Just wanted to drop a note I’m still alive, and I’ve been working pretty actively on my new food site! Check out my first video of
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I think there are times in our life where we meet someone else where the chemistry is dead on. You know you like the other person, and you have a pretty strong feeling that the other person likes you back also.
However within those moments of chemistry, there may be situations where for whatever reason, things weren’t meant to be. Either the person is unavailable, or some other complex scenario.
But sometimes pursuing what wasn’t meant to be can have dire consequences. It basically can put yourself in a situation where your morals are being stretched where you are considering situations you never thought you would ever have been put in.
It is hard because I think rarely in life do we run into this situation where we meet someone this special. And typically we would jump straight into the water to pursue things.
Unfortunately its hardest when we realize this and we are forced to pass on the option and move on. Because in all situations our instinct really does act as a fundamental guide of what we should or should not do.
Chemistry and attraction is a powerful force that can overcome that practical thinking mind. Great leaders have fallen through situations like this.
At the end of the day it is our instinct, and what inside we truly know what is right to do which tempers this situation.
Its not easy.. but there are times we realize we have to move on….
This year will probably be one of the most important elections you will ever vote for in your lifetime. Never have so many events relevant to our lives converged in one single point of time. A war, an economic crisis, global warming, terrorism, gay rights, etc.
I usually read about these political events with a strong degree of fascination, but I am i impelled this late night to write something about the election.
To me, the answer on which candidate to vote for is so obvious. To put it shortly, Republican policies of the past 8 years was plenty of time to create this mess, so why get another Republican in office.
The biggest messed up thing about our political process right now isn’t the candidates themselves, but its.. the people.
Us.
Only a small minority (you can call them ‘elitest’ or whatever) actually think about the candidates positions and do research on their policies, and to see if it matches their values. I consider these people to live in the intellectual centers, and there are pockets of them all over the us.
But the thing is SOOOO many people out there don’t really care about educating themselves on the issues. They instead let media tell them what is going on, and never bother to find the truth for themselves. And you know what this does… this lets both candidates spit shits of rhetoric out to us.. the people.
The reason the candidates do this, is simply that they can get away with it. They can get away with not answering questions directly, and not talking about policy. I mean, in the most recent Palin-Biden debate, Palin was saying that she can answer the question on how she wants to.
Then whats the fucking point of the debate if candidates like this are dodging the issues and not answering questions.
American people. Wake up. You cannot allow our candidates to spit out nonsense during such an important election. You have to get them to talk about, how are we going to fix this economic, what is going to be our foreign policy doctrine, how do we address global warming?
This is not elitism. This is plain and simple common sense. We need to be having this intellectual discussions because these are complicated problems. One liners or soundbites isn’t going to solve these problems.
The ultimate irony of all of this is as much as I disagree with our candidates spewing nonsense, a lot of it is geared towards the naive Americans we have, because they constitute a large portion of this nation.
sigh.
I gave a sermon last Saturday on listening at my church.. check it out if you are interested
For this trip I had to split all the entries into different posts. Enjoy everyone as this took 3 months to write!
Planning
London
Day 1 – London
Paris
Day 2 – Paris
Day 3 – Paris – French Open
Day 4 – Paris – French Open Take Two
Amsterdam
Day 5 – Amsterdam
Day 6 – Amsterdam
Day 7 – Amsterdam
Prague
Day 8 – Prague
Day 9 – Prague
Day 10 – Prague
Dublin
Day 11 – Dublin
Day 12 – Dublin
Post trip
Surrealness of it all
Fin.
This morning’s agenda was to hit up Trinity College.
Dublin is a very walkable city. Here you see a Heineken building. I actually didn’t go in.
As many of the European cities we have been to, there is history everywhere you go.
Picture of a government building I think.
Even though everything is in English, we noticed that some different expressions were used. Here ‘take away’ means ‘to go’.
Trinity College is one of the main colleges in Dublin. It has something called ‘the book of kells’
The book of kells is one of the original copies of the gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John of the Bible) back in the day. Unfortunately they didn’t allow any pictures inside.
Basically they had many of the pages of the book of kells blown up with explanations of the religious symbology and such. At the end of the exhibition area is the actual book itself in a preserved state. Even though the book was a copy of the Gospel (not the original) it had some historical significance as it was a highly seeked treasure which changed hands several times.
Trinity college video
Every college has to have some weird sculptures
Lost baby
Afterwards it started to rain a little bit, and we headed down to search for ‘George’s Street Arcade’. There was a sandwich shop I wanted to try which I found online.
I guess this is the same as so cal except people aren’t spinning the signs.
This was also a place on the targeted to eat list. Such awesome chocolate.
So yummy…
After much searching, we found what we were looking for. One of the joys of traveling to me is actually seeing a place you were researching back at home.
Pesto sandwich review.
Tuna wrap review
Oh so yummy..
As you can tell, food definitely had been a central part of our experience.
Here is a video of george’s street arcade. Arcade doesn’t mean video games here.
Some more extravagant government buildings.
Department of the Taoiseach?
The next destination was to find the Oscar Wilde statue. Oscar Wilde is a famous playright who spent some time in Dublin and who was gay.
Peter ended up asking some old lady for directions. She ended up being SUPER nice and even walked with us a couple of blocks.
Finally found the statue after asking for much advice.
A pretty good impersonation I must say.
Next to some of his famous quotes.
The oscar wilde house which was across the statue.
Gotta take a picture of this.
We ended up walking through some mall.
Leprechaun invasion!
We walked in some gift shop perusing.
I just had too much fun with the statue.
My impersonation.
I may have been a little loopy hehe.
Yes they are!
The next place we went to was Kilmainham Gaol (prison). This was a place where they formerly held political prisoners.
We first got to go through a museum area.
Museum Video
Architectural model of the jail.
They had quite a bit of detail in the photos.
We then had a guided tour take us through the jail.
Forbidden video (videos weren’t allowed to be taken).
The stories of the jail were truly fascinating. This place has a very strong place in Irish history.
Many people got executed at this very one spot.
Contrary to the picture, I am just ‘resting’ my eyes.
They even let us in a jail cell
The view of the inside through a keyhole.
Us in the jail cell
Realizing the jail cell was locked. You would think we would run towards the door but we instead look at the tiny hole in the ceiling area haha.
The ‘thing’
A skyline on the walk back. The walk back had to be 1-2 miles.
More take away hehe.
Fancy trash can.
We were looking for a place to eat, but the restaurant I wanted to go to was way too crowded. Instead we stopped a local and got their suggestion.
Fruity cider.. can’t find this in the states.
Something about asians and peace signs hehe.
I ordered lamb stew.. delliiicious!
Eating is always a comforting time of day because of the relaxing atmosphere and communal bond.
Cheers to water! We were reminiscing on how in Prague we got ripped off.
Happy dan.
Ben and Peter ordered the fish and chips.
Lamb stew review
After dinner we just came back to the hostel and chilled. Rob was chatting it up with these folk here from New Zealand while Peter was talking with some girl from Indiana (?). I ended up going gay clubbing by myself because I wanted to check out the gay scene before I left.
Odd enough, it was dublin gay pride! The gay clubs were packed.
I ended up chatting with some guy who was there from London and got hit on by some old guy in another bar.
He was like ‘bonjour’ and I was like ‘bonjour’ and I was like do you speak French? He said no then I asked, “why did you speak to me in French”. No response from him. Creep.
The next morning we headed out to the airport.
Soccer is HUGE in Europe.
We took Aer Lingus back to Heathro then back to the states.
Oh boy now here is a story for the books. Our flight out of Dublin was delayed, so we were afraid we would miss our connecting flight back home because our layover wasn’t that long. When we arrived in London, we weren’t sure if our plane was boarding so we literally ran to the terminal. It must have taken us about 20 minutes running to get to the other side of the terminal!
Through the flight everyone was waking up pointing outside.
We were passing by some beautiful areas.
Sheet of ice.
Over greenland.
Another plane.
So for the last adventure, Rob’s luggage didn’t make it over on the flight (something happened with the connecting). But at the least he got it two days later.
And alas. the chapter ends.
till next trip..
Fin
We woke up at 6am that day to leave from Prague to Dublin.
It was quite interesting to see a prayer room in the airport.
Ben and I thought it was odd that you couldn’t bring a wet battery on the plane.
Video of breakfast
We took ryanair to go to Dublin. Our flight was half an hour late, with a very strange check-in process. You would just line up, and it would seem like a free for all.
In the ryanair plane.
A happy dan off the plane. The trip was really short, only like an hour and a half.
Ben and Rob coming off the plane. What’s weird is you can exit the front or back.
Our hostel
Throughout the entire backpacking trip, this is the only place we would go hosteling. Here the security is pretty strict because you have to show your pass just to get back in.
Peter’s first task in the hostel was to get some food.
Our room.
We stayed in a four bedroom private ensuite. We had four beds and our own bathroom.
Our shower. The shower was erratic because you would push the button and water would come out for 20 seconds. The problem is when you push it for the first time, REALLY HOT water would come out at times.
I dont know why a cutsy water drop is giving me advice about conservation.
The infamous shower
To get into our room we had a magnetic card key.
My car in Dublin!
What was really fascinating at being in Dublin at this time was one of the big votes that were taking place over the “Libson Treaty”.
Vote yes!
Vote no!
Yes!
Hmm.. the sinn fein party. After reading some local papers I found out that the whole EU was voting for the Libson Treaty which effectively delegates more of the power to the EU creating a federalism type structure in between a country in the EU and the EU leader itself. Think of it as a United States of Europe so to speak.
The tradeoff of this would be that each country would surrender some of its national sovereignty in exchange for a bigger bloc with influence in the world. The result of this was Ireland actually voting no on this proposition which threw the entire proposition in a tizzy (all countries must ratify the treaty in order for it to pass).
We were on our way to the Gusiness Brewery where we all where musuem and churched out. We didn’t bother to see any of them on our trip in Dublin.
Even the love is abroad…
Gas is.. a lot? I tried converting this and it didn’t make any sense what so ever.
Ben and his mischief.
Jamba juice of Europe?
The equivalent of our 99 cent store? So this basically converts to $3.50 store haha.
Solicitors apparently are lawyers.
To Let is ‘to lease’
The brewery house was a good 15 minute walk away from our hostel.
Almost there!
We had tickets already from online so it was pretty quick to get in.
How gusiness is made.
Black gold baby.
The gusiness factory consists of 7 floors with each floor emphasizing some aspect of gusiness. At the top was a sky bar.
I have to say everything was extremely informative.
How the beer is managed
Tasting lab!
What is interesting is they have different types of gusiness in Europe. WE tasted the medium bodied gusiness to me tasted better than the usual one.
Foreign extra stout?
Gusiness north star brew? How come this isn’t in the US?!?
How they make the barrels.
We now crossed in the section of Gusiness marketing.
Picture of all of the stories going down.
You can write any notes and leave them on a wall.
Not exactly sure what Ben wrote.
This is where you can put any notes on the wall for historical purposes.
My note.
Pete in front of tons of beer.
Trying to make my shadow point to a direction hehe.
One of my favorite pics.
Guiness marketing stuff.
More ads.
They had a section about responsible drinking.
After the nice tour, we would go to the top.
Our admission gave us one free beer.
The beer would have to rest a couple minutes.
A very happy dan after lots of walking.
Pic of the whole bar.
It was sort of crowded so we couldn’t get to see and enjoy the view.
This is supposedly the highest point in Dublin.
Very creamy.
Beer review.
Another one of my favorite pics
Afterwards we went to Burdock’s which was near our hostel (fish and chips).
The prices weren’t bad at all.
We brought the food back to the hostel.
Food review.
After lunch we went into food coma.
I think Rob was taking these pictures.
Still sleepy at night hehe.
We proceeded then to walk towards Temple Bar which is a touristy area in Dublin.
Temple bar area
The weather was pretty nice that day. Not too cold.
Temple bar walking around.
Picture in between one of the bridges.
Leprechauns!
Asian leprechaun haha.
So that’s it.. we spent the remainder of our night hanging out at some bar. Tomorrow.. the last day.
This was my extremely unhealthy breakfast. Fried chicken strips in a roll.
Our agenda of the day was to go to the museum of communism. On the way was the real wenscelas square. Turns out I navigated to the wrong street the day before.
My favorite store in New York. I was surprised to see it here. Unfortunately their selection sort of sucked.
A cool citibank advertisement.
The museum of communism was sort of in a weird area. You would walk through a lobby where it literally said like ‘casino on the right’, ‘museum of communism on the left’.
Inside the museum
The museum of communism is basically a place where they collected a lot of relics from the communist times. It’s interesting to see the propaganda first hand.
A teddy bear with a rifle. Classic.
I was reading the captioning around the area and it was talking about communist governments really relied on sports to hold their grip on power.
Interesting to see the other side of the media
The caption is ‘an american policeman’
The communist governments even tried to control their people through art. Not sure how successful they were in that endeavor though.
No museum pics are complete without imitations.
I have no idea who this is
Video
In Wensclas square
Afterwards we went to National Gallery where we got student discount to go in. Unfortunately they don’t allow pics in the museum, but it was really quite interesting.
In national gallery there was this weird exhibit where you can run down a long hall and hit a mattress. I think it was something about physics, but Ben and I raced to the end. I got sort of scared of running full speed into the mattress so I slowed down a lil.
Pic looking out of the national gallery.
Outside of the national gallery we saw a bunch of people snapping pictures of this person. We weren’t quite sure what was going on.
Video of the model?
After the model shoot, even more weirdness.
Umm.. monks?
These two ladies were just standing outside and Pete talked to them. Seems like they ’supposedly’ work for an airline but some of us were just guessing that they dressed up like that to get attention.
Dan smash!
I’m trying to make a rainbow motion. Get it? Or not haha..
An interesting civic I haven’t seen in the states before.
Back of the civic
For dinner, we went to go eat across the place we ate the day before (I forgot the name of this restaurant).
A cute waiter in the restaurant.
The food here was pretty reasonably priced and pretty traditionally czech. I’ve noticed the food is heavy on the bread dumplings and some type of goulash dish.
Peter and I got the same dish.
Rob decided to be different and got pork ribs.
I think Ben got the same thing also.
Dinner video
Afterwards we went to a pool hall where Ben played some Czech guy and almost got ripped off. The place was pretty big, but looked slightly ghetto. The place was a little scary because they had to buzz you in order to get out so you just can’t walk out if something happens.
Back at the apt.
Apt overview
Where we got our water in Europe.
thoughts on prague
Overall I thought Prague had waaay too many tourists which made it lose some of its charm and allure. I think 2 days in Prague would be enough to check it out.
Anywhere I go in the world.. my standard breakfast pretty much is yogurt with a banana. Its pretty cheap and keeps me full for a while.
This morning we were heading out to Prague castle. Before heading there, a stop at the pastry shop.
Sign of the shop we went into.
To get to Prague castle, we had to walk across Charles Bridge. The bridge has quite a few Christian symbols.
Our eventual destination
Arch at the start of the bridge
Don’t play in the street hehe.
After crossing Charles Bridge, we crossed another area called Mala Strana. To get to the castle, there is a short-cut path through a series of stairs. Odd enough, there was music playing at this time.
In one of the sewer gutters, somebody put a fake monster with his hand sticking out.
Top of the stairs
We wanted to do a statue pose in the empty crevice in the wall.. but I don’t think it came out as intended…
Guards in front of Prague castle. You can get way closer to them than to the guards in London.
Castle Square
Picture right inside the entrance. We fortunately got student discount to Prague castle. Basically Prague castle is split into 8 major sight seeing attractions your ticket has access to.
St Vitus Cathedral. We would go in later.
Most of the sites didn’t allow camera usage, but this building, Old Palace did allow it.
It had a really long hall
Funky organ
Some painting. As you can tell, the longer this Europe blog goes on, the shorter the descriptions for all historical art hehe.
Another exhibit was an old torture chamber.
We like to smile when we get tortured.
Ok.. some context for this picture. It is basically a statue of a guy with his package out, and everyone was taking a picture of people grabbing it. OF COURSE the guys wanted me to take a picture with it, so I did. Too bad for the guys it came out too dark.
As representative of Prague generally speaking, there were hordes of tourists in the castle.
We had several chance to go outside in the balconies and take a peek.
It really was quite a beautiful view
We would actually go hike to that tower area later
Outdoor view
Next stop was St Vitus’s cathedral.
Just like Notre Dame, some spectacular paintings were inside
Picture of the main hall
While walking around, we saw this ray of sunshine come into the church so we all decided to take pictures with it
I actually got in trouble for wearing my visor right after this pic.
Probably the brightest out of all the pics.
We wanted to do a matrix type picture in the sunlight
Back of the church
It’s easier to describe with a video
Back of the church
Apparently, the church is a popular spot for wedding photo taking.
Top of the church. Unfortunately I think the coolest part of Prague castle was Prague museum. It was really informative, big, but didn’t allow pictures.
Next stop.. lunch. We were going to go to Puffy Palac, a place I researched online which was good, but it was sort of pricy for lunch. Instead we went to some random local restaurant with the mentality “any place the locals go is good.” Boy were we wrong..
The menu. The czech dishes seemed sort of plain generally speaking. Lots of meat + gravy + dumplings.
We asked for water, and he kept giving us bottled water. Each of these freaking glasses was 2 euros! To say at the least, we were quite upset at the cost of the meal. Beer was cheaper than water.
My dish.. a meat cut and dumplings. The difference here is that their dumplings are more like our biscuits.
Rob’s soup.
We next took a hike up Petrin Hill. The park was really nice and green.
We COULD have taken a tram to the top, but instead chose to walk all the way up.
Some weird memorial. What is a little deciving is that you can’t go up the stairs where the statues are
View from the half way point
Some memorial statue thingy.
We took several shortcuts to get to the top
The hike only took about 20-30 mins
On the way up, there were some really weird random caves out of no where
We wanted to do a pretend shot we were seating on a bench without a bench, but instead it looks like we are trying to take a crap.
Croutching tiger, hidden tourist
Ben was trying to play around at the playground, but there were no rings or anything to hold his hand on the chain
Throughout prague.. we generally had problems reading signs. There wasn’t much English in the signs (but for the food menus there were).
So we made it to the top. The highest point in the area. Unfortunately they were charging an arm and a leg to go up the observation tower, so we decided to pass.
An interesting meeting with dogs
We hiked back to our apt to get some rest
One thing we noticed was that every stone had to be laboriously placed in the street. They must have had quite a few peons or slaves to do the work for the king back in the day hehe
Ben wanted to buy his sister a mug which had some Prague signage on it.
For dinner we went to a skewer house
Basically lots of meat on a skewer. Pretty good food, but nothing like awe inspiring.
One of the pictures Rob is smiling and not making a goofy face 
For our beer choice.. we had Gambrinos. Which is equivalent to our bud light. And who drinks that shit anyways?
At night Ben and Rob went to go play pool while Pete and I went to go check out Old Town Square. Turns out the soccer match was going on.
Even at night.. tons of tourists hehe.
This video was taken earlier in the day
On the way back we saw a car get booted. ouch
We had wireless in our apt, so we shared my phone to get online. I have this cool browser called Skyfire which can view regular webpages on a smartphone
To get to Amsterdam to Prague we booked airfare through www.skyeurope.com. Amazingly, our flight was a dollar, with like 29 dollars in taxes and surcharges. We woke at 4:30am to take a walk to the Amsterdam CS train station.
On the way to the train station we saw someone getting arrested which was somewhat interesting.
We took the train at the main station to Schipol Airport which was only around 15 minutes away. Here you see my breakfast and part of a future lunch.
Schipol airport is one of the nicest airports I’ve been to.
Interesting patterns
We pretty much chilled at the airport while for our flight. No problems fortunately at the airport.
Our airplane. A boeing 737.
Upon arriving in Prague, the first thing we had to do is to figure out how to get from the airport to the city. We eventually figured out we had where to buy bus passes and went in the bus. When Rob and I went in the bus, Pete and Ben were stuck outside and our bus was going to leave! In a panic I told the bus driver our friends was outside, and it seemed like he was going to leave without them, but he flagged them to go in the back of the bus. Sort of a scary moment there. Sorry, no pictures for this since this was a bit of a disaster situation. This is a pic of the hallway of an apt we rented.
For our accommodations in Prague, we rented out an apartment flat for 3 days. The apartment was REALLY nice.
Pic of the bathroom
Shower
Living area
Dining area
Bedroom
Video of the apt
The first stop was Old Town Square. There is some famous astronomical clock or something. I forgot the real significance of it.
Arrival in prague video
More pics of the old town area
Janus something memorial. One of the people who helped usher the protestant movement to Prague
Trying to imitate the sign. Unfortunately Ben isn’t a midget so it is sort of hard to pull off.
Its Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars
Architecturally, Prague is quite beautiful in its ability to keep in good condition its really old buildings.
St. Mary behind a church.
Some statue
Inside St Nicolas church. By this time we are sort of church’ed out so we went through it quickly.
Chandelier
I have NO IDEA what this is supposed to be
In old town they had several really expensive shops
One thing we noticed in Prague was that their streets are made up of cobblestone. They makes for painful feet at the end of the day.
Old town is basically like a square block of their town. Here they are preparing for the euro cup matches to be played on tv.
Before coming, I read up on stuff about Prague online, and people recommended to go to this gelato place.
All the flavors
It was SO GOOD. I am constantly seeking the best pistachio gelato.
The next stop would be slightly north to the Jewish Quarter. Unfortunately most of the places were closed due to Jewish holidays.
Jewish town exploring video
Picture of a synagogue
Throughout Prague, they kept advertising the Museum of Torture (which we didn’t go to).
Pic of the Charles Bridges which divides the two sides of Prague
Walking along the river
Chinese restaurant. And I’m happy to say we had no Chinese food in Prague.
The colonel is everywhere! And I’m sure our western exports will make everyone fat.
A pretty cool way of covering up construction.
In front of some music concert hall
In the background is Prague castle
A ufo in the background
Through the Prague trip, people who will remained unnamed kept taking hidden shots of pretty girls on the street.
Another nice pic of the bridge
For Charles River there are only two passes points to cross to the other side, which is called ‘mala strana’ and ‘castle district’
Another western export.. sex in the city
Ben showing off his Czech Crowns. So even though the Czech Republic is in the European Union, it hasn’t done a currency conversion yet. To say at the least, Prague seemed as expensive as western europe anyways with the US dollar’s crappy conversion.
Dinner time! Also when looking through nytimes.com site on Prague, I saw this restaurant (Cerny Kohout) highly rated. At dinner time, we were hella hungry, but I was insistent on going to this particular restaurant.
Good ol’ beer. Cheaper than water. Seriously.
Appetizer course.
Video of first course
Picture of the inside of the restaurant
Prague’s beer of choice. Pilsner Urqell
Main course: Duck confit
Ben’s main course: Veal
Rob’s main course: Lamb
Closer snapshot of the lamb
Closer snapshot of the lamb
Group pic
Main course review. I have to say.. this food was amaaaaaaaazing.
Here is the address if you ever want to go.
At night, we chose to take a stroll along the Charles River.
So while walking along the river, this group of girls kept giggling at us. They eventually asked if we wanted a group pic, and we said sure. We ended up befriended them for the night which was cool. They are all masters students in Indonesia.
One side of the bridge
Gq posing
Video of the Charles River
Every night I would write down my experience of what happened that day into a journal I brought. It ended up being really helpful because later on I would forgot many small details.
The apt had wireless so the guys were able to use Ben’s and my phone to go on.
Pic of the outside.
