Scenic Route

Ah, the Problem with Prague... ...I don't know where to begin! The 4 1/2-hour train ride to get here from Berlin was stellar. We wound through beautiful river canyons lined with ancient villages & Victorian-era resorts--I saw my first European castle ruin on this train ride! It was perched high up on a rock formation; I almost fainted. (On the return trip we spotted several more!) Amazing. The first thing I learned about Prague was that things are almost always older than they look. On one hand it was like walking through a Disney Land theme park; but on closer inspection these 1,000-year-old buildings have just continued to morph with the times. Below is a picture taken inside the Hard Rock Cafe (!)--note how they let the ancient poke through the modern! Also, zoning codes forbid the changing of original interior spaces. Amazing! Our hotel (Best Western no less!) building has been a hostel since 1307!!! (Earlier records were lost due to a fire.) The hotel had a small eleva...

Our first trip to Europe!!! One word: AMAZING . This had to be a quick trip of 7 days, but it was perfect even though short; 2 nights/1 full day in Berlin then 4 nights/3 days in Prague. Randy came through as Hero Extraordinaire once again by booking us business class on Mongolian Airlines for the 10-hr trip to Berlin (stopping to refuel in Moscow). It was only a few hundred $ more on this airline and what a blessing. This blog entry just barely covers our stay in Berlin. Once we landed in Berlin we discovered that we had accidentally booked a hotel by the other airport clear across Berlin. So to avoid an 80-euro taxi ride (yikes!), we jumped on a bus that took us to the main train station that eventually got us to the hotel, thanks to Randy's navigation skills :) Always take the scenic route, eh? Anyway, I loved Berlin! The trains allowed us a wonderful view/feel of the city: flower boxes everywhere (even in the most humble abodes), maniacally neat & clean, everyone eats ou...

Last weekend Randy & I were planning to hike up a local mountain on Sunday afternoon. However, the previous evening a huge dry lightening/wind storm had swept down on UB causing several big grass fires. So, hiking didn't seem the thing to do 1) because heavy breathing in all that smoke was not a good idea and 2) why go to all that effort if we couldn't enjoy a view? So...Plan B was to visit one of the few museums we've yet to visit after 4 years in Ulaanbaatar. What you see here is from our visit to the Bogd Khan's Winter Palace. This was the last residing Khan of Mongolia who was deposed in 1921 when the Manchurian Chinese invaded. The compound obviously resembles the Forbidden City in Beijing (shhh...); however, the residence was built in the 1880's and is decidedly European. You can get a sense of the dense smoke that was present that day (and the Mongolian attention to landscaping which is basically nonexistent) as well as the contrast between past and pres...