There's No Place Like Home.

Austria was the last place we had a free internet connection... so my rantings and rambling will now continue from my couch back home.
Budapest was nice, Amsterdam was amazing, and Rome... well, Rome had the Coliseum, need I say more?

But I like being home. I'm not a grand adventurer, I enjoy the simple things in life... summer rain, cooking for myself, cuddling up on the couch with a movie, my happy dogs and purring cats. And strangely enough, the sun. I didn't think I'd miss it so much, now I never want to leave it again. And this coming from the self acclaimed night owl.

Now that we're home, it's job search time; reinvention of my day to day productivity time; and time to start churning out the sketches. I'll settle with the more realistic goal of 3-7 blogged scribbles a week, rather than optimistically vowing to post every single day without fail.

Alas, drawing can take the backseat today, secondly: clean the house, firstly: update resume. No procrastinating. DO IT NOW.

A Taste of Home.

3am. Go to SLEEP, brain!
Accidentally happened on an Aussie Bar today. It was a free day, and after skating (in our shoes) on a frozen lake for a little while and trying out the Vienna Metro, The Boy and I decided on (window) shopping. We walked into maybe three stores before spying the bar and thought we'd see if they had Bundy rum. For one drink. They did. We left six and a half hours later.
We were the only Australian's to enter the whole time, and we met a lot of interesting people. The Boy managed to mediate between a very feisty American soldier and... well, everyone else in the bar, while I attempted to drown my sorrows of possibly leaving my travel mascot somewhere back in a Czech hotel.

Beautiful Places.

Yesterday we went to Kutná Hora and visited "The Bone Church."


The artwork of two priests, about forty years apart from each other. There's an amazing bone chandelier, but I took very poor photos of it.

Snowflakes and Absinth.

First day of 2011 started with... yay. A cold. Smacked me right in the head the second I woke up. At least I was obviously over the France thing. So I spent the whole day (minus a brief outing for lunch) in bed, watching 30 Rock on my laptop trying to beg my flu to go away.
We only have two nights set aside for Prague, and I didn't want to miss one second of it.
In Prague now. It snowed. Actually snowed, right in front of me... right into my awaiting hands... We're on a tour for the next week of our trip. Our guide looked back at me and The Boy several times with a confused expression as we never seemed to tire from walking, tongues sticking far out from our grinning faces, in eager anticipation of catching and eating snowflakes.
And tonight, as if the snowfall wasn't enough, we chased down a little door that read, "The Absinth Shop." among the souvenirs we purchased to take home, I downed a cocktail named moonshine, which was made on black absinth and topped with strawberries drizzled with absinth chocolate.
Still have the sore throat and stuffy nose, but it seemed far less important tonight. Travel just doesn't get any better than this.

This photo's from earlier in the day when I first spotted it. Later, when we ventured out, the streets were deserted *cue creepy theme music*

And All That Jazz.

LEGEN... wait for it...

I whinge a lot. Unless other people are whinging, and then I like to annoy them by seeing all the silver linings and happy, smiling sunflowers. I think I'm a contradictist. But that's neither here nor there, what I was trying to get at was; I miss Edinburgh. It was pretty there. It had snow, and cobbled streets, and Irish bands playing in Scottish pubs, and good friends and half decent rum.
Paris is just not my kind of place.
Though I will say, the language barrier has been my favourite part. As I'm sure many lazy travellers do, I had planned on learning at least a few French phrases before boarding a plane, but never got around to it. After all, we're only here for six days. So I have my little phrasebook with me (mostly so I can wave it around politely showing that I'm at least attempting to not assume that English governs the western world) and my vague knowledge of pronunciation I picked up from watching Amelie over a hundred times.
It's quite fun, really. Such a relief to challenge the brain. I almost forgot I had one.
It was probably the thing I found the most disappointing about Africa, there was hardly any need or point in learning the languages, even to be polite. And Swahili's such an awesome language. Especially when they insert "hakuna matata" into nearly everything they say, what's NOT awesome about that?

That reminds me... have I ranted about the extraordinary visual brilliance of the stage production of the Lion King? No? Aw. Well, I guess that (and today's adventure to the Disney Studio) will have to wait for another time. Or not. Because face it, I'll probably forget. So I'll sum them both up - DARY.

Oh yeah, and I sketched a little last night.

From Paris, With Love.

I struggle with adventure sometimes. All I want is to cuddle up in my cramped and creaky room, hide under a blanket and watch DVDs. Maybe because I've seen the touristy things in Paris before, granted, I was fourteen, but they did little to trigger much enthusiasm then.
I'm such a travel grinch :)
Tomorrow we do the Eiffel Tower to the Louvre, and whatever we can fit in between. And my aim is to lighten up and not make fun of the old masterpieces just because they're not my taste. And if I'm a good girl, I'll convince my companions to go to Disneyland the day after.

On a belated note...... late X-mas present brings Skull Candy headphones. The Boy knows me so well *smiles*