I got a kick out of this article in the Independent talking about some of the number of the budget airline business in Europe. The line that hit my funny bone was:
120: The distance, in kilometres, from the centre of Frankfurt to Hahn airport, which Ryanair and IATA describe as “Frankfurt”.
I noticed this same phenomenon while looking for flights to Barcelona. The two airports that Ryanair lists for Barcelona, Girona and Reus are each about 100km from the city itself. Serves as a good reminder that when booking a budget flight, check ever possible detail because you might very well get screwed if you don’t.
If you’re jonesin for some more travel reading material, you should check out all the blogs listed in the Lonely Planet travel blogger awards. They’re all a bit different from what we do here, mostly folks on the road chronicling their journeys, but most are worth checking out for some good travel images and ideas.
On our way back from dinner one night in Horní Bečva we found a narrow little path down a steep hill that made for an amazing sledding run. The next night after a bit more snow, he headed out again for some aggressive night sledding.
After 3 days on the road we arrived in Horní Bečva, one of the funniest towns in the world if you say the name in English. I was really hoping for a big “Welcome to Horní Bečva” sign, but as there wasn’t one, we had to settle for taking pictures in front of all the businesses that named themselves after the town. Unfortunatly we seemed to be the only ones who found the name funny, when renting skies the rental guy didn’t seem phased at all by the fact that we said we were staying in Horny Bitchfu.
We spent our time in Horní Bečva eating our brains out, skiing, and sledding. Our first day skiing was shrouded in clouds. Very dense clouds. The picture here isn’t darkened, it was just that dark and cloudy. Made for some slow and interesting skiing. It also made for some snowy skiing. We got dumped on, more than a foot of snow in the few days we were there.
For out part, we stumbled into a unique and memorable party in the little town ofKudowa-Zdrój, a little old spa and resort town on the Czech border. We went out looking for a good traditional Polish dinner to celebrate the evening. But the only traditional Polish restaurant we could find was packed with close to 100 Polish pensioners having a big evening out. After some sweet talking from my Polish buddies, the owner decided to give us his personal table, so us tourists could have an authentic Polish experience.
We started off the night getting a kick out of watching all the older folks dance. But after we delved into the vodka shots and herring that they had been enjoying for a while before we got there, we got right up and joined them on the dance floor. The music was perfect, two guys on synthesizers playing traditional Polish songs, including one that instructed people to sit down and drink vodka every 15-20 minutes. Amazing.
Alina stole the show, as you can tell from the crowd circling around her, and by the end of the night we were all dancing together with the handful of older folks that stayed out after 22:00.
Video from earlier in the night when we were still a bit timid about getting up and dancing:
