Europe Trip 2011 #22: Prague Day 1 walking around

Day has been day 1 in Prague. It is an interesting place although I didn't get to see much of the city. I intend to go and see around and across the river tomorrow which should be interesting.

Anyway, today I spent some time in Wenceslas Square and then the old town centre awaiting a walking tour [more about that in the next post]. As expected, there are a lot of very old buildings in these areas, including the  museum in Wenceslas Square and the Astronomical Clock building in the old town centre.

The first 2 pictures are looking up [as the museum] and down Wenceslas Square, the next 3 pictures around the old town centre [including a very good, funny, band of older musos]. Following that are a couple of general pictures including one of an old Colonel who seems to be stalking me [I managed to avoid him today]! Lastly is a picture of my hotel.

Enjoy!

Europe Trip 2011 #21: Into the Czech Republic

OK, just a quick couple of photos from the train as we scooted along in the Czech Republic. Nothing exciting, but hopefully a few more pictures tomorrow.

BTW - Susan @ work [I know you're following this...] - you can tell Matt that he was right - Prague does look to be about as dodgy as he said it would be!

Europe Trip 2011 #20: Auf Wiedersehen für heute Deutschland

Berlin is a really nice place and I'd be very happy to go back again, but earlier today, the time came to leave Berlin on a train to Praha [Prague]. The following pictures are from Berlin's main train station [the Hauptbahnhof] just before departure and one from the trip before the Czech border.

BTW - I had a good lunch on the train, and the waiter gave me an extra beer at what appeared to be a reduced price...? Nice :-)

Enjoy!

Europe Trip 2011 #19: Aquadom & Sealife Berlin

Left with some spare time on my last full day in Berlin, I decided to go to the Aquadom & Sealife Berlin. This is part of the same group that runs the London Aquarium, although I think that the Berlin version was a bit better - not only with the general displays, but also with the awesome 1,000,000 litre tank with an elevator running up the middle! Awesome :-)

Anyway, here are the pictures. Enjoy!

Europe Trip 2011 #18: The Zoo and Aquarium - 3

The aquarium part of the zoo was really interesting, although many of the exhibits were hard to photograph due to constant movement. One of the unexpected parts was a range of snakes, turtles and lizards etc in addition to fish, including some tuatara from New Zealand. No pictures of the tuatara, although they did seem to have sufficient house crickets wandering around for them to eat when needed :-)

Europe Trip 2011 #17: The Zoo and Aquarium - 2

Here are some more pictures from the Zoo. Some of these look like people I know [especially in the first 3 photos] :-) so feel free to nominate who they might be! ha ha ha

Take a look at the last photo - I just put this in to show one of the features of the zoo. Mostly, the fences are really low [except at least in the aviary and monkey enclosures where there are full cages], such that anyone could step over them, with separation between humans and animals by virtue of a deep moat/ gully. It's a nice way to remove many of the bars, but still keep the animals safe from the visitors :-)

Europe Trip 2011 #16: The Zoo and Aquarium - 1

Today's big trip was to Zoo-Berlin and associated aquarium which was a bit of fun. I was going to take a taxi [way to far for me to walk!], but the hotel reception suggestion I take the U-Bahn [subway/ underground rail]. It was to be a quick trip from a local u-bahn station to the station right by the zoo.

All good until I found out on the first train that the train would stop early due to track maintenance and that I needed to change to a different line, but it all worked out well. After the train trip, the entrance to the zoo was not obvious [I really should read the clear signs!], but I worked that out eventually, and spent some time looking around.

This and the next 2 posts have some of the photos I took.

Enjoy!

Europe Trip 2011 #15: Berliner Dom

In this third activity today, I visited the Berliner Dom [roughly, Berlin Cathedral]. This church happens to be right next to the DDR Museum and the Spree river tour dock, so not so much walking to get to it, but a lot of walking to get around it, with around 200 steps to get to the top public-accessible part [indicated in the first picture].

There's lots more to the church than the pictures I have put up, such as a mini-museum with a number of large [2-3 meters tall] models of this and other buildings, and the crypt with the resting places of various [presumably] famous leaders from the past several hundred years.

Enjoy the pictures - I'm off now to work out what I will do tomorrow :-)

Europe Trip 2011 #14: Cruise on the Spree river

Following my visit to the DDR Museum, I took the opportunity to take a 1 hour cruise on the Spree river. It was really nice, especially since there was to be a english language translation provided. just a pity that I didn't pick up the device that provided the english translation [I did see them on the way off the boat :-(]! Oh well, the scenery was good, and it was nice to have an hour to sit down and watch the views go by.

The photos are pretty much self explanatory, but have a good look at the 2nd and 3rd pictures - a worthwhile warning!