I thought this was cute, a smarter-than-average teen flick based on the Snow White fairy tale. I could do without the feel-good speech at the end of a movie like this, but whatever.
Today I'm feeling a little better. I still wanted to take it easy, but get out a little, so I went with Zed, Phin, and Seth to the southeast of Prague, the Háje stop on the red / C Metro train, to an area called Jižní Město , the "south town". It is a panelák sídliště, a panel-concrete apartment building settlement, which we knew as a Neubaugebiet in former East Germany. The part of Prague we're living in now is older, so it doesn't have any buildings like that, and I wanted to show this to the boys and see how things look. Apparently this kind of settlement is generally called a microdistrict in the former east bloc. (There is lots of interesting history and nice photos in those Wikipedia articles I just linked to!) Here is some of what we saw. Note all the festive colors they've added which really make the buildings nice to look at! Note the terrifying hallway/bridge at the top between the two buildings in this next one! ...
What a fun book to read. We read this for book club and then watched the movie (which wasn't necessary since we've all seen it so many times we were quoting the whole thing). It is better to know from the beginning that Goldman wrote it all, there is no S. Morgenstern. You feel less duped. I thought it was really obvious that Goldman is the true author (his humor is the same throughout, there's no way the language is from the era Goldman claims it is from), but, I do remember thinking it really was an abridgment when I read it in high school or junior high. And a lot of the ladies at book club didn't know the whole thing is fake either. Some decided they didn't like the book just because they felt deceived by the author. It is so funny though. And you get all this background information about Inigo, Fezzik and Buttercup. I love the way he tries to place the book in time... "This was before Europe," then later he talks about Paris. Also, when he describes...
We took a train from Rome to Ancona, Italy, where we had a one-day stop. Ancona is about ¾ of the way up the east coast, on the Adriatic Sea. The next evening we planned to take an overnight ferry to Split, Croatia, so this seemed like a simple transfer place, but Ancona is a really neat city itself! At night I wandered around and ended up hiking to a functioning lighthouse. The stone sign is at 104 meters above sea level, about 341 feet. Our neighborhood had some nice murals / graffiti: Here is a view out over a pentagonal building formerly used as a quarantine colony, a little island right by the city, open to the public: There are quite a few drinking fountains scattered all over, and all the ones we tried worked! This is the correct way for a city to be. It is very hilly, with stairs and steep roads all over. Many narrow little alleys between buildings, and connecting passages and staircases up and down hills, between houses, churches, and pa...
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