536 days around the world

The Guinness brewery, a cross between leprechauns and Willy Wonka, with a fabulous outcome.

Standing room only for the St. Patty's day pubs.

Ole Jim decides to partake in some of the festivities.

It's official, every Irishman has fallen off the wagon, assuming any were on in the first place.

St. Paul's cathedral, God has apparently been spotted several times making prank calls from the pictured phone booth.

One last hurray in London.

Randy and I spent our three days in Dublin mainly walking to and from the different pubs in order to watch football matches and receive our daily Guinness rations. We explored around the city as best we could, taking in Trinity College and the Guinness Brewery, as well as some fairly seedy parks, where the highlight was the intricate system that bums have developed in order to live untouched in the woods.

The Guinness Brewery, like the rest of Dublin, was actually a little disappointing. Instead of getting a firsthand look at some of the actual brewing, they just lead you through 4-5 floors of fairly boring details about the beer while the President of Guinness nervously talks to you from a looping video where he actually gets to walk around the brewing. The pinnacle of the tour was upon reaching the top floor, you're given the freshest pint of Guinness you'll ever receive (if nothing else, this redeemed the entire episode) and a "stunning" view of Dublin from the sky scraping 7th story. For those of you who have seen Dublin, you'll know that it's like looking out over a much larger version of Vancouver's East Side. The two of us stayed well after our tour was complete and made it a point to enjoy every beverage that Guinness brews, at discounted prices.

After staying three nights in a dorm of 18 guys (one of which stole my precious headlamp, may he rot and burn in hell for eternity), we were happy to be on our way south to the city of Cork. Due to late planning, our options for where to spend St. Patrick's day were quite limited. Our original choice of Galway wasn't able to work out and so we were forced down to Cork and because of the lack of accommodation, had to book two nights at a posh little B&B. Luckily a posh little B&B was precisely what the doctor ordered after weeks of sleeping in crowded dorm rooms, and it was nice to lie down and simply watch football and rugby instead of being forced out into the ever windy, ever drizzly weather of Ireland. The pub scene of Cork was obviously crowded but we always seemed to be able to squeeze in there, despite the annoying fact of the Irish folk apparently having the worst gas in the world. It seemed like every 15 minutes a new wave of someone's stench would permeate the crowd and force us to plunge our noses back into our pint glasses.

St. Patrick's day itself was pretty much exactly like the other nights, with the difference being far more people and a decent amount of leprechauns walking around. Conversation with the locals was given up at about 10:00 when they all became too drunk and therefore totally unintelligible. Attempts to speak with one would result in a flurry of slurs, spit and slang which you could really only nod in agreement too.

The morning of the 19th we grabbed an early morning flight and jumped back over to London. After doing a little shopping and walking over to St. Paul's cathedral, we met back up with Mike at his hotshot investment firm, before meeting Jason (who had just crossed the channel from France and whom I hadn't seen since December). After feasting once more on a few toad in the holes (the meal inside the yorkshire pudding!), the four of us hit the town for the last bash of the Journey. I'm not exactly sure how the rest of the night went, but I awoke the next morning with the taste of kebab and tequila in my mouth, so I'll scratch it down as a success.

The flight home was made far worse than it needed to be thanks to a long lasting hangover, but when I think about it, that's probably exactly how I would have wished to fly home from this trip. After 16 hours in the air with a small stop in Montreal to talk to a customs agent who was bewildered that Monsieur Blanchet didn't speak a word of french, I landed in YVR at 10:30pm, thus bringing the Journey to a close.

Not much seems to have changed at home really. Aside from my upcoming Unclehood, a much fatter family cat and a bank account that went from a healthy 5 digits to a very sickly 2 digits, it seems like life will pretty much continue where it left off. My last two days have been spent trying to reacquaint myself with the idea of not living out of a bag as well as getting a start on sorting the 9,263 photos I've brought back with me. Things will probably take a few weeks to return to normal, and aside from moving a few of the things of life from the necessity to the luxury column, I can't say that I'm really much different from when I left. As I've always thought, the trip wasn't about "finding myself" (contrary to many of the people I met), it was more about simply taking a look around. After a few months the shock of how awesome a place Vancouver is will wear off and I'll begin whining about everyday things like most everyone else. Life is relative like that I suppose. Eventually the Journey will die out as a conversation topic, and I'll resign myself to boring my family and friends with recycled stories, perhaps getting together with my two travelling companions from time to time to relive old times over some imported beers. Travelling is by no means done for me, but I must assume a trip of this magnitude is a once in a lifetime deal.

Anyhow, this is where my tale ends. For any of you who I managed to entertain a few times a week over the past 18 months, feel free to go on a trip of your own, write a blog and do the same for me. Thanks for tuning in, it's been great!

A few of the things I've picked up along the way.

The shoes that carried me around the world.

England, Scotland and Ireland!

Old Trafford - Home of the world's most famous sporting club, Gunchester United.

Why wouldn't this guy be stuffing his face with late night kebabs?

Gothic style cathedral in ye old York town.

Our ghost walk leader, who somehow evaded all attempts at photography, leading me to believe that he may have been in league with the spirits...

Cartoon-like streets of York.

A boring look down Newcastle's river.

Edinburgh Castle, the infamous location of the "missing Randy incident". Also the scene of several lesbian weddings.

Looking out over the windy Scottish capital.

Ireland!

Aimlessly wandering through the Portaferry graveyard.

West Belfast mural dating back to The Troubles.

So...much...Guinness...

I must apologize again for the lack of updates, but being in the 1st world again somewhat hinders blogs. Unlike poorer countries that have internet cafes on every block and let you do whatever you want to their computers, the internet here is somewhat harder to find and most of the systems are locked away, making it impossible to upload photos. Anyway, enough of that.

Randy and I left Liverpool for the city of Manchester in the afternoon and arrived a few hours later (one fantastic thing about this little island is the tiny, tiny travel distances between destinations). To put it bluntly, Manchester sucked. I had heard it was a bit of a grimy, thug ridden town, but I've heard that about other places and they usually seem to work out, Manchester...not so much. It didn't help that our accomodation was essentially in one of the city's ghettos, and to get anywhere we had to walk past gangs of ASBO collecting street toughs. Every guy we came across in the city seemed to want to either fight us or fight someone close to us. There was a plethora of overweight teen moms blowing smoke in their baby's faces while their "husbands" looked at every near by guy as a potential target. We spent the majority of our one night out in the city at a fairly low key pub and just when we were thinking maybe things weren't too bad a group of football hooligans burst through the door and started one of the biggest bar fights I've ever had the pleasure of watching. The bouncers were helpless as these guys ripped into a nearby table, stomping one guy, then another, and finally when the mom tried to stop them, they took her out too.

We happily left Gunchester, as it's known by locals, for the city of York, but first making a quick stopover in Leeds. We only had 4-5 hours in Leeds, but it instantly had a better aura to it then our previous location and therefore will forever go down as quite a nice city in my mind. Arriving in York, we quickly found our hostel inside the old castle walls then headed out for some Sunday roast. York is pretty much how you would picture a medieval English town or city looking and has little aspects of every army that has ever occupied it, including the Romans, Vikings and Scots. After reuniting with Steve (who flew back from Paris), we ventured into the city's nightlife for a bit before returning home. The next day was spent wandering around through the winding, cobbled streets of the old city and eventually enlisting in a Ghost tour, led by a local "ghost expert". York is apparently one of the most haunted city's in the world, and for an hour and a bit this guy basically tried to freak us out as he told a few of the stories with a staged voice and from behind his 1700's era cloak and hat. If nothing else it led us to the Golden Fleece, the most haunted pub in the world, for a few good pints.

Leaving York we travelled north to Newcastle for another two nights. Not much to report from this city, aside from their strange obsession with bridges. It seemed like a bigger, slightly cleaner version of New West, where we basically watched football and children's TV shows after we had seen the few sights. From Newcastle we grabbed a bus farther north and into the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. Every so often there's a city where you come to the conclusion that if necessary you could live there and Edinburgh fell into this category. After exploring the giant castle that dominates the centre of the city, eating some Haggis and sampling some of the local scotch, I left as a huge fan of the place, aside from the constant and powerful winds that never seem to take a break.

Steve left us in Edinburgh the same day Randy and I headed west to Glasgow. I hadn't heard the nicest things about Glasgow, with most people recommending Edinburgh instead, but from what I saw it looked alright. We only spent a single night there, so this opinion could be subject to change. Randy and I barely squeezed on a ferry the following day and headed across to the neighbouring island of Ireland. Our first stop in the land of green was Belfast, which was also quite a bit nicer than I expected. During one afternoon the two of us strapped on our flak jackets and ventured into West Belfast, which is infamous as the playground for groups like the IRA etc. during The Troubles. There are still a ton of signs to tell you that everything isn't quite alright up there, including the heavily fortified police stations, the police cars that look more like miniature tanks than land rovers and the numerous murals that are painted on almost every surface of the city. Walking around West Belfast you pass from Catholic neighbourhood to Protestant neighbourhood constantly with the only indication being the murals changing from IRA support to UFF support. The people didn't seem to mind two obvious outsiders walking through their close knit communities taking pictures of their artwork, but we were both happy to get out of there once the sun went down.

The two of us also travelled an hour or so out of Belfast to a quaint little village called Portaferry. Aside from acting as a reason for getting out of the city and into the Irish countryside, Portaferry is also the former home of a Mister John Scanlon, or the great great great grandpappy of yours truly. There were other nearby towns and cities with closer relations, but Portaferry seemed to be the most picturesque of them all. I had been told that Big John's gravestone was in the local cemetary, and so, upon arriving, we walked up to the Portaferry graveyard to try and find my resting ancestor. Unfortunately, after two hours of looking around, we came up empty handed. I eventually asked a few of the old men who seemed to be puttering about, and after calling over another old man, they held a council to decide what to do to help the lad from Canada. Much of their decision making was totally indecipherable to me as their countryside accents dipped to a level I didn't know existed. In the end it was decided that I should head over to the garage in town, turn left, walk down two houses and wake up old Ian ("cause he tends to sleep late ya know"), the undertaker. He could then provide me with some kind of index to the cemetary and help me find this Scanlon fellow's grave (which they had all claimed to have seen). I didn't actually follow up on their suggestion as I wasn't that inclined to do so, but regardless of finding the headstone, heading out to the little village was still a cool experience.

Yesterday we departed Belfast and bussed it south into the Republic of Ireland's capital, Dublin. The jury is still out on Dublin as it seems a little overpriced for what it's offering. After we leave this internet cafe, the two of us will be headed over to the Guinness Brewery for a tour of the drink that caused me so much pain this morning. I didn't think it was physically possible to drink more than 5 pints of the black stout in one sitting, but last night proved otherwise. Two more nights will be spent here before heading south to the city of Cork for our St. Patrick's day celebrations.

Kickin' it in the Kingdom

Foggy ole London town!

View overlooking Trafalgar square.

London, the city of reunions.

I see in my future...a naked Grouch.

The Grouch. SO much worse in person.

A meal INSIDE a yorkshire pudding! Brilliant!

Our B$G Firm already has an astounding collection of ASBO's.

Windy ole Brighton town.

Pint of shamrock engraved Guiness.

I must apologize for the lack of blog updates. England, as most know is ridiculously expensive and internet cafes are few and far between. I believe I left off in Germany so I shall continue my tale from there.

I had two final days in Berlin, spent much like the rest of my time there, walking around, listening to music and checking out the history side of things. Following that I jumped on a quick flight over to Jolly ole foggy London town.

Within an hour of arriving I was greeted by Mister Michael Lee, a travel partner from years ago (yet somehow I'm still on the same trip...) in the faraway lands of Central America. After a joyous reunion, we hopped on the Tube and made our way to the first pub we could find to catch up on the going ons since 2005. I spent the next two nights at Mike's parent's place (stereotypically located on Robin Hood Lane in southwest London). My one full day at their Coronation Street look-a-like house, was in the company of Mike's dad Eric, a retired British naval officer, who during our morning/afternoon together, brought me up to date on his hilarious opinions regarding Canada, Britain, Vancouver, Quebec, America, Rugby, Football, Hockey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, Naval Ships, Royalty, Scots, Irish, Bush, Blair, Cats, Dogs, Computers, Celebrities, Meat Pies, Bangers & Mash and Mike. That night was spent with Mike and several of his 'mates', as we wandered through the Fulham district of London getting into trouble.

The next morning saw the arrival of Randy and Steve, two buddies from back home. Thanks to an unexpected headache, I wasn't as lively as I should have been, but once the first few pints were down this soon changed. After walking around a bit, we again hit the London nightlife, this time in the Soho district and with a new set of Mike's friends. After being denied access to a few places, closing down a few more places, we ended up at a nice club which had an astounding 10 pound cover charge (actually quite normal here, but still damn expensive). I thought something was wrong after buying my drinks and wondering why the two guys next to me couldn't take their hands off one another and I knew something was wrong when the male dancer came out and performed a nearly naked lapdance on a pole in front of us. On the principle of paying 10 quid to get in, we refused to leave the place, enjoying the rest of the night while getting steamy glances from our fellow club goers and at one point interrupting two who seemed to be having some kind of 'fight' in one of the bathroom stalls. Its probably better that alcohol has blurred my memories of this one.

The next day was spent doing some sightseeing, then another night out on the town with Steve's buddy from back home. After both of these nights, we would return to our hostel on the outskirts of central London to the awful personality known as the Grouch. For whatever reasons, this 60 year old was staying in a dingy hostel dorm room, chose to sleep naked and would periodically blurt out lines through the night as he slept in what must have been some kind of continuous, horrible nightmare. Although funny at first, the whiskey slurred yells of BAH and JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY were an awful remind of the naked, Scottish entity sleeping beside me.

We headed south out of London to the city of Brighton, which is situated right on the ocean and is probably the windiest place I've ever been. Not much to report from this place, other than it was sort of an English version of White Rock. Most of our time was spent leaning into the wind, eating at the pubs or simply enjoying our unusually pleasant hostel.

From there, the three of us returned to London, where Randy and I threw on some Beatles and jumped on a bus headed north to Liverpool (Steve went much farther south to Paris and will reunite with us next week). Liverpool isn't exactly the prettiest city, but it seems to make up for it in general fun. The bar district is among England's most famous and has helped continue our pub to pub tour of England. This morning we did a tour through the Beatles museum and are now awaiting to board our bus for Manchester.

Although not what one would expect really in a trip to England, probably my favourite part of the country has been the food. The pub atmosphere has created this perfect combination of pints of ale, mixed with Yorkshire puddings, sausages, roast beast and meat pies. We do find the constant surveillance of its citizens a little odd, but for the most part, aside from the brutalness of the Pound on my bank account, it's a great country.

Berlin

Brandenburg Gate at night.

Listening for Hitler´s ghost atop his bunker.

Hitler´s previous living location is now home to fantastic Chinese dining!

Was happy to see that my brother´s in arms have already infiltrated this city.

The Reichstag, in all of its chocolatey glory!

City square somewhere in Berlin.

Jewish memorial in Berlin.

There are far too many smiling faces in this protectin shot, but nonetheless, Just Protectin´ the Berlin Wall.

Angel on a stick!

Feel free to create your own caption for this picture.

Mark my words, I would die for my Berlin football club.

Olympic Stadium.

German Committee members inspect the local recipe.

It was all fun and games prior to the actual fun and games.

Pergamon altar inside the Pergamon museum.

Lonely stone soldier stands watch over the Soviet memorial.

Inside za dome of za Reichstag.

Entrance to the concentration camp, with the horribly untrue slogan of "Work will set you free".

Execution trench, with bullet catcher in the back and a Canadian wreath in front.

Our group arrived in a slightly colder Berlin on the afternoon of the 14th after a 4 hour train ride from Prague. The border was probably the easiest I´ve crossed, with the guards coming on the train with a portable stamp and checking us all into Germany in less than a minute. Tara had taken care of our accomodations beforehand from Vancouver and had checked us into what I was later to learn is the 3rd highest rated hostel in the world, quite nice as would be expected and one of the reasons I´m still here.

The next day we signed on to a tour given by Terry, a fellow who has been doing it so long that he started his career by showing allied soldiers around the city after the war. During the marathon 10 hour walk through the middle of Berlin, we visited virtually every major historical site the city has to offer. Stopping off or passing by the Reichstag, the Brandenburg gate, Hitler´s bunker, Luftwaffe headquarters, the Berlin Wall, Hitler´s old house and a bunch more. Due to the freezing conditions, several members of our party had to make a hasty retreat back to the hostel, giving us another reason to walk around the city the following day.

Saturday saw us travelling out to the edges of Berlin to catch a Bundisliga game (Germany´s premiere soccer league). After adourning ourselves in the hometeam´s colours and scarves, we made our way into the famous Olympic Stadium, which also played host to the 1936 olympics. Although not quite as crazy as some of the South American games I´ve been too, the crowd was still leagues beyond anything typically seen in a North American sporting event. Unfortunately for us, Hertha Berlin experienced their first home loss in 10 months, casting a dismal mood over the blue, scarf covered fans on our trek home. That night we held a few of our own football matches in the back of a Berlin bar. The headline event being the Hatazawa brothers versus the Blanchets, and in a dastardly turn of events, my own side suffered one too many defeats at the end of the tournament. Little did I know that my sister has married some kind of fuseball guru, although I was able to barely beat him in a straight one on one, I did not like having a hobby I hold so dear being challenged by a mere mortal.

Following a quick breakfast the next morning, the gang saddled up their bags, jumped in a taxi and left me twiddling my thumbs on the side of a Berlin street, all by my lonesome. After aimlessly walking around the city listening to Wolfmother, I decided the only way to properly cheer up was to reacquaint myself with my good friend alcohol. Within minutes of signing up for one of the local pub crawls I was immersed in a world of a German pilsners, jaggermeister and absynth. The walk home at 3am, which should have taken 10 minutes, took over 2 hours, as I got incredibly lost in the bullet ridden/bomb scarred maze of East Berlin. To investigate the strange nausious, dizzy feeling I had recently acquired, I would randomly empty my stomach in an effort to sift through the contents and find the culprit. The following day was a write off, aside from a quick visit to the Pergamon museum, famous for housing the reconstructed gates of Babylon and other massive structures inside its walls.

This morning I grabbed a train and rocketed right out of the city to the little town of Oranienburg, home of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Sachsenhausen was the first concentration camp to be designed and built for the that specific purpose and was used as a model for future camps as well to train the officers and commanders who would later go on to rule over Aushwitz, Dachau and other happy places of the Nazi regime. Sachsenhausen is most notoriously remembered as the camp where over 10,000 Russian POWs from the Eastern Front were executed bringing the overall death toll of the place to just over 100,000. Most of the killings were done with a simple device that appeared to be measuring the victims height. After standing next to the ruler, a small panel slid down in which the hidden SS guard behind would insert his pistol and finish the job. After passing through the skull, the bullet would economically be caught in a bullet catcher on the far side, in order to be re-used for the next person. Near the end of the war, a gas chamber was installed to speed up the process, as well as several sets of gallows. The Soviets liberated the camp in May of 1945 (but not before the camp leadership decided a move was in order, resulting in a death march across Germany that killed an additional 6000 people) and thought it was such an efficient system that they would just keep using it! It was used simply as a "prison" for the next 5 years under the Russians, with another 12,000 inmates dying before it was finally shut down in 1950. Because of its location deep within Soviet territory, it´s still undergoing some changes, mainly the fact that the Russians only mentioned the heroic Communists who had died in the camp and totally failed to mention any Jews, Gypsies etc.

Tomorrow I spend my last day in Berlin, before flying out to London to meet up with more characters in this story. I had originally wanted to travel through Belgium and France in an effort to wet my endless appetite for war history, but decided against it after the cost was looked into. Berlin is a fantastic city for walking (which is how I tend to measure the quality of a city now), has a ton to see and last but not least, the flight up to London cost me $50!

Through Siberia and into Europe

Some stop...somewhere in the middle of Siberia.

Loco!

A little look at Siberia, through the train window.

One of our much loved, typical train dinners.

Onion factories in Moscow!

Warm up lunch during Moscow sightseeing day.

Long view over the Moscow river towards the Kremlin.

Icy walkway up to the Kremlin.

A gigantic cannon....

Just protectin' The Kremlin.

Look down one of St. Petersberg's canals.

Winter Palace.

One of the random hallways in the Hermitage.

A throne room fit for Glob.

A ninja turtle made this!

St. Petersberg swimming pool.

Down a street in Praha.

Outside of Prague's version of the Gastown Steam Clock, stupid tourists.

Dumplings!

Ethan!

Prague at night.

Dev and I finally managed to escape the clutches of Irkutsk the following day and by 5pm were on our way West through Siberia, past the Ural mountains and into a little town called Moscow. The 77 hour train ride was probably the most enjoyable travelling I've done the entire trip and the 3 days seemed to whiz by as quickly as the terrain outside.

Neither Devon or myself ever discovered if there actually was a dining car attached to our train, and for the most part, our days revolved around eating. Whenever our food stores began shrinking, we would decipher the Cyrillic timetables in order to find a lengthy stop, then dash out of the train to the nearest supermarket, buy more sausage, cheese, pickles and bread, all the while hoping that I had translated the name of the town correctly and that our train would still be there when we returned. Given that and simply how much time we had on there, I'm proud to announce I can read the Russian language, albeit I usually have no idea what the words meant, but it did come in handy for town names etc.

During the day we would rotate between reading, playing our nintendos, staring out the window at the snowy landscape or playing/fighting the little Russian kid who broke into our cabin every 20 minutes to say hello. Unlike our two previous trains, the carriage we were on was rather quiet and peaceful, most of it being made up of a group of families, which was a nice change from the stumbling drunks who want to talk to you at 3am. Our providnista (carriage attendant) quickly realized we didn't speak Russian and was actually quite nice and helpful to us, even entrusting us with her sacred door lock device during a long stop in Novgorod.

We pulled into Moscow at 6pm on the 7th and found our way into the depths of earth to have a try at the notoriously complex Moscow Metro system. With my new found knowledge of their alphabet, we were able to eventually make our way into the center of town and to our awaiting beds at Napolean Hostel. Within minutes of arriving, we had become intertwined with some other travellers and were out the door for a strange night of food, bowling and clubbing. Upon leaving the last establishment, we stumbled out into the -27 degree night and made our way home through the bizarre private taxi system the city runs (basically any normal citizen will simply pick you up for the right amount of money). Although cold for us, I'm sure it was much chillier for the fellow who we saw get beaten down then thrown out into the snow wearing only a pair of jeans and his own blood.

The Russians in general are a bit of a somber people, especially around tourists. They rarely smile or joke with you (aside from the ones who work directly for tourists) except when they have been diving down their Vodka bottles, which they do constantly and without abandon. The Russian women are absolutely stunning, while the Russian men seem like a bunch of degenerative, fighting, militaristic drunks, making for some strange combinations when you see them walking together down the street or in the bars. The corruption in the city is horribly visible in the black Mercedes, Audis and BMWs that drive around with blue sirens on, which basically means they've bought a "license" from the government that makes them invulnerable to traffic violations (meaning they can and do drive over sidewalks, through red lights and basically speed everywhere).

We enlisted the help of a Russian speaking Swiss hero, Markus, who had incredibly walked from Swizterland to Ukraine before finally getting cold and bought a train to Moscow, and toured through the city. Red Square was sadly a little underwhelming (was always much larger in my mind's eye) but the awesome Russian architecture, the Kremlin and the plethora of other Soviet style buildings were fantastic. We managed to get into Lenin's tomb while it was completely empty, aside from the stern looking guards who surround his body, and were able to spend a minute or so staring at the bizarre, waxy skin of Russia's holiest hero.

After two days of sightseeing around Russia, we grabbed a night train up to St. Petersberg which deposited us in the even colder city early the next morning. After quickly finding our hostel, we decided to take advantage of our only full day in the famous city and set out for a day of exploring. Following a 2km stroll down Nevsky street (which is apparently Russia's most famous street, unknown to us) we ended up at the Winter Palace/Hermitage. The Hermitage is one of the largest museums in the world and according to sources, holds the greatest value of items amongst all museums on the planet. The building looked deceivingly small at first, but once we were inside the two of us were literally lost for 3 hours as we stumbled through the endless maze of priceless paintings and sculptures. As with most museum experiences, we started quite pumped, analyzing each painting for a good 3-5 minutes, by near the end were simply speed walking through the corridors. We finished our tour of the city by walking over some of the famous canals, around a few of the massive fortresses and eventually back to our hostel, quite tuckered out.

The next day, after finishing some souvenir shopping, we jumped on a flight outta Russia and into the heart of Eastern Europe, Prague. After a joyous reunion with Tara, Ray, Michelle, Shin and Danielle, the 7 of us explored a bit of the city. Yesterday we did much of the same, with a visit to the Museum of Tortures, a stint on the bridge where Jon Voight fakes his own death in Mission Impossible, through the typical gothic buildings of what you would expect to find in a place like Prague and eventually went out for a huge, delicious meal (thanks pa!). Today is much of the same, perhaps with a little bowling thrown into the mix after dinner... Tomorrow morning we take a train and blast out of here towards Berlin!