Last night I was looking at the Toronto skyline and I couldn’t shake the Hong Kong Skyline out of my head… when I think about three skylines….the CN Tower dominates

The NYC skyline from on top the Brooklyn Bridge

Then there is the Hong Kong skyline and the light show that accompanies it

And a typical Old City European skyline with a castle in middle

© rishiray for Rishi Sankar: Ah Trini Travelogue / Ah Trini Traveller, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: brooklyn bridge skyline, hong kong harbour, prague castle, Toronto skyline

Well it has been a great time on this trip.. and i although i said would blog from the road.. it has been quite the busy time in the last couple countries. Im finally done here with this eurotrip and as usual it has been a blast. I have about 6 hours on the train from here to Frankfurt. Of course I missed the train to Frankfurt at 10,34am.. because the damn eurail book was wrong and told me to go from Hvalni instead of Holosovice. But thankfully, i can make it into Frankfurt at 7pm, so there is no real issue, rather than the fact that I could have stayed in the hotel a bit longer.

The final hotel in Prague was quite good, and I would definitely recommend it again and recommend staying verz close to Wencelas Square when in Prague. I will definitely come back here, the sights are amazing = so much history and culture, good bike riding = rented a bike for 300 krowns == so about 15 canadian for a couple hours. To rent the bike for the whole day was 20 canadian. There is good bike riding and a smaller castle in the south of Prague.

This has been one of the first trips where I didnt lose a camera or a card or something related to the pics. I guess eventually. one is bound not to lose something on the road. so all cameras are still around, adapters, PSP, laptop = which has been a godsend for doing my work on the road and all the knicknacks.

So today was pretty much just spent recovering from last nights drinking in a bar. I think it was called .. get this… alcohol bar!! Anyway, i got into a little altercation with dumbass czech bitch…. since ranj and I and beth we talking.. and of course, im there being colourful, in language and spirit. She proceeds to lecture me about my language, which would be fine, but after the way that we have been treated here, in terms of service and lack hospitality, the idea of a czech lecturing me about anything else, than telling me the ways that something is not possible, was on the verge of ridiculous. So of course, in true Trini styles, I proceeded to cuss her out and it escalated a bit from there…. but in the end, I wasnt having any of it. So we left and headed to a Casino.

Now the Casinos in Prague are a bit sketchy but they are better in terms of hospitality, and you get a better exchange rate in the casinos that on the street. In fact, even the Czechs get ripped off by their own, but only if your wife is American. I saw the funniest thing while getting some cash exchanged, where this Czech was going postal on this one guy, who ripped him off, but then the guy§s wife was american and that somehow made it understandable.
so after the casino, I went back looking for my brick in the pile of beneficial bricks, and can you believe it, my brick was gone. The fuckers or someone ripped off mz Trinidad block. But they will know a Trini was there. Then it was on to the hotel and crashing! Quick nice trip, and I do love Prague though, since this is really a golden city, I only wish the service was better in the restaurants and everyone didnt look at you like they had never seen a brown person in their lives.

But whatever.. time to catch the train to Frankfurt and the ISRAEL. I never did think I would make Israel in my lifetime though, since this is a country, I have no zeal to see, but I guess we will see……….

12.55pm
So my train gets in Late from Prague such that I miss the connection to Frankfurt from Dresden. The one thing I like about the German Rail system is how punctual they are, so when a train gets in late. It really throws schedules off, and this one definitely threw my schedule off, but since I originally took the earlier train…but then missed that connection since the Eurail book was wrong…I now missed another connection but I should be getting into Frankfurt with about 90 mins to spare. Now here is the thing that just came up that I might have not thought about. The luggage service that is storing my luggage opens till either 9pm or 10 pm. If they open till 9 pm, then I might be slightly fucked with no luggage in Israel. This could be a real problem over there in Israel since I only have the clothes I have been traveling with and I get into Tel Aviv at a very messed up time. I think it is time to call the luggage people and see and hope they close at 10pm.

3.55pm..
Im on the train to Frankfurt, I dropped in to a Tmobile store and bought 15 euros on the unlocked phone, of which it has become a very good thing to have. I think I am going to detail how I got the phone in the first place… but I think that is a side little story from the first day in Frankfurt. The luggage place is now open from 6am till about 10 pm. This is pretty good seeing that I will have to run from one end of the terminal and then try and grab this bag and then find the Lufthansa gate. It is going to be quite the interesting night ahead of me.
So in this train compartment, I am with this german guy.. he is an older businessman type. He had a reservation for this 4 seat compartment, but I was sitting here first and I refused to move… so he is sitting across the table from me. I wonder how he is going to reach when I start snoring down the place. That should be pretty funny. I must say though, I always love traveling the rail in first class. The shitty European service somehow becomes “not bad”, and actually pretty pleasant. Some days, I rag on Americans but honestly once you get used to actual customer service, the shit that passes for Customer Service over here is actually almost ridiculous. In Trinidad, our customer service is obviously some type of afterthought.

8.31pm
Well… a couple hours later… it is now 8.31pm… just close to Frankfurt airport, there will be quite the mad rush to get all this stuff done. Im kinda nervous about the connection and passing through German Customs, as well as the two pieces of luggage that I am taking with me. Well I can clear state that I have never gone through more stress and trouble than for this flight to Tel Aviv. I have never also one through 5 security checks on a flight. Obviously the Israelis have some enemies. The stress of getting this flight though, im sure aged me a couple years. In addition, I am thoroughly pissed that I had to fork out 220 euros since I was only allowed 20 kilos of baggage allowance and im going for three weeks on a trip. It is a good thing I did not fully pack for this trip else I would have to put out a lot more money, as if 220 euros wasn’t enough.

© rishiray for Rishi Sankar: Ah Trini Travelogue / Ah Trini Traveller, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Taking the train from Vienna to Prague was quite uneventful, of course travelling second class in the trains wasn’t the greatest thing in the world but we were comfortable. Now once you got into the Nadrazi Holesovice train station in Prague, we got hit with a bit of culture shock, since the station was run down with little tourist facilities. It definitely took us by surprise. It took the three of us a little bit to figure out how to use the subway to get downtown.  Wencelas Square which is the main square in Prague was about 10 minutes by subway. We took the C train to Muzeum and found a hotel there.

So once we found a hotel, then it was off walking. In Prague, there are so many points of interest, buildings and monuments that it is a bit overwhelming to start.

© rishiray for Rishi Sankar: Ah Trini Travelogue / Ah Trini Traveller, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: how to get around prague, muzeum subway prague, Nadrazi Holesovice subway, prague at night, prague subway, wencelas square, what to do in prague