walking

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The magic of Charles bridge and the Vltava river

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The previous post in this series is here..

Good thing the photos and videos are bringing back memories.

After our visit to the castle complex, our guide walked us down the hundreds of steps to the Charles bridge that was built starting in 1347 AD!

It is a fantastic bridge as are the statues on it.

We walked down the steps and right before we got to the bridge we got some funnel cake. It is a local delicacy. We missed it in Budapest.. but got it here. It was close to a Churro..

After this walk across the bridge, we got to see the old Jewish Quarter, one of the oldest areas in Prague, followed by a lunch with local cuisine (which doesn’t have much in the way of Vegetarian options).. so we ate fried cheese and bread.. the rest of the group loved it. This was a restaurant in the basement of a 800 year old building. They had to put special wiring in to light the place with bulbs. It was interesting.

This was followed by more walking and finally a boat cruise on the river to see all the landmark buildings from the river. When the cruise was over, we said bye to our guide. He told us to walk back to the hotel through a gap! We went “duh”.. why did we Uber here in the morning. we could have just walked it!

a few photo galleries.. We walked past the place where they shot the first Mission Impossible movie and actually recognized it. Our guide was full of information on events that we could recognize from famous movies, famous artists who came to Prague and were inspired, there was a lot of talk of Duran Duran, etc. He was an “all things Prague” guy!

A lot of photos in the Portrait format gallery.. tall structures, small roads, go figure!

The clock tower in the old square was supposed to be a highlight and our guide said go there and don’t miss it. San and me decided to walk around a bit. We also got to spend time at the Kafka head which turns every few minutes. When we saw the head, we realized it was 300 feet from our hotel. So we decided to take a break go get changed and then get back to the square.

A video highlights reel of this part of the Prague tour..

The last part of our evening in another post..

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A walk to remember - Luxor

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The previous post in this series is here..

Our boat reached Luxor earlier than planned. So we were all ready and waiting for Walid. He was also ready but asked us to wait for 20 minutes so that the rest of the crowd disperses. "we have time! we can enjoy a nice less crowded walk!" he said. It was a good idea.

We walked from the boat to the Luxor temple. It took us 30-40 minute tops including some photo ops! This is a beautiful walkway with the river on one side and the Luxor temple on the other side. 

Once we went into the temple past security (yes, every temple has a ticket counter and security), we saw the Avenue of the Sphinxes.. 150 of them lined up on either side of a wide road that goes for kilometers to connect Luxor to the Karnak temple on the other side. 

The Luxor temple itself is "small" compared to some of the other templed we had seen. It had its share of history! It was a gateway from the dock to Karnak for the kings in those days. The whole place was beautiful.

The video highlights first, so you have context for most of the photos.. 

There is a mosque on the top which had its own crowd. The whole temple was burried under the mosque and a village and was excavated recently (relatively speaking). 

Romans painted over the original murals with colored faces

Finally there was a bunch of boards describing the major faces in Egyptian history. After my co-sister and me took photos of all these boards something was off.. then we realized we were going left to right.. the picture sequence was right to left.. Arabic style! So have put the pictures in the time sequence into one composite. Each of these is a large board at the entrance to the Avenue of the Sphinxes. You can click on this pic to get the larger size version. 

We were not done for the evening.. We had booked tickets to a sound and light show that was to start an hour later. It was a narrow time window. So a van picked us up at a street corner before we hit the walkway and took us on a road parallel to the avenue of the Sphinx to Karnak... 

The night pictures from that show are proving to be an editing challenge. . . will post that next!

 

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Shopping day

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Black Friday has evolved in the family over the years.. for more than a decade we simply just lost interest in shopping as a family or just started looking at things online. 

Usually we are traveling somewhere to celebrate our birthdays and Black Friday would land smack dab in the middle of a Disney trip!

This year it was San's birthday and both kids were with us and we decided to make the most of it. The girls went shopping bright and early while I did yoga. 

Then to make up for it, Jr. went shoe shopping with me. Three years ago I bought a pair of these Nevados shoes at Big 5. The display piece happened to be my size. Wanted a black walking shoe that could double up as something I could wear to work and this was perfect. It was 25 bucks then and I asked for a discount because it was the display piece and sure enough the store manager gave it to me for 20! Have walked at least 1800 miles in in over the three years and it is finally showing signs of wear on the outside and the sole. So went and bought the exact same thing yesterday! Jr. was amazed by my decision making. Told her, "hey, we went in and out and got shoes in 10 minutes because we know this works great!". This time it was not a display piece and was 30 bucks. Still expect to use this for the next three years!

The Salomon hiking shoes with ankle support that was bought ~2 1/2 years ago has also gone through at least 1500+ miles just with weekend hikes) and the ankle hooks are bent. The laces jumped the hooks during the grand canyon hike because over time the ankle support bends to fit my leg. While the tread is pretty good, wanted to get new hiking shoes. That was again a great bargain at REI. It was a 180$ shoe being sold for 80$. It did get the "paisa vasool" certification from both me and San. This time though I want to be able to replace shoes every year.  This waterproof shoe was actually Jr.'s recommendation. Apparently she had one in high school and early college and it was great. 

Then came the best part of "online shopping". "We" and I use that term loosely, are proud owners of a Karoke machine. San and the kids are allergic to noise, especially any sound that comes out of my mouth! However, after San tried a portable karaoke machine day before yesterday that one of our friends got to a party, she was convinced that we could use one at home. Spent two hours researching what was the best option and finally got this on Amazon. So Ta Da! This thing has many applications. . including but not limited to use as a public address system that can wake up the kids when they are sleeping late! They are not too thrilled about this purchase. The litle one has declared "thank god I don't live at home!" 

I am hoping that this will get me used to singing into a hand held dynamic microphone instead of the iPhone's wired earplug mic! 

In less than a day it will be back to the routine! Haven't blogged in more than a month as the day to day grind has been very busy. It is time to start posting little snippets again.. 

Hope all of you are enjoying the long weekend! 

Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.