each other. There were racks overhead for luggage, a door that slid closed, and mirrors above the seats. I discovered later that the mirrors made finding your compartment by the people in it really confusing. I’d see Bertine and go to walk into one compartment, when actually she was in the last one. Train funhouse!

the obligatory crappy mirror shot

We sat in the station for about half an hour while the train loaded, and then we were off. I was way excited about things like using the train-WC (we had started calling it the WC since arriving there), and visiting the dining car. I’m a sucker for novelty.

sitting at the station

Shortly after the train left [train movie], a guy came around checking our tickets. After that, passport control came through. They were usually a team of two, one with a stamp for the country you were exiting, and one with a stamp for the country you were entering. You could hear them coming by the chunkCHUNK of the stamp, as they progressed down the hall. Having looked at the railroad map beforehand, I figured we’d be entering Austria briefly to go through Vienna, then heading into the Czech Republic. Imagine our excitement when we looked at the passports the officer handed back to us, and realized we were in Slovakia.

dining car

Train travel is slow, and the train rocks in such a way that it makes you really sleepy. I spent the time alternately knitting and dozing. Though I hate sleeping on airplanes, it was easy on the train. I saw the towns of Bratislava and Brno, cities I’d heard a lot about in Russian classes but never expected to see. Most of Slovakia and the eastern part of the Czech Republic looked like it was made up of little fairytale villages.

We got some new compartment-friends in Bratislava. One of the guys put a big bottle of beer up on the shelf, where it proceeded to roll around a lot. There was also a teenage girl, who Bertine saw being waved-to by her mom from the platform. She looked very nervous, and didn’t say a word until we reached Prague.

We decided to try the dining car shortly after Bratislava. The guy who worked in there was awesome, and we loved him. He was so over-the-top. He didn’t want to serve me soup, because it came from a packet. I got the cheese plate instead, because, you know. Cheese. Bertine got paprika chicken, and we had Czech beers. As we were eating, we crossed the border into the Czech Republic. Passport control came through the dining car. In the back corner, we were alternately amused and annoyed by a group of crusty British guys who were bitching about not having smokes. One of them said, ‘We just went an entire country without a cigarette!’ At one of the stops, they lined up at the door, waiting for the second it opened. The train would only stop in small towns for perhaps a minute, and people would rush to get on or off. They sprang back into the dining car with a pack of cigarettes they had purchased in a mad rush from one of the booths at the station. So funny.

We paid for our food (note: the dining car is really expensive, and they made some extra money by obviously rounding up in the conversion from euros to, in our case, forint) and headed back to our compartment. The guys had gotten off the train, so only the girl was left. We spent the rest of the trip to Prague dozing off, and peering at the travel guide.

We arrived at Holešovice Station around 5:30pm. As before, we first stopped at the cash machine. Prague only had single-day travel passes, so we had to get change for the metro ticket kiosk. We stopped into a little shop to buy pop and food, and I realized I could just buy a ticket there. We were on our way to the hotel.

Thing is, I didn’t know exactly where the hotel was. It was called Hotel Ibis Smichov, and there was a Smichov station, so that seemed obvious. The directions in the guide were as if you were driving, so I had to guess. In the metro station, we were immediately stopped by a transit cop, who checked our tickets. He told me I needed another 10Kc for my suitcase. We decided to play dumb-tourist and risk it anyway.

We took the metro to Smíchovské nádraží and walked out onto the street. We didn’t see the hotel, so we walked around and tried to find street names we’d recognize from the tiny map I had. We saw a couple signs with promising-sounding names, but had no clue where we were. We were freezing, and it was dark. I tried to call the hotel, but couldn’t figure out how to dial a local number; all I knew was how to call the US. OSKAR, the local cell service, kept telling me ‘the number is being cheeky’. The neighborhood was pretty dodgy, and I was tired of rolling my suitcase over cobblestones. We finally went back to the metro station and Bertine managed to find a nice woman who knew where were were headed. She told us our hotel was actually at the previous station. We were relieved.

We hopped back on the metro with no ticket, hoping we wouldn’t get caught. We got off at Andel, and walked out to find ourselves in an infinitely nicer part of town. It was all fancy shopping and bright lights. For a second, it struck me as downtown Las Vegas.
While we stood at the metro exit looking for the street name for our hotel, a guy came up and asked what we were looking for. We told him, the Hotel Ibis on Plzenska (which I later realized was ‘Pilsner’, like the beer). He looked excited and waved us after him. I muttered to Bertine that we needed to watch out for that guy. He rushed us around the corner at the main intersection and headed down Plzenska. We could see the hotel from there, so we stopped and thanked him for his help. I dug quickly in my wallet and came out with a bunch of coins. I handed it to him and he said no, and pointed at my wallet. I said, ‘Sorry! Thanks!’ and we hurried off. I’m pretty sure he probably ended up with more Hungarian forint than koruna.

hotel ibis smichov

We were so happy to find that hotel. We were even happier at the location. It was right by a big mall with lots of restaurants (immediately named ‘The Mall of Prague’), and a brand-new Humanic store that Bertine was positive would open up just for us. We checked in and dropped our stuff off in the room, then immediately headed over to the mall to find dinner.

big flush, little flush

thanksgiving dinner

We called the folks back home to wish them Happy Thanksgiving, and let them know we’d made it to Prague and were beyond thrilled to be there. We circled the mall and headed up to the food court, which was way nicer than the usual American version. We decided on the Turkish place. Yes, we had falafel, hummus, Turkish coffee, and chai for Thanksgiving. We rule.

giant nutella display

Afterwards, we stopped at ‘The Target of Prague’, i.e. Carrefour. It had a huge grocery on the lower level, and everything else on the second floor. We marveled at the crazy European candy, and decided to come back for souvenirs before we left. We went back to the hotel and went to bed shortly after 9pm.

We woke at 6am; it was still dark out. Breakfast at the Hotel Ibis Praha Smichov was even better than in Budapest, because they had all the same food and Laughing Cow cheese. We ate, bought metro passes, and took the metro to Staromestská, or Old Town Square. Bertine led the tour. I photographed. The cold was especially painful that day, for some reason.

the church of our lady before týn

They were setting up booths in old Town Square and Andel, near our hotel, for Christmas. We didn’t really know what they’d be used for, but we were hoping they’d be open before we left.

church of st. nicholas

Old Town Square made me really, really happy. It was one of those places that’s so essentially Prague. It’s perfect.

štorch house

powder gate

astronomical clock (old town hall)

We positioned ourselves in front of the clock on Old Town Hall at 9am. Every hour, it puts on a show; a procession of apostles comes out and music plays. My favorite figures on the clock were Death (a skeleton, of course) and The Turk.

window on old town hall

9am also meant the clock tower was open. We went inside, climbed a bunch of stairs, and then took a magical round glass elevator to the top. The first thing we did, even before checking out the view, was smash some pennies in the machine.

Prague is all about red tile rooftops, winding streets, cobblestones, and church spires. It’s amazing from above.

celetná street

looking across the vltava: prague castle on the right

church of st. nicholas

church of our lady before týn

old town square, setting up for christmas festival

looking south

We circled the clock tower and peered at the city until we were freezing. We took the magical round glass elevator back downstairs and set off wandering.

u rotta

marionette shop

Most of the shops didn’t open til 10, so we followed the guidebook and read about the sights, noting the stores we wanted to come back to. We went into a few churches, and by then I felt like I’d already been in so many churches I couldn’t keep track of them anymore.

I was excited to see a Tesco, so we went in and checked it out. It was kind of like a multi-level K-mart. Not terribly exciting, but we at least warmed up. Afterwards, we headed back towards Charles Street in Old Town, where all the shops were. We found a little candy store that had coffee, so we stopped there for a while.

The people who worked there were so awesome. I had a cappuccino, and Bertine had tea. When we were done, we picked out a bunch of treats for people at home, and then each bought a bar of chocolate. That was the first time I’d ever had sugar-free chocolate that actually tasted like the real stuff.

karlúv most (charles bridge)

Charles Bridge was one of the things I was most excited to see, so of course when we got there I started crying. I can’t help it!
Even in the cold, the bridge was busy, and lined with stands selling prints, photos, and crafts. We each picked out a photo of Prague that we liked. I took about 300 pictures.

little quarter and prague castle

st john nepomuk: rub him for good luck

We found the frieze depicting St John Nepomuk being tossed off the bridge (they really seemed to like tossing people from things in Prague). Tradition states that one should rub him for good luck, so we did. He’s all polished from all the good luck he’s been distributing over the years.

people seem to pet the dog too!

grand priory mill (little quarter)

little quarter bridge tower

We walked down to the other end in the Little Quarter, then headed back across to Old Town. I took 300 more photos, and the bridge got even more crowded in the ten minutes since we’d gotten there.

Also, we couldn’t resist talking about the movie XXX and Vin Diesel a lot while we were there. I mean, it was all about Prague. Shut up.

the vlatava river

For some reason, my phone only picked up T-Mobile while we were in metro stations, and on the Charles Bridge. Otherwise it was OSKAR. I was happy when I could get T-Mobile, because that meant I could send photos to the interweb, and let people know we were alive. I sent four of them from the bridge.

musicians on the charles bridge

st norbert, st wenceslas, and st sigismund

We went back to Old Town and headed back into the main shopping area. By now, it was BUSY. There were tourists everywhere doing their tourist thing. It was hard not to trip on the cobblestones when walking in a crowd, I noticed. On Charles Street, I had to buy a bunch of tshirts and other things by Fun Explosive. It’s a miracle I only bought five shirts, because I wanted fifty.

We did much, much shopping in old town, then found a place for lunch in a side alley off the main square. It was a little Italian restaurant called Giovanni, and in keeping with all our dining experiences, it was awesome. As was the decor: gold-flake ceilings, velvet drapes, mirrors everywhere, an eclectic mix of tables and chairs. I ordered a four-cheese pizza with brie, and Bertine had penne. I got ‘comfort coffee’: a cappuccino with SoCo. SO AWESOME.

vegetarians are HOT.

kafka street

After lunch, having been sufficiently warmed-up, we decided to take our numerous shopping bags back to the hotel. We turned right around and headed back to the same metro stop, but this time turned the other direction into Josefov, the Jewish Quarter. Prague’s Jewish ghetto was enclosed and didn’t become an actual part of the rest of the city until 1850. It’s very crowded.

maisel synagogue

old-new synagogue

The Old-New Synagogue was built in 1270; it’s the oldest in Europe. It’s also the home of Rabbi Löw, who created the Golem and supposedly hid it in the synagogue.

Man, I was really excited about the Golem. That quickly became my second-favorite thing about Prague, after the Charles Bridge. At the gift shop, I got little Golem figures, and a book illustrated by the Fun Explosive people. I really dug the Golem. I couldn’t stop talking about it.

old jewish cemetery

old jewish cemetery

The Old Jewish Cemetery is unbelievable. It’s hard to capture in photos just how crowded it is. It’s about the size of half a city block and has around 12,000 gravestones, but there are supposedly 100,000 people buried there. They charge a lot to visit it, but it’s absolutely worth it.

rabbi löw’s tomb

people leave pebbles and coins as a sign of respect

kafka statue

We walked around the rest of Josefov, getting lost a lot. There’s something about the combination of winding, dead-ending streets and alleys and the fact that it takes a lot of work to actually find street signs that made getting around in both cities a challenge. Organic cities are always hard to navigate. We finally found the Spanish Synagogue, but I was more excited about the Kafka statue. Kafka is definitely my third-favorite thing about Prague. It makes me happy being somewhere he was.

wenceslas square

We took the metro over to Wenceslas Square, which is best known for being the site of anti-Soviet riots. We were pretty exhausted from walking in the cold all day, so we decided to stop at McDonald’s and go to the bathroom. For some reason, I guess I’m OK with going to McDonald’s in Europe. We got Coke Lights and Spinach and Cheese pockets, which were dangerously close to real food. We warmed up. I went on a long journey to find the bathroom, because they’re hardly ever nearby. This one was out back in a courtyard. I paid my 5Kc, and got a McDonald’s receipt in return.

We set off up Wenceslas Square, then started to realize maybe we weren’t in the right place. We turned around and walked back. At McDonald’s, we turned left and then found ourselves in Wenceslas Square. Which really isn’t much of a square at all, it’s just a really wide, divided street with a bunch of stores. It was somewhat similar to the area near our hotel: fancy shops and restaurants. There were carts and booths set up in the middle, and it was quite crowded.

jan palach memorial

We walked down to the end near the opera and museum, and stopped to see the memorial to anti-Soviet protesters. Standing at the high end of Wenceslas square, overlooking the crowd, we decided we were cold and worn out. [And, according to this movie, I really wanted coffee.] We hopped on the metro at Muzeum and rode back to Andel.

dinner!

We decided to buy food and hang out in our room instead of dining out this time. We stopped at the Target of Prague (Carrefour), and scoured the grocery. For ourselves, we got a few kinds of fresh bread, cheese, snacks, Squash-brand cherry vodka (which was only twice the price of pop, as liquor is super-cheap in Europe), Coke Light, and a beer. We also bought a ton of candy to bring back home to everyone. Kinder eggs are always an especial favorite.

We brought our haul back to the hotel, noting on the way that Humanic really looked like it might be open in time for us to shop there. We ate dinner, drank Coke Light with cherry Squash, and watched the Simpsons dubbed in German. Which was hysterical. My favorite part was Mr. Burns answering the phone, “Oy-oy.” We also watched parts of Aliens in Czech, Big Brother in Czech, and then MTV Made in German. We almost died when we saw it was a story about a kid in Minneapolis wanting to be a rapper. They showed scenes of Uptown, and his hip-hop mentor was wearing a Pizza Luce tshirt. So bizarre.

We slept hard that night in our twin beds with the blankets so narrow you had to be careful your ass didn’t hang out.