CeriandMark

I wasn’t going to write a blog entry for Prague; I’d decided that my last entry was, indeed, my last entry. But why not, eh? The adventure still continues, even if a four day city break seems like nothing compared to the mammoth trip we took last year. But Prague definitely deserves a mention, and I may as well keep the blog alive - for all the adventures still to come :) Paris may have taken the number one spot in Lonely Planet’s The Cities Book, but from personal experience, I can safely say that Prague is the most loved of Europe’s cities. I’ve been preached to numerous times about the beauties of Czech’s capital; everyone who’s been there sings its praises, commending the architecture, the atmosphere, the history - and, more often than not, the ... read more

Heading up north, passing from Nevada into Utah, we stayed in Salt Lake City. If any place in America can be the absolute polar opposite of hedonistic hustle and bustle of Las Vegas, this is it. Wide open streets, perfect little houses, majestic white official buildings and flowers in bloom everywhere you look, make this one of the prettiest cities we've visited so far, and the fact that the inhabitants are predominantly Mormon only served to make it more interesting. We went to visit Temple Square, where the grand white Mormon Temple towers over the old Mormon council hall and the famous Tabernacle Choir hall. A couple of Sister Missionaries gave us a free tour, and they were really lovely people, but they didn't quite manage to convert us, which was obviously their main aim. The ... read more

Why would you ever return to the city after spending time in America's National Parks? You can really lose yourself in them, and why not? Guidebooks use words like "magnificent", "awe-inspiring" and "food for the soul" and they're not exaggerating at all; the four days we spent in the parks of northern California were - in one word - magical. We drove from San Francisco down through the Sierra Nevada hills, to Yosemite National Park, where we stayed at a ranch in the middle of nowhere. We were sleeping in a tent cabin, which kept the bugs out, but not the freezing cold. In the evenings, we stayed in the lodge playing board games, enjoying the fire, but then at night we survived the cold by sleeping in every single piece of clothing we have brought ... read more

We last left you in Phoenix, where, on our final day, we went to the botanical gardens, perched out on the edge of the desert. It combines all sorts of weird and wonderful plants and flowers, with even more weird and wonderful huge glass sculptures, shaped and coloured in a way to make you feel like you're walking through Wonderland. We sat under a pavilion overlooking the desert, waiting for sunset. We were hoping to see the unusually shaped cactuses silhouetted against a sky of reds and oranges, and we were not disappointed; it really was the perfect desert sunset. The following day we passed from Arizona into California, trading in cactuses for palm trees as we went. With the town of 29 Palms as our base, we explored Joshua Tree National Park, where the Mojave ... read more

As we drove from Dallas to Amarillo along Route 66, everything was exactly as I imagined it would be. The road was long, straight and quiet, passing by cattle ranches, oil derricks and dusty green crop fields. The 'middle-of-nowhere', 'nothing-ever-happens-here' towns we drove through were very Deliverance-esque; there may have been no porch sitting banjo players, but that was simply because there was literally nobody around. At one point, to my great excitement, our car even got hit by tumbleweed; we are definitely in cowboy country! And, as is tradition on an American roadtrip, we got to see one example of a roadside "world's largest" - a huge white cross in the middle of a field. The sign promised spiritual enlightenment, which is exactly why we took our photographs from the car and kept on driving. ... read more