As usual I headed out on Monday to to watch and cheer the runners in this years Dublin Marathon. Fortunatly it was another good day for running and didn’t rain during the “race”.
I find it motivating watching all these runner pass me, all shapes and sizes that have trained for a long time – it is great.
Thanks everyone who took part. Here are a few photos. [click to continue…]
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Today was just one of those days at work – I was working on websites that I don’t find very interesting so off I went wandering on the internet and came across My Charity.ie. Love to do something I though – but I have no time…
Not having time shouldn’t be a bar to raising money for charity I thought and below is the result of that thinking.
Yes I want your money for Oxfam – and I am prepared to do only one thing – I will list all the donors at the bottom of this page with your website or blog – so go on get that credit card out it is all for a good cause.
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Today I put the Euros back in my pocket, for the last three weeks I have been spending Czech crowns, it has been fun.
For the first time in 15 years I am sad to be going home, strange I did not see this coming. When I lived in Glasgow I had this feeling for a few years before I left on a whim to live in Dublin – one of the best moves I have made in my life – Dublin, Ireland, and the Irish have been very good to me something I will never forget.
But as we sat outside in the garden this morning having breakfast I said “Imagine we just didn’t go back” – I am the one who is pron to this type of thinking more than Anna. This has been a very relaxing holiday even though I have started back on my internet stuff this past week already – just trying to head off the hard landing next week – well tomorrow actually. [click to continue…]
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Like most Czech Hotels the service in Hotel Adam is fairly disappointing. The staff are not friendly and do not know how to smile with the exception of the female manager – who was the only one who managed to simile and be chatty.
There is good and bad to be said about this hotel – it has a great swimming pool with sun beds that can be taken out onto a sun terrace, as with most places in the Czech Republic it is clean. But I still come back to that service issue of friendliness – it just does not exist and that is a real problem for me.
The hotel is located in St Peters Valley in Spindleruv Mlyn, which is part of Krkonose National Park in the North of the Czech Republic – the area is beautiful and the hotel is located with great views across the valley – make sure you get a room facing the front of the hotel.
The food is highly changeable and not recommended in the hotel; it is also fairly expensive for what you get, there are much better places in the small town and in other hotels in the area. We ate two nights in the hotel, the first night was great, and the second night was awful. The waitress service does not help create any good will towards them either – inattentive.
The rooms are fine, the beds are comfortable, there was a TV in the rooms – however it had no English speaking TV channels – but I suppose it was a walking holiday. There was no telephone in the room and the internet connection was complete crap – it took minutes to connection and kept disconnecting – I mentioned this at the desk and got a shrug of the shoulders in response.
Today with two nights left in the hotel the elevator has broken down… it was down for two days.
Over all if you know what you are getting with your money it is fine – as many of the above problems are endemic in Czech hotels. The price for the week is fairly cheap at 7,700 Czech Crowns for two.
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It is 9.25pm and we’re in bed already – me with laptop on my knees writing this. We are in Spindleruv Mlyn, which is in Krkonose National Park in the North of the Czech Republic.
We’re in bed already because we walked over 20km up in the mountains for about seven hours and then we had a brilliant meal at Bakchus the best restaurant in the area – so putting it simply we are done for the day.
The only reason for writing this post today is to put up the following photo. This is a children’s wellness home where people used to send their kids into the country for a while if they had been unwell. But to our surprise it is still used – this photo is for someone we know who was there for a while many years ago and says he is still traumatised from the event.
Sorry but I could not resist…
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We both need a good long holiday. We haven’t really taken the time for one this year and one of the consequences is that we are getting a bit tired a lot of the time. So my bright idea last week was to get away for the long weekend to Connemara.
We have been to Connemara before and there is something about us and that side of the country – it rains – it rains a good deal. The last time we went we rented a cottage for the weekend and spent most of the weekend reading as the rain didn’t stop at all.
The time before was nowhere as bad – but we still had more than our fair share.
So going on previous experiences you think I would be expecting rain and be prepared for it. Well prepared for it I am, as I walk in Ireland quite a bit and the raingear is always with me – but I had it in my head that I would be out walking for two of the three days. It didn’t happen.
One day of a bit of walking and another touring round the area where they only speak Irish and only have the road sings in Irish – it is one very depressing place. Firstly I though it a bit rude not having the road signs in English – you can travel all round this country and the road signs are in Irish and English – but this one little bit takes away the language that most of the country speaks and almost 100% of the tourists.
It is a barren desolate place, the area stretches from near Westport to just about Galway and it is just a ribbon of land between the mountains and the sea, the kind of place that God forgot to make fertile. The only thing that can survive is sheep and a few cows, and this is where the middle classes send their kids to brush up on their Irish and be bored to tears.
It was good to get back to Dublin.
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I have heard this in this form and a few others – like you are what you think – I like that one too.
As for being what I eat if this is the case I would have morphed into an Indian at some point, a pizza at others, and maybe a hamburger at other times. When I was a veggie for a few years in my idealist twenties I certainly did not look like a turnip…
It was my birthday just over a week ago and the most used present that I was given has been my steamer. This I find quite funny – to be given a steamer for my birth day, I think that it is the first time that I have been given a kitchen implement – humm getting old or too difficult to buy for?
Anyway it is great, never mind that crap about you are what you eat, this kind of eating is an absolute pleasure. During the last week I have eaten vegetables every day, and for the first time in a while made myself corn on the cob.
The first and best thing about a steamer is the delicious taste of the food. It really does taste so much better, this I would have been quite sceptical about if some had been telling me – but really it makes a huge difference.
Second, you can just put it all in and set the different timers and wander away and let the machine get on with the cooking, and then at the end it is set to keep it all warm for another 40 minutes.
You can also cook white meat and fish in them and they are also better tasting.
And lastly the healthy part. Apparently food that has been steam cooked is better for you – it retains more vitamins – nice to get a little health benefit when everything tastes better than it did before.
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This is an unashamed plug for a friend who runs a walking holidays company. Macs Adventures arrange hill walking tour and cycling holidays all over Europe. Being a bit of a hill walker myself this gets my interest.
However I first thought when looking at walking holidays – Why would I pay for someone to arrange this for me? I am the eternal student, in my head anyway, and I think about the cost of things. But on second thoughts I discovered that I am not so right in this.
For about the same price of doing it all myself, phoning dozens of Bed and Breakfasts and trying to get a reasonable price, having one that is the right distance from the last one – so that I get a good long walk during the day, and having a B&B that caters to hill walkers – well I begin to see the sense in having someone else do all this work for me.
For example, if you are walking the West Highland Way in Scotland, you have to sit down and work out how far you intend to walk each day and if there is a B&B at the point you want to stop. The other point is the rucksack. Why carry you own all day, when included in the holiday you can have someone ferry it to your next stop and all you have to carry is a reasonably light daypack. [click to continue…]
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Getting a bit tired of paying way over the odds for weekends cottage rentals we decided to try a hostel last weekend. I managed to find Cnocnafeola a hostel in the Mourne Mountains on the internet. I wonder how we used to find places pre-internet, for so many things now I along with millions of others automatically turn on the computer to research any number of things.
I had forgotten the pleasures of staying in hostels. One of the great things is chatting to other people. One of the awful things about hostels is also other people, but more of that later. I always find it a bit difficult when I go walking somewhere I haven’t been before. It can be hard to know the best routes, on Friday evening I got talking with some guys who knew the area well and I got some great advice for starting points for some loops. The other great thing about this hostel was the maps and routes in every room. They have a folder with ten of the most walked routes in the area with full descriptions and maps, many others could take note of this it was a great help.
One of the first things to note is how much hostels have changed over the last 15 – 20 years. No more cleaning the hostel yourself in the morning. I used to always find this part a bit strange – you would pay whatever it was to stay over night, but on top of that everyone would have to clean part of the hostel in the morning, ah the 1980’s. [click to continue…]
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Hopefully next week I will be back to adding some photos here and writing more often again. I had moved web hosting for this a few other sites on the same server. It was a job I thought might take a day… Oh I wish. Anyway it is all done, but the transfer of the files by the hosting company has stopped me being able to upload photos here. So next week I will re-install the script again and be able to add my photos.
Life has been very busy, work and a lot of stuff around our wedding. We were in Prague for a few days seeing people and deciding on some things for the wedding. We were only there for five days – that never makes for a relaxing visit – too many people to see and too little time. It is better when we have more time to relax into the visits.
This weekend we are off walking for a few days in the mourne mountains and I will be switching off the computer for the whole time – quite something for me. It often gets to a point that we have to escape the city for some time into the countryside. Both of us are just a bit too busy right now – work and study – when life get like that it is too easy to lose focus on the things that really matter.
Have a good weekend, and remember the sun tan lotion.
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