Check, Cheque, Czech!

Do you want to go on holiday?
Check!
Can we afford it?
Cheque!
Where shall we go?
PRAGUE.

I found flights to four places under £100 return, and asked him which destination he liked. We quickly settled on Prague.

It’s an utterly beautiful city. Spindly towers coated in copper-green, rust-orange roofs sitting hat-like upon tall white house sandwiched around cobblestone streets. Crumbling finesse surrounds you; it’s the perfect place to wander with the sole aim of gawping at the architecture of gothic churches, medieval castles blurring into renaissance residences and palatial grounds.

 

 

One of the finest days we wandered up to an ancient monastery with a library to die for; rows of glorious old tomes, and intricately decorated renaissance ceiling art. Literally and figuratively, it was heaven. Outside we found the same trio of musicians we’d bumped into at various points, and sat in the sun eating and listening to them play. Afterwards we wandered down through the gnarled orchard, where a little bit of light-hearted scrumping took place.

 

 

The last night, after a week of searching, we accidentally stumbled on the graffiti wall. The city is chock full of history from all periods, and it’s lovely.

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Brighton

As it turns out, Brighton is lovely. This will just be the briefest post – I have exams and I care about them too much to spend all my time blogging instead of revise. Come end of exams, posting shall become a more regular occurrence.

Firstly, after some overpriced train fares – the internet lied, it did NOT cost me £11 return – I went to Brighton to see an old friend,  known mainly by his surname Whyman, perform in Othello as part of the Brighton Fringe. I think it’s excellent that the Fringe has migrated beyond Edinburgh; I went there a few years ago and thought it was such a fabulous creation and opportunity. Anyway, didn’t see much of the dear WhyMan, which was a real shame.

Instead we (the boyfriend, my friend Laura and I) went wandering through the Laines. We shopped a bit – Brighton has many various shops. We mainly snuggled into fantastic old bookshops – one, called Rainbow Books sadly had no relation to gay pride but more than made up for it with a complete wholehearted absence of organisation, and contained a book entitled, to mine and Laura’s amusement, JEW BOY! But there were also many vintage clothes shops. Laura runs a shopping blog, on which a more detailed account of the shops there is readily available.

I bought a number of books; for my course, At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien, Goodmorning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, The Complete Works of H G Wells and The Book of Margery Kempe (a bargain at £1.99, since every other I’ve seen has been verging on five times that amount.) I also purchased JAmes Joyce’s Ulysses, for a mere £4.95, The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennet in hardback which makes me happy and joy of joys, the complete works of J M Barrie, the genius responsible for my darling Peter Pan. A lot of money was spent but it was money that needed spending, certainly for my course books, and I’d always rather support second hand,  independant, and charity bookshops than anywhere else given the choice. Plus, I had to buy them at some point so it may as well be now.

We also spent some time frolicking on the beach, which resulted in my boyfriend having very wet feet for most of the trip. His stupid girlfriend was playing catch the waves: he chose to join in, and he lost. Granted said girlfriend pushed him a little bit and the wave was much more purposeful than either of them had expected, but she was very sorry about the whole affair.  We saw Whyman’s play, obviously – he played Rodrigo – and had some delicious cornish pasties.

Overall the trip was a success. I’m paying for it now, after the loss of three day’s revision, but otherwise it was excellent. So much so that I’ve already arranged to go stay with Whyman again this summer, when he has a house and a sofa I can sleep on instead of bunkering down on his halls of residence (very uncomfortable) floor.

And, for the record and because I know he reads this, happy birthday to said boyfriend, who finally caught up on the age thing today. Well done darling, you’re no longer illegal. 🙂

Now! To REVISION!

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