For the Jubilee long weekend, I ended up in Prague for a last minute weekend break. I thought it was going to be terrible with my view of stag parties heading everywhere and anticipating what Amsterdam’s red light district would be like, but with more beer and groups. Fortunately it was a surprise that even though plenty of English stag crowds were around, the rest of the city was just beautiful and a sight to behold.

Prague reminded me a lot about my time in Budapest since it’s along a river, and seems to have just as many bridges crossing it as well. The most famous, the Charles Bridge is full of tourists, street artists and musicians out to entertain and raise some money. That bridge also leads all the way to the castle, apparently one of the biggest in Europe and with amazing views of the city. This is one of the streets on the hilly ascent up.

There’s plenty of interesting things around town including art like this.

The city also has an amazing set of buildings all done in different styles and shapes. One of the very well known ones is the Dancing House, a Frank Gehry that looks just as intriguing during the day as it does during the evening when it is lit up.

I managed to stumble across the rather “huge” Occupy movement in Prague.

The old historic square attracts a lot of tourists and that’s for a very good reason. The Astronomical Clock doesn’t sit too far and there are plenty of interesting cafes and restaurants to sit back and relax in.

There’s also this imposing tower you can climb. It’s not quite as tall as the Cathedral Dome in Cologne, but it’s still fun climbing small spiral staircases. Go early to avoid the traffic in the stairwell.

You’ll then be rewarded with a stunning rooftop view. Or at least a view of all the tour groups standing around with their English guide.

I also visited the amazing Senate Gardens. The garden is set up in such a way that even with the number of visitors, it never feels like there are a lot of people there. Amazingly well kept.

I saw a number of Gloria Jeans coffee houses around town. I guess it’s catering to the crowds of Australians coming over and the fact that Prague generally serves pretty poor coffee. Beer is the thing here. And it’s often cheaper than water when you dine out.

Prague is a bit infamous for its food. Stodge, more stodge and generally a lot of meat. I’m always worried by signs like this:

The old square has a number of stalls serving fire roasted ham and these chimney cakes that I remember from Hungary (called Kürtőskalács there)

In the Czech Republic, they are referred to as Trdelník. When in Prague…

The weather wasn’t the warmest it could have been and I was glad to bring a sweater. Fortunately the heavy rain waited until at least the day that I left before falling. A nice experience and definitely a city worth visiting again.

Time is certainly flying past this year. I can’t believe it’s already June and pretty sure this month will fly by as well. At the end of last month, I headed away for a week at a conference, once again in Malmo, a city on the south side of Sweden and easily reached by a short train ride from Copenhagen airport.

I stayed at a very nice hotel that had an amazing gym space, and a very comfortable bed as you can see. Fortunately they also had pretty dark curtains since summertime in Sweden means sunrise very early and very late. Since I don’t seem to sleep well if there is even a slight hint of light, dark curtains work really well for me. The conference wasn’t walking distance to the city and we all had to catch a train two stops out of the city centre to a rather desolate conference centre location. The conference went really well though and I think has some of the best conversations out of many I present at.

Since I had to arrive before Monday to give a tutorial first thing Monday morning, I was fortunate to take some time sightseeing. Although I was in Malmo for Øredev the last two years, things always look better in the sunshine. Above is the the view you get when you step outside from the main train station.

And there are small canalways where tourist boats tour around for an hour around. You get a pretty good sense of how small the city is, but how very nice it is as well.

The boat goes under bridges that are fearfully close to your head but still fun to ride underneath.

Here’s a picture of the famous Turning Torso that dominates the skyline. Malmo really comes alive during the summer with many people lying out in any green space, and the cafes and restaurants throwing as many tables and chairs as they can onto the pavement to be sat on until late in the evening and sometimes early in the morning.

I’ve been back just over a week now after my holiday to San Francisco. It took probably about three years worth of spending but the flight I took was thanks to redeeming frequent flyer points for Virgin Atlantic. My sister ended up coming along because they had a 2-4-1 deal and we both only had to pay the taxes for the flights. Amazing at how much tax you actually end up paying with both of our flights still costing a few hundred quid even with the tax. I wonder how the airlines make any money after all.

Fortunately the rest of the trip was relatively inexpensive since we crashed at our cousin’s place in San Francisco where it was pretty easy to get around by bus. The weather forecast looked ominous from the day we left with heavy rains and grey clouds scheduled all week. What a surprise when we turned up and had blue skies for almost the entire stay. The day we left was cold and drizzly but everything else was perfect. We even spent enough time walking around in the sun that I ended up slightly sunburnt (yes, I’m officially British now!)

Although we had both been to San Francisco before we still did almost all of the things a tourist should do including visiting the Golden Gate Bridge, heading up for a great view to Coit Tower, getting lost in the great expanse of the official Chinatown area and riding one of the cable car trams from the downtown area to the built up tourist hot spot of Fisherman’s Wharf.

We bought a Citypass that gave us entry to some of the sights around town including the amazingly large Science Museum, a cruise around the Bay area and access to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art that was definitely worth visiting.

We also took a segway tour of San Francisco that lasted a good three hours standing upright and a little bit of training to get used to the strange vehicle. The vehicle is classified as a bicycle according to the local laws, so we had a little bit of safety training before being unleashed on the streets as a group where our tour guide took us to see a number of interesting sights around the coastline area. We only had a couple of people falling off their segways but more due to the fact they were playing around than anything about the vehicle itself.

The other significant trip we took was when we hired a car and drove up to Napa Valley where my sister had snagged an elusive booking for the famous French Laundry restaurant. Consistently up in the Top 100 restaurants of the world, the French Laundry is a very well known restaurant and a purveyor of very fine dining also requiring that I bring along a coat for our lunch time meal.

The drive up to wine country was fun. Being a Sunday we encountered little traffic and was a great little road trip. I can’t believe how quickly a single week goes, particularly when you are busy sight seeing and having fun.