Been Der

On our walk home from the Porterhouse microbrewry Friday night, Brett poetically used the Gaelic name for Howth (Binn Eadair) an Irish village we had hiked around earlier, for the founding of an epic northern minnesota classic. Its not so much the video, but the audio, so make sure your volume is on.

Krak-oo-wow That's Good Wodka

It took us 19 days in April before we made our first escape for the month, but it was a good wait as Erin and I choose Krakow, Poland for the second saturday-sunday excursions during our European stint. Krakow is a vibrant student city with a population of about 700k, in the south-east corner of Poland, not far from Ukraine and the Solvak Republic. We choose to come here as it is an up-and-coming destination with all the history and screnity of Prague and Budapest, but less tour buses and segways. We arrived and went directly to the main square, lined with churches, towers, and buildings dating back to the 1200s.

Our first stop was St. Mary's Cathedral, where John Paul II presided prior to becoming Pope. The church is absolutely beautiful with carved and colorful details that we've never seen. It is very different from your York Minster's and St. Peter's as there is not many priceless stone carvings, but they did a fabulous job with what they had.

We saw this group of breakdancers along the square on Sunday, regular looking lads with amazing atheletic abilities.

That night we had an amazing dinner after wandering around the jewish quarter (very nice but nothing spectular, we had a local beer in an old pub called Alchemist). The dinner was about 1/3 the price as those in Dublin, which was nice to have a top-tier meal without killing the wallet. After dinner we did a good job experiencing the night life of Krakow, known as some of the best in Europe, with cavernous clubs, bars, and more vodka than one can handle! We had a great night, going to 5 different places, capped off by a delicious kabab.

The following day we walked around, enjoyed the square, and visited the Wawel castle, which was formerly home to Austrian and Polish kings. We also went to a little mom and pop shop that distills and flavors its own vodka, which we had a sample of! It was a perfect escape from the work grind and another unforgettable weekend.

6 Hours in Bangkok

On the way home from our relaxing honeymoon, we decided to forego spending an 8 hour layover in the Bangkok airport and instead ventured into the abyss of the city. And what a bizarre, crazy place cluttered with rickshaws, stray dogs, beautiful temples, orange-clad barefooted monks, amazing shopping, street vendors and scary street food. Luckily, we had two excellent navigators....my high school friend Pat and his wife Tara, who are temporarily living and working in the city who helped us explore the chaotic city on a little bit of time. The size of the city is unbelievable and it took us about 40 minutes to get to the old side of the city with all of the temples. Thus, the six hours in Bangkok. As it was already 4pm we unfortunately were unable to tour any of the historic sites so we hopped on a local water bus. Public transportation safety is not a consideration as you literally hop on the back of the moving boat as it passes. Note Lou is preparing to jump in the photo below.

We had dinner sitting on the deck of a nice (clean) restaurant that overlooked the famous Arun Wat temple.

After dinner we went to Khao San Road, basically a backpacker hang-out and cheap shopping haven, where we spent all of our remaining Thai bhats on cheap clothing and home entertainment.