The weekend has been pretty full and I have yet again missed to complete a few items on my to-do list … I wish the weekend had 3 days, so that I could catch up with all activities usually plan out to myself …

 

On Friday I’ve arrived to London slightly later than planned. I originally wanted to leave work at around 2pm, but that didn’t, and simply even couldn’t, happen! There’s too much to do these days as my stay in Leicester is slowly heading towards its end in a few weeks time!

 

I still managed to get to the cinema in time for a movie with Robert Redford & Tom Cruise – Lions for Lambs. It’s probably not a movie I’d fully recommend to others to see, but it’s watch-able. The film is trying to pass on a strong message, but does it in a fairly awkward way and as it touches upon International Politics, which I studied as major and at some point tries to oversimplify it for the sake of presenting us with a reflection of ourselves, I found this to be a bit of a put off.

 

I actually saw two more movies on Saturday. The first one was an incredibly long Into the Wild about a guy who got disillusioned with modern society and decided to run away from his everyday life in order to seek for ultimate freedom. This was allegedly based on a true story. The film took some 2.5 hours, presented series of beautiful shots from Alaska, as well as other nice nature shots of Arkansas & California. However, the whole idea seemed to be a bit too left-ish. There were a few interesting messages to consider, but at the end of the day, the main character seemed to be a spoiled kid from California, who cannot put up with day-to-day obligations and a few hardships. My last movie was a chick-flick Good Luck Chuck – I didn’t expect much and that’s about what I got, so no surprises there. The film has scored incredible 2% on www.rottentomatoes.com, which is the lowest I have seen so far this year for a movie, and I’ve seen a few misfits already ;o)) …

 

Anyway, I’ve managed to prepare all for a move to my new flat in Leicester (for 3-4 weeks), sorted all the admin, which had piled up in the last weeks while I’d been travelling a bit … And on Sunday morning left my London flat early in the morning heading to Kenilworth to see the local castle. It’s not located far from Leicester, so I’d plan to go straight to Leicester after I’ve completed my road-trip …

 

Kenilworth castle was quite nice. I didn’t go inside and didn’t even bother to check on the price. There was enough to see from outside and I wasn’t convinced that paying some £6 to see the bit inside would be easily justified. So I took a walk around the castle and took a series of pics. On my way back I’ve found an alternative route through the garden’s of local Abbey with a beautiful lake and lots of green.

 

My original itinerary was aiming for a straight trip to Stratford, but my GPS was showing that Warwick castle happened to be in an immediate vicinity of Kenilworth, so I decided for an alternative destination, which turned out to be a worthwhile decision!!!

 

Warwick castle is really great!!! Although the £17.95 price tag on the entrance ticket was quite a blow into my budget, I was definitely happy to conduct this trip. It took me about 2hrs to see the place and while at it, the staff provided the visitors with a Ghost Alive and Battle Dreams shows. The former was a 10mins jump & scare type of event where actors took us through this Ghost legend accompanied by sudden yells and jumps out of darkness … The latter was a story of a young warrior who died in the battle of roses and his pre-battle dreams, which turned out to be true. I later found out that the castle is administered by the Thussaud group, which explains the price of the ticket and the cheesy attractions, which where fun anyway, so I cannot complain too much after all, right? ;o)) … There are two more interesting buildings to see, which is a St. Mary’s cathedral with its tower where one can get a fab view of Warwick from – I didn’t bother spending money on this anymore. And then there’s this Lord Leycester hospital, which also looks nice from outside.

 

Once done at Warwick, I jumped into my Auris and drove straight to the birthplace of William Shakespeare – Stratford-upon-Avon. The town is soooo beautiful … it has such a strong character with all those small shops in the streets and nice smells luring the bypassers to enter … I took plenty pictures again, but didn’t visit any museums. This place is more about getting there and spending some time around to suck in its character and that’s exactly what I did ;o)) …

I flew back home last Thursday to see my family and friends and most of all to celebrate my father's 60th birthday anniversary! On a side I also got my tooth fixed, as I lost a fill some one month ago and preferred to see a dentist I know well than taking any risks in the UK ;o)) ...

 

Thursday began in quite a rush manner - I woke up early at 5am, was out of the hotel at 5.15am and quickly drove back to London, where I got shortly after 8am only to find out my home internet was down again, which meant that the next immediate step was to quickly pack up my luggage and head for the office where I would need to work from that day ...

 

I made it to the office right at 9am and started working through my emails. The day flew by promptly and at 6pm I was rushing through the door to catch my plane at Heathrow. I thought I was doing really well time-wise, but soon found out it wasn't exactly the case when I got caught out by London's crazy traffic, had to let a few tubes go 'cause they were overwhelmingly full ... I made to to the Czech Airlines stand 1hr 15min before take off ... close enough to get me stressed of course ;o)) ...

 

My mom picked me up in Prague and drove me home to our home town Ceska Lipa, where we arrived at some 3am local time ...

 

On Friday I had the dentist appointment and in the evening went out with my friend Michal - again to find out that although my hometown is so small there are sufficient number of good looking ladies around to keep me amazed ;o)) ...

 

On Saturday my sister and Tomas arrived for the weekend and in the evening my uncle and aunt joined us to celebrate my father's b-day ... it was really nice to see my family altogether again!

 

On Sunday I slept in late and in the early afternoon we shoot off to Prague where we went for an all-u-can-eat Sushi bar - I got sooo stuffed again ... man ...

 

I always love these short weekends at home ... in one month I'll B BACK ...