Christmas Day in Český Krumlov

Our Christmas Day in Český Krumlov in photos.

The view from our room with the River Vltava below.

Grace and Lily pausing to take a photo of St. Vitus Church, reconstructed in the early 15th century.

A sister huddle in one of the city's squares.

Purchasing a couple of Czech Christmas decorations that we will hopefully enjoy for many Christmases to come.

Some more Christmas market food to sample.  Barry has caught me with my mouth full of a large potato pancake and it is quite clear that my hand is poised to grab more.  Not so elegant.

Meandering through the town, with the castle on the hill as our destination.

A gingerbread shop looking very Christmasy.

A tad bit larger than the macchiato that you get in Italy, but no complaints.  It was a yummy Christmas Day coffee treat.

A view of the tower of the state castle, the oldest part of which was built in the mid-thirteenth century. More information on the tower here.

Great view of the town and the Vlatava River from the castle grounds.

A castle window just the right size for Lily.

Where we stayed is the red house with the black roof on the right side of the river.

Heading back into town under the Cloak Bridge that links the castle complex over the deep ravine.

Christmas dinner reservations at the Restaurant Bohemia.

There was no turkey with stuffing on the menu, but Barry and Grace ordered the chicken with cinnamon apple slices and cranberry sauce which seemed quite festive.  I quite enjoyed my pork stuffed potato dumplings with cabbage.

Svornosti Square after dark. We were so full after dinner but had to come back for another Christmas market treat and our last taste of Trdlenik.  This is a sweet bread that is made from dough rolled out in strips and then wrapped around a spindle and glazed with sugar.  It is then cooked in open coals until the outside gets browned and the inside fluffs up to spongy, soft bread-like dough.  After cooking, we almost always chose to have ours rolled in cinnamon sugar, and once Lily had one with Nutella spread on the inside, which she would highly recommend.

Closing in on the Christmas stall in Svornosti Square where the best Trdelnik in the whole of Czech Republic is served.  Okay, so perhaps we don't quite have the authority to make such a claim, but considering we were only in this country for 5 days, we sampled quite a lot of Trdelnik from multiple vendors and this was the best by a long shot: very fresh and nicely puffed up.

Our order is done and just being removed from the heat.

An after dark shot of St.Vitus Church on the way back to our room. So beautiful.  Barry was feeling pretty chuffed with himself at this moment as we had just been in a store for the girls to buy a few postcards and stickers for their travel books and upon leaving Barry gave the storekeeper all the Czech he had;  "Děkuji" (thank-you), "Ahoj" (casual goodbye), "veselé Vánoce" (Merry Christmas), and the shopkeeper gave him a big smile and said, "Oh, you live in Czech!".  

We so missed family and friends, but today is a Christmas that will stand out for our family in the years to come.

Merry Christmas!  Veselé Vánoce!

Berliner Weihnachtszeit

Grace and I appreciate Lily's decisive shopping style that she has developed, as it is so much more efficient than how we tend to go about choosing and purchasing a new item.  Lily's not a huge shopper, but if she does have an item in mind she knows almost instantly, even at a distant, when she spots what she wants to buy.  Case in point:  the purchasing of those Corfu purses about which Barry wrote.

Grace had been humming and hawing over which purse to buy at the first store for quite some time before I was able to encourage her to move on to have a look at the next purse shop.  The whole time, Lily had just been quietly hanging out with us, but as we approached the second store with its hundreds of purses hung up outside and inside, Lily looked up and within seconds pointed one out and said, "I'd like that one."  Her big sister was not only impressed with the speed of her decision but with the decision itself, as she ended buying the same purse Lily chose only in a different colour.

In much the same manner, Lily judges a city as one of her favourites pretty quickly.  For instance, as a five-year-old, she told me within a day of arriving in London that she was going to live there when she grew up (of course, it was the first country she had been to in months where she could communicate with people in English!).  And, it happened again in Palm Springs when she was seven. Before we even left the airport upon landing, she offered to rent me a room in her house she would have there one day, for one cent.  A super deal, I thought.

As a newly turned eleven-year-old, Lily was about to fall for her city number three.

I had been told that Berlin was a city, much like London, where you could find some great international eateries.  Our first meal out certainly backed this up, as it was at a delicious Vietnamese restaurant just around the corner from our hotel.  While waiting for our food, Lily was staring out the window when she quietly said to me, "I could really see myself living here one day."

Lily's view outside the Madami Vietnamese Restaurant.  We observed several tour groups go by examining the art on the walls.

This tasted really, really good.

As much as I wanted to see some of the historical sights of this city, we were only in Berlin for a short stay and the Berlin Christmas markets were a priority on our to-do list.  We walked the short distance to one of the reportedly biggest and best: the Berliner Weihnachtszeit at Roten Rathaus.

On our way to the market, the girls found these trampolines in the sidewalk amusing.

The girls are good at trying new things, but sometimes a familiar taste from home is just what you need.

The girls were so interested to see this Berliner use spray paints to create some art.

Arriving at the edge of the Berliner Weihnachtszeit Christmas market.

Some serious Christmas spirit here.

Soaking up the atmosphere in front of the skating rink while Mom and Dad warmed their hands at a small fire.

Grace and Lily making some tough choices at the Schokokuss (Chocolate Kiss) booth.  So many flavours to choose from!

Just about to try their first taste of these soft egg-white meringue domes covered in chocolate.

From chocolate covered meringue to garlic "kartoffelchips"....mmmmmm!

We all loved our first visit to a German Christmas market.  In fact, we had to drag Grace away she was so enjoying herself.  It was on this Christmas market high that we were so shocked to learn of the tragic news that had just unfolded at another of Berlin's most popular Christmas market that evening. We were so very sad to learn that others that had been, like us, soaking up the holiday smells, sights, tastes and sounds of Christmas in Berlin had been victims of such a senseless attack.

So much goes through the mind.  What I will write here is that we have special family memories from this day and there is an eleven-year-old Canadian girl that is still dreaming about returning and having an apartment in the city one day.  Thank-you, Berlin.

Christmas in Antibes

Time to complete the trifecta and add a final instalment to my guest blogging before I hand the keys to the keyboard back to Ginger.

As I passed by a school on Friday at 4:30, I heard a couple of students happily proclaiming "Les vacances sont partis!" and a warmth spread through me as the memory kicked in of the joyous sensation of wishing my students "Happy Holidays" combined with the realization that I had survived to yet another Christmas vacation.

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas abroad, I have to admit that at times being away from home is so very hard.  We love our house at Christmas time and this year there is even snow back home which just adds to the misery (maybe a little bit of dramatism for literary gain!)  The girls have been missing their house, their friends and their family.  Lily for one has been quite upset that "we don't even have a Christmas tree dad!"  Well, the village of Antibes has done their part to try and uplift our spirits, so on Saturday, the girls and I set out to find some holiday cheer (it was Lily's birthday as well).

Throughout the town, Christmas displays are set up.  This is the display at Place de Gaulle.

There is a small Christmas market just outside of the Old City that definitely was bringing a holiday vibe.  Grace loves going here every day to buy a local delicacy called Socca.  It is made with chickpea flour and is delicious.  On Saturday we even bought the ingredients to make it at home. 

We continued our tour through town to Place Nationale where there are rides set up for children.  There was one ride that the girls figured was old enough for them so they had a couple of spins on this classic:

We made our way back to the Pres-aux-Pecheurs square which is definitely the epicentre of Christmas cheer in Antibes.  They have an outdoor ice rink which combined with a chilly 5-degree evening and some fake snow, transported us to a winter wonderland.

It seems like ages ago that we arrived in Antibes and one of our first activities was to ride La Grande Roue to get a view of the city.  Lily has been asking for a return trip for quite a while and since it was her birthday, I decided that we had to take another spin.  

 Grace took this from the top of the Grande Roue.

The girls even managed to get a few last minute requests into Santa.

After the Grande Roue, we had a hot chocolate and a candied apple, and I was so happy to hear Lily proclaim "This has probably been one of my best birthdays ever!"

As we made our way back to our apartment, the three of us all agreed that Antibes has done a great job of bringing holiday cheer into our lives.

Cruising to Corfu

I like to think that my blog entries are a bit like an all you can eat buffet.  Quantity over quality so here goes with the second instalment of Guest Blogging by Barry.

I was introduced to the island Corfu as a young boy by my mother as she read aloud Gerald Durrell's "My Family and Other Animals" which is set on the beautiful Greek island.  My mother read us Durrell's books as we prepared to visit Corfu in the summer of 1976.  I remember well being enthralled with the exploits of a young Gerald as he explored the flora and fauna of Corfu.  Unfortunately, some tainted mango juice bought from a street vendor in Cairo cancelled my first visit to Corfu due to me spending 2 days in an Athen's hospital as opposed to visiting the beaches of Corfu.  Fast forward 40 years and thanks to the Costa Mediterranea, we arrived in Corfu with just over 8 hours to explore the city.  This trip to Corfu came with its own set of challenges as the trip in was quite bumpy and all of us felt a little seasick as the waves and wind battered our floating hotel whilst traversing the Adriatic Sea from Bari.

This picture doesn't quite do the waves justice but we were rocking and rolling pretty well!

Corfu was a great stop for a day trip as the city is quite compact and easy to get around.  My favourite stops on the cruise were the smaller cities that didn't overwhelm with the scope of their size.  We started out visiting the Old Fortress.  One thing I found interesting throughout the cruise was hearing of the successive empires that controlled the various cities over the last 1000 years.  Corfu was no different as the Old Fortress was built by Byzantines in the 12th century, though artefacts from as early as the 5th century are displayed in the Old Fortress museum.

Fragments of a floor mosaic from the Basilica of Jobianos dating to the 5th or 6th century.

The Republic of Venice extended all the way down to Corfu and they continued to improve the fortifications of the Old Fortress to such a degree that the fortress survived three major Ottoman Empire sieges in 1537, 1571 and 1716.  It was a beautiful day to walk the grounds of the fortress and imagine the Ottoman navy trying in vain to take the fortress.

In front of the church of St. George.

Ginger and the girls in the entryway of the Old Fortress.

The Contrafossa moat was built by the Venetians to improve the fortifications of the fortress by turning it into an artificial island.  The inner harbour is still used by fishermen to this day.

We left the Old Fortress and headed into the Old Town of Corfu.  We really felt the benefit of travelling here in off season as the narrow streets were quite empty and easy to manoeuvre in.  Grace and Lily managed to score a couple of flashy purses and they made their dad proud as a well placed "they were cheaper at the other store" by Grace to Lily resulted in a "prices can change!" response from the owner and voila: 20 euro purses became 10 euro purses.  I almost cried at the progress in their bartering skills.

The three of us sampling a Greek doughnut.  How could I pass that up?  

When we first arrived in Corfu, we asked Lily what was one thing she wanted to do in Greece and she replied, "eat Greek salad of course!"  So with stomachs somewhat satiated with Greek pastries we began a search for the perfect Greek salad.  This proved a more difficult task than we initially thought as the chilly wind was driving everyone indoors and all the restaurants with indoor dining were full.  Well, these hardy Canadians were willing to eat outside and we lucked out by stumbling on Pane e Souvlaki on the Town Hall Square.  With a wind break to our left and a heater to our right, we had an amazing lunch of pita bread and hummus, with a main of Greek salad that did not disappoint.

Feeling like we had made the most of our visit, we headed back to the ship just in time to catch the evening sun lighting up the city.

Corfu city with the twin peaks of the Old Fortress in the background.