Tag Castles
It's been a couple of weeks since my last post about tourism in Germany during the Covid19 pandemic. Me and my colleagues spent most of those weekends exploring the southwestern part of Germany, checking out a lot of different sightseeing spots. To my surprise there was a fair amount of other tourists at several of the places we visited; except for the fact that museums were closed and we were limited to eating fastfood in the car, it didn't really feel like there was a lockdown. Granted, Germany was only doing lockdown light but in some places it felt so normal it almost made me question if there was any lockdown at all. Don't worry, I have not become a Covid denier, it's just that the overall experience has mostly been like normal, pandemic free tourism.
So, just like in my last post, I want to share some of the more worthwhile places with my readers, enjoy: read the rest
I’m here in Germany for business reasons but me and my colleagues still get the weekends off like normal, so we are able to go out sightseeing. There are of course some limitations due to Covid19, but so far they are comparatively mild and we’ve been able to visit a bunch of different tourist attractions. Some of them are really worth seeing so I thought I would share them here.
Schloss Lichtenstein
Germany is full of castles, if you do a search on Google Maps you’re bound to find at least ten in any given area. With that being the … Read the rest
Right now I’m on a business trip to Germany, and because there are no good hotels near the company I work in, I have access to a rental car. As soon as the weekend rolled around, me and my colleague made full use of this.
When we got up on Saturday the sky was grey and it was drizzling; not great for sightseeing but we set off anyway, hoping it would clear up during the day. We drove for about an hour and a half through sleepy little towns in the German countryside until we got to Hohentwiel fortress ruin … Read the rest
On Sunday we had more time, so me and Kevin drove out of the city to the northwest. We headed to the historical site Newgrange, but when we got there, we found out we had to buy tickets at a completely different place. So, we drove around quite a long distance (the lack of roads stopped us from taking a shortcut), and finally managed to get some tickets.
The site itself is a big stone age tomb. From a distance it looks like a big grassy knoll that kind pops out of the landscape because it is a bit too … Read the rest
I am currently on a business trip to Ireland. Since it is weekend I had some time off from work. Me and my colleague Kevin used this opportunity to take our rental car and go out explore Ireland.
I actually had to do a little bit of work on Saturday morning, so there was not really enough time to leave the city. Instead we drove to down town Dublin, parked the car near Trinity College and spent the afternoon walking around the city center.
We started with the college itself, and the very impressive library. The main room is long, … Read the rest
Warsaw is less overwhelming than Krakow, very likely due to it being a proper city, a metropolis even. Therefore the interesting attractions such as the old town, palaces, churches and so on are all spread out. To see them one cannot simply stroll around, it is a fair walk among modern buildings to get anywhere and public transport would be preferable for the not so young and fit.
For me and Yini, walking along the royal way up past the castle was no problem, so we did manage to see much of old (or should I say rebuilt) Warsaw in … Read the rest
The last two days we have been busy seeing what Slovenia is really all about: the great outdoors. We started yesterday by going southwest to the Karst region and visited the Postojna caves which was nice but a bit on the touristy side. You have to take a rather expensive tour that includes two journeys with a small undground train. Even though photography was forbidden I snapped a few shots on the way out.
From there we went to Predjama Castle that is built in the mouth of a gigantic … Read the rest
The plan for today was to look around a bit more in Riga and in the afternoon I would go to an old Soviet bunker and fire an AK-47 but, after thinking things over for a while we figured out it might be wiser to switch plans so, at the spur of a moment we signed up for a tour to the national park in Sigulda.
Normally I avoid tours like the plague because there is too little freedom, they take too much time and take you to too many place that are not interesting, as some kind of diversions … Read the rest
One of Lithuania’s big national parks, Trakai is just half an hour or so away from Vilnius. So, having heard that it should be worth a visit we hopped on a bus around lunchtime (we slept all morning after a long first day) and went there. Since we got there around noon we decided to eat some local food for lunch. When I say local I mean Karaite food; the Karaites are a turkish people who have been living in the area since the 1400’s. They were originally brought to the area to be body guards for the king. Apparently … Read the rest
There is something rotten in the state of denmark…it is raining so hard that visiting hamlets old castle is less than fun. We are standing in the tunnel through the second battlement, cowering from the rain. The vaults overhead are white except the last one before entering the castle grounds, which has been painted a bright orange; through its opening we see the big main building, yellowish grey masonry with a maroon roof and a high, ornamented copper spire tapering to a point, piercing the milky sky. I wish I could se more of this famous fortress but it will … Read the rest