rivers

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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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Cruising the Danube in Budapest

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The previous post in this series is here..

Note this was July of 2024! Just getting to blog about it..

We flew from Zadar to Budapest on RyanAir..It was a short and sweet flight. Once at the Budapest Airport we took a Taxi straight to our hotel (The Danubius Astoria in City center) and after checking in, we came out to get another taxi to go to the docks. The check in at the hotel took a few extra minutes as there was a line. We had tickets(thanks to viator) for what we thought was a sunset cruise in the river Danube. Had to race there. So we got an Uber. Note that there is a lot of one way streets in Budapest and it reminded me of Chennai. Crossing the road and getting an Uber in the direction you are going will save you a good 10 minutes and money! We had just started exploring the city and learned this lesson the hard way. Turned out the sun set only after our cruise finished.. Still it was a nice evening spent seeing the city from the river. We would get to see the city the next morning anyways.

Here are the photos from the cruise. 

The viator site made a big deal about this tour coming with a "drink". There was champagne.. but we asked them for juice instead and they were not expecting that! 

it was alternating between capturing things on the side of the river, taking selfies or handing the phone to the couple from UK who shared the table with us to click photos of us.. spent two hours doing that!

We were already craving some Indian food and were told to check out a place by friends. Initially we thought we could walk to the Indian resaurant from the cruise but it was a long walk and we were not sure if we would make it in time. So we got an Uber. 

This restaurant called "Indigo, flavors of India" in Buda area, was really posh and the food and service was just fantastic. 

After we had our fill, we decided to take another Uber back to our hotel. It was time for a hot shower and get some much needed sleep!

Video highlight of the cruise

We did get a good nights rest and the next morning, had to find some breakfast (not included in the hotel) before going on another little adventure.

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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!

 

Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.