Walkabout 2009: Dresden

By the time we were done with Prague we still had a few more days in Europe looking at us right in the face. With nothing better to do, and not wanting to take too long of a train ride, we moseyed up to Dresden. We had no idea President Obama was doing the exact same thing.

When we arrived at the main Dresden train station, I immediately commented on the large number of cop cars there. Honestly, I was being snarky and figured there was just a police station near by. That was until we got to our hotel.

We weren't staying in the city center. When I hit Orbitz up for hotel rooms, almost all of them came back at over $200. I didn't know why. I just assumed that Dresden was very popular this time of year.

The tram we took to our hotel gave us our first clue as to what was going on.

But when we got to our hotel we saw this.

The intersection the hotel was on was shut down and a crowd had formed hoping to get a glimpse of the US President. Unfortunately, I guess, this route was a decoy and Barack never showed up.

The next morning, after packing, we were headed to Frankfurt to decompress for a day before our flight home. The only problem was the streets were blocked again.

No problem. There was another train station three tram stops from our hotel. We can either take our train from there (hopefully) or we could take a train from this station to the main one. Either way it was better than just standing around.

We hiked to the train station and just as we were to cross the street to the train station, we were told we could not cross. A friendly police officer informed us that President Obama's motorcade would be passing by in about an hour and that no one was allowed to move until after he's passed.

So I guess we did end up just standing around.

After what seemed to be much more than an hour and enduring a light sprinkle, our friendly Polizie announced, "Here he comes!"

And there he was. What, you don't believe me?


How about now? That's clearly him.


He even waved at us.


And there he goes. Oh, and that's our cop Dominic in the foreground.


And that's the rest of the Obama posse.

Walkabout 2009: Prague

I hate to even admit this, but by the time I got to Prague, I was just about vacationed out. There are only so many centuries old buildings, bridges and statues you can see before you become numb to the splendor. Prague is a beautiful city with an amazing history. Having been virtually untouched by the two World Wars, it is a unique living museum of European architecture.

But I did become numb to it all.

That is until I discovered U Flecku.

Situated literally right around the corner from our hotel, U Fleku is a 500 year old beer house that offers up as genuine Czech experience as I could have dreamed of. Long tables make this place a gathering of people participating in a grand communal ****** rather than just a couple of people at four top talking about that asshole at work.

Oh, and beer -- what kind would you like? Miller Lite? maybe a Pale Ale? how about a strong Belgian ? Too bad!!! They serve one beer -- the same delicious Schwarzbier they've been brewing/serving for 500 hundred years. Oh, they also served a Czech drink called Becherovka. It's a strong spicy drink. While supplies last, I was able to bring home a bottle, so please feel free to ask for a sip.

And on top of all this greatness, there is the food. It is here that I first fell in love with tenderness of the pork knuckle. It was suggested by the Turkish couple sitting next to us out our table. Upon my first bite, I gleefully gave our new Turk friends an enthusiastic thumbs-up.




Unfortunately, we had to leave the next morning -- my stomach yearning for another chance at a pork knuckle.

Walkabout 2009: Paris

After a long night train (11 hours and very little sleep) we finally made it to Paris. Wanting to stay awake as long as possible and to work off some excess energy I suddenly had, I literally walked from the hotel across the street from Gare de L'est to the Eiffel Tower and back. According to Google Maps, thats 8.3km one way. Dang!


Unfortunately, I didn't have a working camera on the first day. I remedied that on the second day by purchasing a battery grip for a mere €200 and took the shit-ton of pictures you can now see at the top of this post.

I had met a waiter in Antibes -- Stefan -- who had once worked as a Maitre D in Houston. Due to a green card snafu, he is now "stuck" in Antibes -- poor guy. But he recommended a night boat ride up the Seine. Well, I'm not gonna lie to you. It wasn't that great. I much preferred just walking up and down the River.

Other Paris disappointments -- The Louvre in general and the Mona Lisa in particular. There are just too many people in the Louvre to enjoy it. And the crowd around the surprisingly tiny Mona Lisa forced me to take pictures of it from a long distance and then just gave up any thought of getting close to it.

Also, when you're not overcome by car/bus/truck exhausts coming from the street you're pulverized by cigarette smoke coming from passers-by and bistro diners.

But despite these minor annoyances, Paris is still Paris and thus is pretty awesome. The food, of course, is awesome. My only complaint being that the options are often overwhelming. Oh, and the waiters can be borderline assholes at times.

And for anyone planning a trip to Paris, beware the Gold Ring Scam. I had this attempted on me 4-5 times. A gypsy will appear to pick up a big gold wedding ring and show it to you. The first time this was tried on me, my spidey sense told me that something was up and just ignored the gypsy. But apparently they will forcefully make you take the ring and expect some kind of reimbursement.

Walkabout 2009: Antibes Wrapup

More random pictures from Old Antibes.



On our final day in Antibes, we biked to Nice and back.


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Walkabout 2009: Day 5

Well, they can't all be great days.

The intent today was to head into Cannes on the last day of the film festival and soak in the city.

Well, there's just not that much to Cannes. Yes it's pretty. But there wasn't much to do unless we wanted to spend a lot of money.

So with some extra time on our hands, we headed over to Nice. Admittedly, we went to Nice without much of a plan. And with the last train going back to Antibes about an hour after we got there. Thus all we did was walk around a little bit around the town near the main train station.

We then got back to Antibes and had dinner at the same restaurant as the night before only this time I had the Mussels. Disappointingly they were not as good as the scallops. But It was still overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. So that's cool, huh?

For dessert we had a crème brulee and threw a Frisbee not quite on the beach since there wasn't a beach there.

Walkabout 2009: Day 3

Well that's just great!

I got up early this morning and wanted to post some blog items and maybe figure out where our next stop might be. So I hop on the Orange provided WiFi. After struggling through their website that was supposed to be English, but was partial still French, I found a way to buy time on their network. I walked through the steps. And at the end was told that my password would be emailed to me.

WHAT!?!?

If I had email access I wouldn't need to buy time from you guys?

Well I bought an hour from the front desk and finally got on for a little bit.

But enough about my internet problems. This was another great day.

We headed back over to the Cathedral after a quick breakfast at café near our hotel. And as amazing as the cathedral is on the outside, it was equally amazing on the inside. How did they have the technology to build this in the 1100s?

Next up, we take the train from Strasbourg to Colmar to take a local train to some of the small wine making villages in the area.

And here's an example of the great luck we've had on this trip after only 3 days. We were originally going to go to Turkheim. But upon getting off the train, we didn't see anywhere to go and quickly go on the train and got off a couple stops later.

We got off the train this time and was greeted with the stench of a freshly fertilized field. Seeing a small village in a nearby hill, we hiked up and found a small winery.

And this is where a good day becomes a great day.

We met one of the owners of the winery who graciously gave us a tour of the building. The winery makes mostly white wines and sparkling wines (not Champagne since it's not in the Champagne region) and a Pinot Noir. She then told us how the village was destroyed during World War I since there was major battle there and also sustained considerable damage during World War II. The winery had mostly shut down well into the 70s making only enough wine for the family that owned it. But things turned around in the 80s and is now thriving from the renewed interest in small label wines.

Interestingly, the owner was recently in Houston trying to find a distributor in Texas. Their wine can be found in Washington, Oregon, Michigan and Massachusetts.

After the tour, we were treated to a tasting. It was a little disappointing that most of their wines were white and neither of us are much fans of white wines. But we did find a nice dry Riesling. But for me the standout wine was the Pinot Noir. I had a visceral reaction upon my first sniff. It was beautiful. And it tasted even better than it smelled.

We bought two bottles of the Riesling and one of the Pinot Noir. We intended to give one of the Rieslings to Vanessa's aunt, but she doesn't like wine. How is that even possible in France???

We headed back to Colmar to find a train to Beaune. But there were no trains or hotels in Colmar. But the friendly ticket agent in Colmar found us a hotel in Mullhouse, so we crashed there for the night.

Walkabout 2009: Day 2

We're in Europe!!!!

And I can't say I'm real impressed with Frankfurt Airport. It reminds me of both Newark and Hobby airports way before they were renovated.

After a lengthy walk from our gate to baggage claim, we thought we were lost. There was an official-looking area that looked abandoned except for a uniformed gentleman that was leaning against a wall appearing to be on break. We asked if this was the way to baggage claim. To which the man replied snarkily, "Well you have to go through us first. ". He then pointed to a beaten-down man that took our passports, stamped them and moved us on our way. It's good to see that after only a couple of years in Germany, JT has made snark all the rage.

The trip from Frankfurt airport to Strasbourg went smoothly, for the most part. We missed our train from Offenberg to Strasbourg, however. Looking at the schedule, the next train was due to depart in a half an hour, so no worries. Well, until it never arrived. And then the next train never arrived. A quick review of the timetable showed that those trains only run on Saturdays and the next train for today was an hour away.

But we did eventually make it to Strasbourg, got our hotel and went site seeing. And while the amazing beauty of a Strasbourg should alone be enough to blog about, the thing that struck me most was that kids are punks the world around. We first observed a table of "Too-Cool-For-School" punks smoking at an outdoor café while drinking their Coca Colas. Ooooh la la. But the topper was seeing about half a dozen punks yucking it up and drinking their Forties while leaning against the Notre Dame Cathedral.

And it was while dining, that Vanessa and I had a conversation about the awesomeness (literally awe inspiring) of the Cathedral. It is both an amazing achievement in both engineering and artistry and taking nearly 300 years to build. To which Vanessa suggested that the only thing close to this she could think of that was close to this were the pyramids of Egypt. To which I quickly replied

"With an almost infinite supply of Hebrew slaves, you can do pretty much anything."

Which became one of our many catchphrases of the trip.

Heading Home

By the time you read this we should be in the air, heading back to Dallas.

I'm sorry that I haven't been able to blog as timely as I had hoped. WiFi in Europe isn't as available as I had hoped. But most of my pictures have been posted to Picasa.

FYI. While it lasts, ask me for a shot of Becherovka. You'll be glad you did.

Day 13 Update

We're heading to Prague tonight and there is supposed to be free internet in the room. Hopefully there will be sufficient bandwidth to upload pictures.

Walkabout 2009: Day 4

Ugh. We spent almost the whole day on the train from Mulhousse to Antibes. By the way, if you want to imagine Mullhouse, think of a French Garland.

No pictures and nothing much to report.

Although the day did end with a nice meal looking out at the Mediterranean Sea. I had the scallops, of course.

Even More Updates

Sorry for the lack of updates and pictures. We are staying at Vanessa's aunt in Antibes. There is only her computer (and its French keyboard) to post updates. Mine currently has no internet and my only camera battery is dead.

But I have spent much time swimming at the beach and eating and drinking what the local restaurants have to offer.

Seriously, old Antibes is about as charming a town as I could imagine. I hope to have more comments and pictures once we get to Paris.

Quick Update

Sorry for the lack of updates. Free WiFi is not as plentiful as I had hoped.

We went to Cannes and Nice yesterday.

At our next hotel I will upload more pictures and blog entries:

Quick Update

I'm sorry that I haven't had the time or even much WiFi to upload more updates and pictures. They will be coming as soon as time becomes available.

Oh, and there is the small issue of my leaving my camera battery charger, my extra battery and my Euro Plug adapter in the hotel in Strasbourg.

We're headed down to Antibes today by way of bullet train. Cool, huh?

Highlights so far - touring Notre Dame in Strasbourg (an really Strasbourg in general) and a personal tour of a winery in Alsace.

Walkabout 2009: Day 1

Bennigans -- The Last Thing I Saw Before Getting On the Plane

There's not really that much to say about day 1. The flight was lovely. The dinner was much better than expected. However, the breakfast was not that great. An omelet is just not expected to sit around for 8-9 hours.