Scotland, Prague and Dubrovnik

Scotland is one of those places that can look amazing...if you get lucky (and it's not cloudy or raining)...of course the Scottish Tourist Bureau would like you to know that Scotland never looks like this...

and almost always looks like this...

Of course with any trip we had to get our priorities straight and check off the standard stuff...

Cannons!
  This is Mons Meg, she dates from about 1450 and she can fire up to 400 pound balls 2 miles (3.2 km)! Holy Cow!

 Beer...(bitter and twisted anyone?)

Whiskey...this is Scotland...

Sweeties!!! (Scottish Tablet is awesome!  Really it's like eating a block of sugar, it really can't get any better than that...)

Tasty Food (look at the size of that eclair! Jacket potato and haggis anyone?)

Quirky stuff...

This is the Falkirk wheel.  It looks kind of space age but it's a really simple concept, the boat drives in, they close the door and let it rotate by (mostly) using the power of gravity.

This is a deep fried mars bar.  It was an elusive find, eventually some chip shop owner felt sorry for me and deep fried it especially for me!  It used to be ubiquitous to Scotland but now I guess they are geting more health conscious (and apparently it ruins the oil when you batter it) so they are impossible to find.  I must say that a deep fried mars bar tastes better than the non-deep fried version, but then again its deep fried so that should be no surprise!

The highlight of this entire trip was the castles.  The first pictures in the blog are of Edinburgh Castle.  Like most castles it is very old and has evolved over the centuries.  The castles we saw seemed to be built in strategically important areas (read: high).  A small village turns into a fortified town which turns into a castle.  

Edinburgh Castle is located on an old volcanic plug (very old, no volcanoes in scotland anymore) - see how high it is?

Stirling Castle is on a plug as well.  Apart from the great view you hopefully got a decent amount of warning if you need to prepare for an attack.  I'm not sure how much it helped, as most of these castles have changed hands more than a few times, but it couldn't have hurt.

Prague was different from what I expected.  I expected the pretty buildings, the old style architecture, the good food but I guess I wasn't expecting the hordes of tourists or the fact that everywhere you went people spoke at least 5 different languages and you could do everything in english.  Makes for a very easy place to visit, but it kind of feels like you're being lazy.

The main attractions:

Charles Bridge

  go here early in the morning, unless you want it to look like this...

don't forget that you have to touch this if you want to come back to Prague...

Old Town Square (which is pretty if you can ignore the hordes of tourists and chain restaurants)

15th Century Clock (just off old town square - in the picture above its just off to the right)

Wenceslas Square - is really more of a street that starts with a little market and ends at the National Museum

Petrin Hill - if you need to work off some of the tasty food a trip up Petrin Hill is just for you!  There is a funicular, but it wasn't working when we were there so we trudged up the hill and then up the tower. 

The views were worth it though...the monestary with the yummy food is on the left, the castle is in the middle

 

Prague Castle

Prague castle is huge, according to the website its the largest "coherent castle complex in the world", say that 10 times fast...  Most tourist groups we saw must have got the basic ticket, they wandered through the complex without going into most of the buildings.  You can poke your head into the cathedral without a proper ticket but you miss the museums and some of the neat historical stuff.  One saving grace of the entire thing is that you are unable to take pictures inside most of the buildings without a special ticket, this makes the tour go a lot faster!

 

Here is the cathedral...

 

 

This is the silver Sarcophagus of St. John of Nepomuk...

 

 

and some pretty windows.

The food was pretty good in Prague (and - as long as you steer away from the tourist area a bit - cheap! maybe it's just because of where we live but we could have a full meal, drinks and dessert for a lot less than at home).  Being in the downtown area made eating very easy, it's walkable (we didn't take the tram but they are easy as well), there are tons of places to eat around all the "sites", they all have menus in 5 different languages, they all speak english and they all serve tasty stuff.

 

This is a standard meal - goulash and dumplings.  Dumplings here are apparently large chunks of "bread", very different from what I was expecting.

Here again is duck and dumplings with cabbage.  Looks simple and it is, but its still tasty :)

There was all sorts of street food, warm nuts, fried cheese but given the fact that we like to sit down and eat we really only tried this.

This is a Trdelnik.  Flour, eggs, butter, sugar...can't really go wrong.  You can buy them all over the down town area and they taste as good as they look.

 

This is how you cook a Trdelnik.

 

This is Dubrovnik's Old Town (sorry about the clouds...the weather wasn't the greatest when we were there)

From the ground...in the distance you can see Lokrum Island

 

If you are Game of Thrones fans then see if you can recognize these...

There is something about sleeping in a walled old town that is magical (as long as you can tune out the hordes of tourists!).  We were lazy and didn't do much other than sleep in, eat pasta, pizza and seafood and then wander around the old town.  It was wonderful!

The city...

The tasty food...

And the local inhabitants (if you don't like cats you might find dubrovnik a bit strange as they are everywhere).