Tort diplomat

by Cristina

prima incercare :)

Bublin' Dublin

Dublin was the first trip of the year and it came unexpectedly as a spontaneous idea from Cristina who had read about St Patrick's day and a great offer to stay at a castle!

It was very difficult to resist it, especially since it qualified as a very nice birthday present for me :)
So a couple of hours later we were good to go the following weekend to Dublin.

We got there late Friday evening and went straight to the 'castle' which was definitely the coolest hotel we've ever stayed in. There are sooo many reasons to stay there and indulge utter comfort. It was a truly unforgettable experience.

But Dublin was definitely much more than that. First of all, it was bursting green while in Prague it looked like spring gave up any hope of beating the gloomy winter. Green and springy with a permanent wind performing disco-like effects with the sun and clouds.

That must be a reason why the whole city is so alive! Despite not having a great deal of imposing architecture nor dramatic views (which i pursue fiercely wherever I go) Dublin has a great personality as you will see in the videos i shot in a matter of a couple of hours walking through the city center.

Dublin's houses are rather modest looking: basic Victorian architecture of what was at the time a mere provincial town of the British kingdom which could hardly dream of one day becoming a prosperous capital of its people. Even so, they are very well kept - especially the doors. It seems a great deal of effort goes into maintaining a nice shine on the thick, colorful paint layers carefully laid on these symbolic and yet so functional inventions.

We spent the whole Saturday admiring the city unwinding along the banks of the Liffey and we ended the day with a fulfilling creamy experience where else than at the Guinness factory. Word of advice though, get your tickets online to get in smoothly without waiting like us for almost 2h... It's cheaper too... Anyway, it was worth it - the museum is really cool and highly interactive. The best aspect of its interactiveness is getting trained to pour your own perfect pint
of Guinness - a skill which becomes ever more important in the partner selection these days :p


Top that up with a view of the city (albeit not very impressive but nice nevertheless) from the Gravity bar, a 360 glass bar on top of the museum (which is part of the old factory in fact) and you won't even regret not catching the St Patrick's day fireworks display which we thought ought to have happened at the other end of the city when in fact it was happening in a completely different town in Ireland.

We've called it a day after wondering through the temple bar where there's no temple and no bar but in fact tens of them. There's this bar of sand which belong to the Temple family where all the bars were built in what's today Dublin's cultural core.

Sunday welcomed us with a sunny breakfast in the castle that was just amazing and kept us filled for most of the day. This day we got to experience the local flavour a bit more intensely as we walked through the pedestrian streets and parks of Dublin. We came across a great open air kids fair and witnessed the Irish baby boom - basically every family had at least two kids swirling around them. It's kind of understandable, which such nice events and opportunities for kids there's probably never been a better time to be one!

As we were headed t0 another park nearby, my eyes slipped across the firm of a very uninspiring pub and as they read ''O'Donoghues", Rory's pub advice came to my mind and we had to give it a try since we were so lucky to run into it. Rory's Irish and i met him during my monster days :) And how glad I am I did! The people you see in the video below are regulars of the 200 years old pub and we had just managed to pop by their Sunday afternoon session. It was the most flavourful Guinness we had enjoyed so far!




After crossing the park we were headed for in the first place, we saw this nice dancing troupe performing:


And finally, as we were spending our last half an hour in town before heading to the airport, from an alleyway came a most intriguing deep bass and fanfare sound from these guys.


They had no less than 6 drummers!!!

Maybe some of events that spiced up our stay were due to the St Patrick's celebrations but even without those, Dublin has always something surprising to offer and amaze! So go and green yourself up a bit!

More pictures here

George Orwell's cup of tea

Prague is a very cultural city: there is always something happening in any immaginable art field. However in some of them there's the language barrier which is totally understandable obviously. My basic Czech skills aren't of much use when attempting to see a play for instance.
There are fortunately some very good workarounds: I discovered here the non verbal theatre which can be fascinating really as I've already seen two such shows - it emphasises how speech is merely one of the many forms of communication, many times not necessarily the best one.

The second workaround is actually proper theatre in English. Thanks to the large expat community in Prague and to the people who care about their theatrical cravings, there is the Fringe festival every year for 8 or 9 years now.

And since i have a weakness for theatre I fully profited from this veritable 'theatre season' and saw 7 performances, some better than others. If you read till here you might be wondering about the title - well here it is: I saw a really good performance of George Orwell tonight, he was telling the audience stories from his life 'through' a really good actor who spoke at an alarming pace which really kept me attentive for the full hour and a half.

Apart from reading 1984 which is a chilling experience and an mind opener in respect to world politics I didn't really know much about him. Turns out he was a very interesting character, an idealist escaping from life's unfairness in his work. A thing he failed to mention in tonight's performance however - quite unforgivable for an Englishman trying to set the world on the proper course - was how to make proper tea!

Toriholic

Tori Amos has a new album only 2 years following her previous one and more excitingly, she's on tour again visiting Prague. I can't wait to see her again!

You can listen to her new album on we7. For me it happends that initially her songs don't get to me that much (maybe also because the lyrics are hard to understand) but after listening to them a few more times, I really become addicted to some of them! I guess it's just the same with people, it takes time to start apreciating the ones who really matter.

Enjoy and really, do go and see her if she comes on tour somewhere near you. She's the one of the best live acts (if not the best!) i've seen so far!

Fiti darnici

O initiativa foarte faina in lumea virtuala romaneasca care mertia toate laudele si care sper sa va inspire!

Carevasazica, http://www.oamenidarnici.ro/