The Parent Visit: Arrival, Malahide Castle

My parents flew in from Austria on June 6, late in the evening. After getting them home from the airport, we caught up a bit before turning in to sleep (it was late, after all!). The next morning, the weather didn't appear to be too bad so we formulated a plan to go see something. Malahide castle is not too far away from the Dublin area, so it seemed like a likely candidate. We decided to drive down to Bray (a town just south of Dublin) and hop on the Dart train and take it all the way up the coast and through the city centre all the way up to the castle. It turns out that this was quite a bit longer a trip than we thought ... and with less coastal views than we rememebered. The Dart train isn't really something we take on a regular basis. Oh well.

Still, we made it to Malahide and wandered around the grounds for awhile trying to find the castle itself. There's a fairly sizeable park there, with a lot of trails, playgrounds, sports pitches and general grassy fields. It was a nice day though so we enjoyed a bit of a walk until we came across the castle itself. For some reason though, we came across it from the back entrance which was slightly confusing.

There was a guided tour starting right away, so we got in on that. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed inside (seems like too many places these days have a no photography policy). The tour was actually quite interesting -- It's pretty cool to hear about a building that has so much history. I'm not too sure how much I can remember from the tour, except for just a couple of details. The first being that in one of the rooms, there was an amazing marble table in one corner. The table's surface had several colours of stone inlaid like a mosaic, and it was incredibly beautiful. According to our audio tour, no one's been able to figure out how the person accomplished it ... The second thing I remember from the tour was a portrait in the stairwell of the castle. The portrait depicts a child wearing red shoes being held by her mother Mrs Talbot. The child would grow up to be the woman who sold the castle to the Irish State.

After the tour, we stopped in the cafe there for a quick lunch and then wandered back out onto the grounds for a bit. Eventually we returned back to the dart station and headed home.

That evening, we headed into the city centre on the LUAS and headed in for some dinner at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen. It had been on our list of places to go try, since several people had recommended it. Turns out it was actually quite good!

So that's how we spent the first full day my parents were here. Throughout the week, I went to work, so the next stuff I saw with them would be on the next weekend: our trip to the Irish West Coast.

Morgan

A Weekend in Budapest, Part II

On the Sunday of our trip to Budapest, we did indeed ride on a boat, upstream along the beautiful Danube. It was a glorious day, and everyone and his dog was out in canoes, kayaks, and motorboats. We saw people tubing and paragliding. And the town where we went was called Szentendre, after St. Andrew. It’s just north of Budapest. There we found tasty barbecued meats at a Serbian restaurant, which boasted an excellent guitarist. One thing that’s really struck me around Budapest is the amount of live music in restaurants and on the street. Much of it is of fair quality too. A ton of artists, actors, writers, and musicians reportedly live in Szentendre. And more and more tourists are showing up. I believe it’s because of the hot chocholate (forró csokoládé in Hungarian) at a little café down the street, south from the dock, across from a family of knife-makers. Here ended my search for “real” hot chocolate, that is, melted drinking chocolate in a cup to which you then add milk and whipped cream as you wish. I would gladly row 10 miles up the river for it. (Okay, 10 km in something streamlined maybe.) I think there’s also a marzipan museum and a confectionery museum, as well as a wine museum there. We took the train back into town after being waylaid at the station and serenaded by a little old fellow and his perhaps-once-tuneful violin. The next day we trundled across the bridge to the Gellért Baths to soak our cares away in the mineral-rich waters. A great way to spend a Monday if you ask me. At the lockers, there’s a cute little key attendant who locks up for you and then lets you back in when you’re done. (It’s appropriate to tip a few hundred forint.) It was nice – quite clean, not too salty, not super hot. That said, many people I know would be looking for a lot warmer pools than I found there. They also had extra things like facials and massages, and I think maybe I should have gone for one – I’ve been missing massage since class ended!

Magically healed in the fountains of life and youth and so on, we decided to do a little more walking. We climbed up to see some statues on the hill beside the Gellért, including the liberty monument, which looks to me like a lady trying to paraglide with a leaf, and St. Gellért, who, according to legend, was pushed off the hill in a barrel and died. There was also a very cool, cavernous little church, carved and dug into the side of the hill.

That evening, it was time for possibly the biggest helpings of food yet at a nearby restaurant appropriately named Fatál. Yes, it’s Hungarian for wooden plate (on which some of the menu is served), but I prefer to take it literally and without the accent. Morgan and I indulged in roast duck and wiener schnitzel of significant area. (The schnitzel was totally hanging off the edge of its fatál.) With various flavours of beer of course. And not a vegetable in sight, unless you count potatoes. Please don’t tell our moms.

After supper the guys, apparently not completely owned by the hugeness of the food, went to check out a local casino. I went home to pass out. They came back with stories of poker hands and people that tried their darndest to usher them into strip joints. Rumour has it that if you accept the invitation of such an establishment, the bill will be much more than you bargained for…

On the morning of our final day, we checked Gerbeaud off our list. It is a fancy-pants café-confectionery with tasty cakes including Morgan’s Gerbeaud torte and my alma torte. You can tell how respectable it is by the way they bring thimbles of complimentary water to your table without your having to ask. I must say though, that their version of forró csokoládé is entirely trumped by Szentendre.

Back to the Oktogon (octagonal intersection and subway stop below) and Andrássy út we went, to see the House of Terror. The building that now houses a museum was formerly chosen as headquarters for both Nazi and Communist terror organizations, and many people were tortured and interrogated inside it. It’s very well set up to tell the stories of Hungary’s double occupation (and very short-lived rebellion) through pretty much endless amounts of media. There must be several days’ worth of video alone, as well as printed material and some of the technology and other artifacts of the day. There were beautiful statues and tributes but also reconstructed prison cells, some of which I really would not have enjoyed. It can be a profound experience if you allow it, and we left reminded of sobering stories made up of many lives.

We took our last ride on the underground and strolled our last Hungarian streets, ate our last honey-cakes and said our last thank you’s to our generous hosts. We used our last few hundred forint to buy a bottle of water for the plane and we were off home again. There or thereabouts ended a lovely extended weekend away. I would highly recommend Budapest and wouldn’t mind going again myself, though we have the rest of Europe to get through. I hear Croatia is quite lovely.

Diane

Last Days in Austria

Here is the last installment of our adventures in Austria. I hope you enjoyed themUnfortunately, we just had the one last day in Austria before our flight home the next day. The Austrian relatives had been wonderful hosts -- not only generously giving us a place to stay and feeding us, but refusing stubbornly to let us pay for anything (though we did manage to get a couple of the bills, it was a struggle!). There was one thing we had been requested to do by Sabine's mom, and that was go over to her place for dinner. Fortunately, we had one night left to do that so that is what we did.

On Monday morning, Sabine and her husband picked us up and we made a journey about half an hour out of Linz to a little town called Gmunden which is famous for the ceramics (or in German: keramik) they make there. Unfortunately, the guided tour of the facility was closed until early January (one reason to go back I guess!), so we took the chance to admire some of the wares. They were rather nice, I must say, and you could really get just about all of your kitchen dishes in one design or another if you liked. They even had napkins, candles, coasters, and placemats you could buy that matched particular patterns. I dunno if it would be worth buying a 3.50 euro coaster just to match your ceramics though...

After taking a look at the ceramics, we walked down to the nearby lake to walk along it and stopped for lunch at a cafe which sat right next to the water. It was well worth it just to enjoy the sun shining through the glass of the porch and watch the birds on the clear water. We didn't leave until much later and enjoying more traditional Austrian desserts (complete with a lot of whipped cream!). It was a nice lunch.

We continued walking along the coast taking pictures. Our eventual destination was a castle built on a small island on the lake. It made a nice subject for pictures, particularly with the mist over the lake in front of it. On the way, we found some ice frozen on the side of the road and Diane and I were quick to walk around on it a bit. You know the kind of ice where it's not frozen solid yet, but you can walk around on it and watch and hear cracks in the ice and bubbles run in the shallow water underneath? I have great memories of playing on ice just like this in the spring back in Edmonton. Perhaps that's why I keep doing it now whenever I get the chance.

We reached the castle and walked around it quickly before making the return journey to the car. We needed to be back to Linz to setup Skype for Sabine's mom to talk to people back home. So we arrived at her place the smell of cooking. She must have spent all day cooking up a feast for that evening! So we ate, and ate, and ate... it was delicious, and I don't really want to think about how much work went into preparing everything!

We returned back to Kien's place, and got packed up and ready to leave in the morning. The next morning, Kien's brother generously drove us back to the Salzburg airport where we caught our plane back home.

It was a good trip, and we're glad we got out to see this side of the family and where they live. It was Diane's first time in continental Europe, and just my 3rd time with one of those times happening when I was just 2 years old, and the other when I was in Italy for a computer games research conference. It was a good experience and we're looking forward to our next trip. I hear we've got an open invitation in Budapest...

Morgan

Two Days in Vienna

As promised, here's one of two posts that will close out how we spent our time in Austria.Being so close to Vienna, Diane and I really wanted to get a chance to see part of this famous city. As we setup our schedule with my cousin Sabine, we quickly found that a trip to Vienna was going to be a little tough to do with her since she had a few commitments during the week. So we decided it might be best for us to venture to Vienna on our own to check it out.

As it happens, one of my friends from university is staying in Budapest, which is also a couple hour train ride away from Vienna. So when I told him we were going to be in Austria, we made tentative plans to meet up after Christmas in Vienna. Fortunately, this worked out well for us.

So early on Saturday morning, Diane and I waited in the Linz-Ebelsberg train station to catch the 7:00am train to St Valentin, where we transfered onto a train that took us straight into Vienna. We arrived a little less than 3 hours later. It took us a few minutes to get our bearings before we found the right way to go, and it was just a 3 block walk to our hostel for the night. Our room was ready so we checked in and left to find Mike near the university in Vienna.

Our plan for the day was pretty simple: we had downloaded an mp3 friendly audio tour called "Vienna: Hidden Corners of the First District". The starting location was where we met up with Mike, and we started out on what turned out to be a fantastic audio tour. If you're ever in Vienna and are looking for a good way to walk around the downtown core as a way to get familiar with it, and see a bunch of cool things along the way, I highly recommend this tour. We met Mike around 11am, and got started pretty soon after that - and we were at the tour for most of the day (with a few rest stops along the way, including lunch).

The tour was composed of 22 parts, and took us through some very interesting corners of Vienna. Early on in the tour, the guide had us go into a nondescript tailor's shop and ask to see the cellar -- apparently something this particular store would be asked a lot, because the lady waved us to a staircase saying something similar to "of course!". The cellar was amazing, with stairs and chambers leading us around quite a ways before we ran into a spot where the owners had blocked further exploring. According to the tour guide, these underground chambers lead quite a ways under Vienna. It was pretty cool! Even at this early stage in the tour, we all felt the money we paid for the audio tour was well spent.

The tour continued on to point out several remnants of the Roman empire, and led us on to a church where a lifesize mosaic replica of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper on the wall. The mosaic weighs an astounding 20 tons, and what amazed us the most was that it was done at such a resolution that from the ground, we couldn't tell that it was a mosaic. Apparently Napoleon had commissioned the mosaic be made so that he could take an original back to Paris with him. When it was completed, however, Napolean had already been defeated and eventually it ended up in this relatively small church in Vienna.

Our guide then led us through several more interesting facts and features of Vienna on to a side street and an unassuming doorway to a pub. Just inside, you go down a couple flights of stairs at which point the room opens up into an absolutely incredible arched ceiling cellar which was formerly used to store wine. Now, it makes probably the best atmosphere pub I've ever been in. We stopped in there for a beer and to enjoy the atmosphere, as we totally felt it was required to do!

A little while later, the guide had us walk up to a private looking door set in the side of a road, and open it to reveal a narrow passageway which eventually opened up into a Renaissance courtyard dating back to the 1500s. Already, the tour had paid for itself by showing us several parts of Vienna we would never have found on our own.

The rest of the tour pointed out several other details of Vienna including what is apparently the oldest underground public conveniences (restrooms), an old church where part of the inside plaster on the walls had been stripped away to reveal the previous stylings of the church, and some interesting details at the city's famous St. Stephen's church. We ended our tour not far from where we started it, at the gates to the Hofburg palace grounds.

Mike had a couple hours left before he had to go catch his train back to Budapest, so we made the most of it by walking around the Hofburg grounds. At this point it was dark out and the grand buildings were all lit up beautifully. It was a stunning sight. After stopping to take some photographs, we wandered our way eventually back to the train station where we waited for Mike's train in a cafe there. We wished him a good journey back and were on our own in Vienna for the evening and the next day!

It had been a bit of a long day for us though, so we didn't really feel up to doing much other than finding a place to eat dinner and retiring to sleep. The person who ran the hostel suggested we try out a little restaurant down the road from the hostel. It was a charming little Italian restaurant which we enjoyed quite a bit. Maybe the food wasn't incredible, but the waiter (whom I presume owns the place) was really charming in the way he sat down with us to explain the menu specials in his Italian accented English. We had some nice wine with dinner and tried out some Sachertorte (traditional Austrian chocolate cake) and ApfelStreusel (apple streudel) for dessert. Of the two, I actually preferred the apple streudel: it was warm and really quite tasty!

The next morning, we returned to the Hofburg grounds to attempt to see the Spanish riding horses show that morning. Unfortunately, it was all sold out except for two 135 euro tickets (each!). Instead of doing that, we left and stopped for a bite of breakfast at a nearby cafe and decided on a backup plan. Eventually we decided to check out the Austrian imperial palace: Shonbrunn. When we got there, we were dismayed by the long line up entering the palace, and decided to check out the grounds for awhile with the hope that the line would be gone when we returned. Quickly, we discovered that the palace grounds were HUGE! One could easily get lost in there. For the next hour and a half or so we wandered around the grounds just a tad in awe of the scale of the whole thing. It was a bit unfortunate that we were there in the winter -- the trees and plants were bare, and would probably look stunning in the spring/summer or fall. Still, there was lots to see including a long climb up past one set of statues to another building far up the hill that looked down on the Palace and a magnificient view of Vienna. From there, we wandered back down the hill and back around to the front of the palace to see if the line up had died down a bit. Thankfully, the lineup had disappeared into the building!

So the next thing to do was explore the palace. The tour with an accompanying audio guide was actually quite interesting. Two things really stood out for me. The first was the incredible scale of the place and the amount of decoration that went into each room. Every single room that we entered had a particular theme to the decor, and the people who were in charge of decorating the rooms did not stop at anything. Every detail was thought of and covered. Some themed rooms included Asian lacquered panelling, blue and white painted walls and decoration to imitate porcelain, and the use of rare and expensive wood panelling. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to take my camera in, so I don't have any photos. The second thing that stood out for me was the tremendous amount of history behind the building. The audio tour provided with the admission rattled off several years and historical figures to the point that it turned into a blur of history. I'm going to have to spend some time reading about the history of Austria on wikipedia now! For an example of what I mean, the tour guide would say something like "Napolean stayed in this room when he stayed in Vienna in year XXXX". And it would be like that for many of the rooms.

The tour took about an hour, at which point we thought we'd return to downtown Vienna to ride the tram around town just to see the town a little bit before we sought dinner. Diane remembered a restaurant mentioned on the audio tour we took the previous day that had looked rather cozy, so we returned there to eat an early dinner before our train back to Linz. The food was fantastic, and the place was warm and cozy. It was a wonderful way to end our short trip to Vienna.

A couple of impressions we had on our short stay there. The transit was truly one of the nicest things about the city. It was incredibly easy to get around town on the numerous trams and underground lines that go through the city. On a less positive note, Austria is a lot more lax about where you can smoke -- meaning that many of the restaurants we went to during our stay were smokey which detracted a bit from the atmosphere in my opinion. Vienna is a wonderfully ornate city with most buildings looking beautiful in the crisp winter air. There's a lot to see there, and we'll definitely have to return to check out some of the public parks, the museums, and more tourist attractions!

We negotiated the train route back to Linz successfully although there was a little bit of running just to make sure we caught the next train on the two transfers we had to do on the return journey. The first leg was the longest and it was in a comfy new looking double-decker train - the likes of which I didn't know existed. So Diane and I sought seats on the upper deck, partly for the novelty of the experience.

We arrived at our stop at Linz on time to discover that Kien had come to pick us up at the station. The walk back to his place wasn't too long, but he decided to drive up and pick us up there anyways, which was thoughtful and nice of him to do!

So that was our short trip to Vienna. It was fun, and everything went pretty smoothly which was good for our first foray into continental Europe by ourselves!

A Quiet Christmas (relatively)

We had quite a relaxing Christmas. After spending the first couple of days in Austria touring Salzburg and Linz, the speed of our tourist activities slowed down for Christmas eve and day. On Christmas eve, we slept in (as we would do most of the week really), hung around Kien's place for awhile before Kien took us to Enns -- which is the oldest town in Austria, and only a few minutes drive from Linz. The biggest feature of Enns is the giant clock/watchtower in the center square. This tower soars above the town, and was incredibly built back in the 1500s. The cool thing was that even though there was nobody there (it was Christmas eve, afterall!), the tower remained open with an honour system collection box for the two euro entry fee. We gladly paid it as the climb to the top of the tower was totally worth the view! The inside of the tower had a pretty steep staircase wrapping the inside walls of the tower, but we climbed it with little trouble.Once back on the ground, we continued to explore the town of Enns -- walking into an old mansion courtyard and then on to a lookout point to see an outlook onto the river that flows through town.

We returned back to Linz to find that one part of the family had already arrived for the family dinner. In Austria, Christmas is mostly celebrated on the eve. My Austrian relatives had prepared a common Chinese feast in the form of a hotpot. In this meal, the table is filled with plates full of uncooked meats, noodles and vegetables which surround a hot plate with a pot of soup stock. During the meal, you choose food you'd like to eat and toss it into the pot and wait for it to cook before rescuing it with chopsticks or a basket. The meal is interactive, and actually quite a lot of fun -- not to mention tasty too!

Diane had spent some time wrapping up the pile of gifts we had brought with us from Ireland the previous night, and we had people open them. Before we knew it, it was late and we retired for the evening.

The big plan on Christmas day was to ... well ... not do much. We had setup a date to connect through Skype with a party my mom was having at her place with all the Chinese relatives in Edmonton. That wasn't until 9:00pm though in Austria, so we had most of the day to kill, and we really didn't do all that much. It's because of this downtime that I managed to get a bunch of photos up from the first few days of the trip. It wasn't until the afternoon when we decided to go for a walk. Diane and I had just planned to walk around SolarCity some more, but Kien took us a few minutes away to a nearby lake which was absolutely gorgeous in the dimming light. The water of the lake was crystal clear, and was reflecting a gorgeous shade of silvery blue. We even were greeted by a couple swans that were out on the cold lake. Purely wonderful. The walk around the lake was about 3.5km (according to the signage around the lake). It was good to get out and walk around -- particularly the overabundance of food we were getting fed from the family!

That evening, we hooked up on Skype first with Diane's family for a short bit to say Merry Christmas (sorry about the short length!), and then with my family in Edmonton where there was a series of people who all made an appearance to say hi to my Aunt, Kien, Lillian, and the new baby Marisa. By the time this all was over, it was late and we were tired (from eating?) and retired for the night.

On "Boxing Day" (it's not called that in Europe), we didn't have much planned either, but ending up going into Linz with Kien to walk around a bit. It was a chilly, cloudy day in Linz -- much like it had been all week really. The town was pretty much shut down for the day with very few establishments open, and the ones that were were awfully quiet. Still, we did get to see some of Linz's sights. One of our stops was an incredible church. From the outside, it was tall and ornate, but the truly jaw dropping experience doesn't happen until you step inside -- where the church's incredibly high arched ceiling towers above you, and the tall stained glass windows glow. I could feel my mouth hang open as we walked around inside the church, and as might be obvious to you at this moment, am still amazed at it.

After exiting the church, it was starting to get dark, but continued our way along to a museum which was unfortunately closing right away so we didn't get to go inside. We didn't, however, miss a pretty nice view with city lights glittering across the surface of the Danube river.

Eventually we decided to go have dinner at a sushi bar/mongolian bbq place. It was decent, but the nicest thing about it was the price really. Actually, that's one thing we've noticed while we've been in Austria -- compared to Dublin, it's pretty cheap! Stuff like the all-you-can-eat buffet we had that night was far cheaper than we could imagine seeing in Dublin, and this appeared to follow for just about everything we've seen in Austria so far. We've heard a few times that the prices in Ireland and the UK are the most expensive in the EU. Well, we've seen some pretty hard evidence in three cities in Austria anyways.

So that was our pretty quite Christmas. Up next, our short two day trip to Vienna and meeting up with a good friend there!

Morgan