Travel Thread

Lit thread spin-off.

We were planning a trip to Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the summer, though Bonni is now having second thoughts (where second thoughts equals she was distracted by an International House Hunters episode from Slovenia).

I'm headed to Israel in a couple of weeks with the family - first time ever for all of us, very excited.

Trotsky
Lit thread spin-off.

We were planning a trip to Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the summer, though Bonni is now having second thoughts (where second thoughts equals she was distracted by an International House Hunters episode from Slovenia).

Prague is beautiful and not to be missed. Mind you, I was there 20 years ago right after the Velvet Revolution and of course, it's radically different now, but that probably makes it even better. Theresienstadt is also an interesting day trip from Prague.

I was in Bratislava and Kosice a couple years ago. There's not a lot in terms of grand museums or amazing monuments, like Paris or Rome or London, but both are great small European cities - cafe culture, pedestrian zones, etc. And Bratislava is a stone's throw from Vienna or Budapest, both of which are wonderful.

OTOH, if you want to go to Slovenia, that's nice, too. The karst area near Bled is beautiful - a miniature Switzerland. Ljubljana is another one of those small European cities like Bratislava. And then you can drop down to the Croatian coast.

Jeff Hopkins '82

Trotsky
Lit thread spin-off.

We were planning a trip to Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the summer, though Bonni is now having second thoughts (where second thoughts equals she was distracted by an International House Hunters episode from Slovenia).

Prague is beautiful and not to be missed.

Watch your wallet in Prague, especially on that famous bridge (St. Michael's?). Someone in our group had his $$ removed from his front watch pocket. Crowds and jostling make it easy.

Al DeFlorio

Jeff Hopkins '82

Trotsky
Lit thread spin-off.

We were planning a trip to Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the summer, though Bonni is now having second thoughts (where second thoughts equals she was distracted by an International House Hunters episode from Slovenia).

Prague is beautiful and not to be missed.

Watch your wallet in Prague, especially on that famous bridge (St. Michael's?). Someone in our group had his $$ removed from his front watch pocket. Crowds and jostling make it easy.

Also the main plaza with the astronomic clock.

Beeeej
I'm headed to Israel in a couple of weeks with the family - first time ever for all of us, very excited.

It seems like only yesterday I was chatting in #lynah from there.

I'm just back from Albany..............what a beautiful town.

Anyone have a good east coast beach suggestion for the summer? We always go the beach at the end of the summer. Have gone to Cape Cod a few times, Bethany Beach a couple of times and Charleston SC. Need a new destination for 3 young boys (ages 7, 9, 11) and Mom and Dad. Really liked SC, may go back there.

RatushnyFan
I'm just back from Albany..............what a beautiful town.

Anyone have a good east coast beach suggestion for the summer? We always go the beach at the end of the summer. Have gone to Cape Cod a few times, Bethany Beach a couple of times and Charleston SC. Need a new destination for 3 young boys (ages 7, 9, 11) and Mom and Dad. Really liked SC, may go back there.

Assateague Island National Seashore on the DelMarVa peninsula. It's a barrier island that straddles MD & VA. My family vacationed at Chincoteague Island, VA (a tourist town with Assateague a short drive away) every year for 10 years when I was growing up, and a group of CU friends have camped on the MD side for several years. There is state park & a National Park area (with camping) both on the bay & ocean side in MD. Chincoteague, VA is a small tourist town with hotels & restaurants. Lots of nature programs for families out on Assateaugue. Famous for the wild ponies.

[www.assateagueisland.com]

Al DeFlorio

Jeff Hopkins '82

Trotsky
Lit thread spin-off.

We were planning a trip to Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the summer, though Bonni is now having second thoughts (where second thoughts equals she was distracted by an International House Hunters episode from Slovenia).

Prague is beautiful and not to be missed.

Watch your wallet in Prague, especially on that famous bridge (St. Michael's?). Someone in our group had his $$ removed from his front watch pocket. Crowds and jostling make it easy.

The Charles Bridge - Karlovy Most.

Will be visiting Budapest and Vienna, followed by a return trip to Prague, in early May.

I preferred Salzburg to Vienna personally, but that may have had to do with the timing... Austria was hosting the UEFA tournament that week, and there were games there. One of the host site stipulations was that they had to put the public event stuff in the major touristy areas, so imagine all those beautiful monuments and buildings hidden behind beer pavilions and papered over with soccer crap. Argh. The hordes of fans swarming around in goofy nationalist costume was pretty hilarious, though--viking Swedes and bullfighter Spaniards. And the Germans parking their butts in the streets en masse while they poured Sprite into their beer. Good times.

As for me, I'm taking a long weekend in Hawaii at the beginning of May. Got airfare and four nights of hotel for $540, yay! Now all I have to do is figure out how to feed myself out there.

Al DeFlorio

Jeff Hopkins '82

Trotsky
Lit thread spin-off.

We were planning a trip to Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the summer, though Bonni is now having second thoughts (where second thoughts equals she was distracted by an International House Hunters episode from Slovenia).

Prague is beautiful and not to be missed.

Watch your wallet in Prague, especially on that famous bridge (St. Michael's?). Someone in our group had his $$ removed from his front watch pocket. Crowds and jostling make it easy.

I've heard the same thing from several people, but when we were there, we never encountered any problems. Maybe they sensed the Czech blood in me.

Kiawah Island just outside Charleston is great for kids. Lots of rental condos and good rates if you roll the dice and wait till the last minute to book. Also Wilmington, NC. Fewer bugs than Charleston/Kiawah IIRC. Where Kiawah is swamp and alligators and moss off beaten path (but in a nice southern way, not in a Deliverance way), Wilmington is more beach and then in town an arts / music / movies scene.

Killer

Al DeFlorio

Jeff Hopkins '82

Trotsky
Lit thread spin-off.

We were planning a trip to Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the summer, though Bonni is now having second thoughts (where second thoughts equals she was distracted by an International House Hunters episode from Slovenia).

Prague is beautiful and not to be missed.

Watch your wallet in Prague, especially on that famous bridge (St. Michael's?). Someone in our group had his $$ removed from his front watch pocket. Crowds and jostling make it easy.

I've heard the same thing from several people, but when we were there, we never encountered any problems. Maybe they sensed the Czech blood in me.

Or maybe it was because they somehow knew your elynah handle was "Killer" and were scared of you?

RatushnyFan
I'm just back from Albany..............what a beautiful town.

Anyone have a good east coast beach suggestion for the summer? We always go the beach at the end of the summer. Have gone to Cape Cod a few times, Bethany Beach a couple of times and Charleston SC. Need a new destination for 3 young boys (ages 7, 9, 11) and Mom and Dad. Really liked SC, may go back there.

My family goes to Hilton Head every year, we started out by using the time shares then moved down the Island to renting a house and bikes to get back to the more touristy areas.

Trotsky

We were planning a trip to Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the summer, though Bonni is now having second thoughts (where second thoughts equals she was distracted by an International House Hunters episode from Slovenia).

Kyle Rose
Will be visiting Budapest and Vienna, followed by a return trip to Prague, in early May.

Did Budapest and Prague in 2008. Most memorable was the Terezin (Theresienstadt) tour. Our guide Pavel Stransky of Wittman Tours was a survivor of Terezin and Auschwitz. The tour company was also very accomodating - we (two couples) were supposed to go the day before and literally had to cancel at the last minute due to a missing passport we had to get replaced at the U.S. Embassy. If you're going to do Terezin you might want to call Wittman and ask for Pavel (he's still on their website). Even if he's not available, they seemed to be a knowlegeable group and a lot better than the random tour company we had for the downtown Jewish quarter tour.
We were in Prague during the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Czech rebellion (which is why Jaromir Jagr wears # 68). One day during our trip the government was giving out free beer at the Palace to celebrate. Lines were about 40 minutes long.
In Budapest we stayed at the Hilton Budapest with beautiful views of the Danube. The first morning there we walked out of the hotel and heard this consistent humming sound. It was the Red Bull air racers practicing for a competition later that day.

Anyone have suggestions for a summer house rental, near Ithaca, ideally lakefront on Cayuga? My oldest two boys are probably going to Schafer's hockey camp (anyone have experience with this?) this year and my wife wants to spend the week near Ithaca.

Sounds like a good vacation idea to me.

RatushnyFan
Anyone have suggestions for a summer house rental, near Ithaca, ideally lakefront on Cayuga? My oldest two boys are probably going to Schafer's hockey camp (anyone have experience with this?) this year and my wife wants to spend the week near Ithaca.

Sounds like a good vacation idea to me.

Indeed. Let me know if they teach the finer points of breaking a stick over your head.

RatushnyFan
Anyone have suggestions for a summer house rental, near Ithaca, ideally lakefront on Cayuga? My oldest two boys are probably going to Schafer's hockey camp (anyone have experience with this?) this year and my wife wants to spend the week near Ithaca.

Sounds like a good vacation idea to me.

Ithaca is, indeed, an excellent place to spend vacation time!! I have always had family to stay with, so I don't have personal experience with rentals, but a good friend found a very nice place on another Finger Lake through Vacation Rentals By Owner a couple of years ago.

David Harding
I have always had family to stay with, so I don't have personal experience with rentals, but a good friend found a very nice place on another Finger Lake through Vacation Rentals By Owner a couple of years ago.

I don't know about places in the Finger Lakes in particular, but friends and I have found good rentals in other areas on VRBO before.

VRBO looks good, thanks very much for the suggestion.

Reviving an old thread here...I just decided this weekend to join a friend for a few days in Prague later this month. Neither of us have ever been there or know much about it, so does anyone have suggestions for restaurants/entertainment that absolutely shouldn't be missed? We're only there for five days and four nights.

Thanks in advance!
Dianne

Dianne 99
Reviving an old thread here...I just decided this weekend to join a friend for a few days in Prague later this month. Neither of us have ever been there or know much about it, so does anyone have suggestions for restaurants/entertainment that absolutely shouldn't be missed? We're only there for five days and four nights.

Thanks in advance!
Dianne

I went there in December of 2008, but just for a long weekend. We mostly hit the Christmas markets, toured the castle/cathedral, and caught an opera (Carmen). There's lots more to do and see, but we just didn't have time and we were so busy at the time that we really didn't do much research before we went. We loved it - definitely one of the most picturesque/fairy-tale-like European cities I've been to, and the food was great - very hearty Eastern European food, which was perfect for snowy December days. It would be quite different in August, I'm sure!

The day trips from Prague are supposed to be fantastic, too - amazing Bohemian castles, etc, but we definitely didn't have time for those.

Watch for pickpockets on the Charles Bridge.

Dianne 99
Reviving an old thread here...I just decided this weekend to join a friend for a few days in Prague later this month. Neither of us have ever been there or know much about it, so does anyone have suggestions for restaurants/entertainment that absolutely shouldn't be missed? We're only there for five days and four nights.

I can vouch for the deliciousness of the beer at U Fleku. It's an overpriced German-style biergarten, but definitely a great place to meet people, foreigners and locals alike. I have so much fun there that I can't imagine not going there whenever I return to Prague. I would try the "medicine" (Becherovka) exactly once: it's basically Jagermeister without the extra coloring.

Czech food is, in general, very utilitarian and not much to speak of: as a holdover from their Soviet history, the food in many restaurants is still measured and sold by weight, and it tends to be very basic meat-and-potatoes style. I would also avoid Czech wine at all costs: you are much better off with beer. For the traditional saaz-heavy pilsner, I prefer Staropramen to Budvar and Pilsner Urquell; for less saaz in your pilsner, go with Gambrinus. For dark beer, there's the aforementioned U Fleku brew, which is basically somewhere between a Czech pilsner and a German dunkel or schwartzbier, or Krusovice. You can also often find German beers on tap or in bottles.

Enough about beer. The most important thing I can stress about Prague is to walk as much as possible. The touristy areas are not very big—they may cover 4 square miles or so at the most—so it's easy to walk from place to place. I even spent much time out late at night wandering by myself, and didn't run into any problems. YMMV.

I also can *not* vouch for the midget stripper at Darling, though I've certainly heard a lot about her from drunken Brits wandering around Wenceslas Square in the morning. Talking to shop owners in downtown Prague was one of the few instances in which people were relieved to hear I was from the United States, rather than Britain.


Age, you need to make your software and/or database UTF-8-happy. I kept getting errors until I replaced all the foreign characters with Latin equivalents.

Kyle Rose
For the traditional saaz-heavy pilsner, I prefer Staropramen to Budvar and Pilsner Urquell

I haven't had any of them in the Czech Republic, but I agree with this based on having had them all on tap in the States.

Oh - also, avoid any and all puppet/black light theaters like the plague. I would rather watch us lose an ECAC championship game to Harvard than sit through that rot again.

If your schedule and travels allow, go see Divokej Bill [www.divokejbill.cz]. Happy to reimburse you if you can bring back a copy of their latest CD (Mlsna).

Oh, and if all the beer suggestions still leave you craving something cold, get some zmrzlina.

Apparently you should check out the Clown and Bard.

We blew off my people and decided on England instead. Spirit of adventure my ass, I want AC.

Trotsky
We blew off my people and decided on England instead. Spirit of adventure my ass, I want AC.

AC? As in air conditioning?

Not so sure you'll find that in either Prague or England. It was certainly rare (and much sought after those 2-3 hot days per year) in Oxford, anyway.

Thanks all for the tips and suggestions! Killer, Divokej Bill is playing in Prague one of the nights we're there, so we'll see! Assuming I can find it without too much trouble, I'm very happy to bring a CD back for you!

That would be great. Have a fantastic trip!!! And be sure to follow my wife's advice about having duck some night (I can almost taste it now...and it's breakfast time).

Turns out we didn't need AC. It was in the 50's and 60's the whole time we were there.

York is lovely and laid back; London is great fun. I have an excellent B&B recommendation in York if anyone needs it, but it expires in 2 years when the couple is moving to Cornwall.