Italix Parson’s Essential

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Continuing with my cover of English pens, it’s time to look at a modern ‘oldie’ and stalwart of the industry.  The Italix Parson’s Essential from Mr. Pen.  Back when I first started going to the London, UK Fountain Pen Club about three years ago this was still a ‘must have’ pen within the community, and for good reasons as it was cheap, good value for money, and with the availability of a very large number of hand ground and tested nibs (Peter Ford from Mr. Pen being the nibmeister).  I tried one at the time, actually I tried this specific one at the time, and decided that maybe I would get one further down the line.

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The Curse of Prague

Prague is suffering through it’s own fault.  By keeping regulation and enforcement on various form of adult and intoxicant entertainments light, combined with cheap flights in and cheap accommodation, it has become stag do and party capital of Europe. This has resulted in large groups of younger (though not entirely) people (yes not just men) roaming around in crowds, and then from mid afternoon on, starting to fill the myriad of bars, from where they emerge late in to the evening or early in the morning. Continue reading

Final Night in Prague

It’s easy to lose track of time, especially when editing and uploading photos, writing a blog, and at the same time looking at the time on a device you’ve not synced locally.  So when at 8 pm I got a call from some of the friends I had agreed to meet for diner earlier in the day I discovered it was not the 7pm I was seeing.  Worse still I had only just started to look up where we should go.  As our hotels were close to each other and one person, Edith – Aistair’s mother, has mobility problems, it made sense to go back to Potrefena Husa Nadroni, after all it does decent local food, and being a chain it is priced and targeted at locals, unlike virtually everywhere else around here. Continue reading

Prague Photos – Update

Normally I post at the start of a trip about where I’m hosting my travel/holiday pictures.  It used to be WebShots, until they changed direction and effectively stopped hosting, then Photobucket, but that is slow and when they went to redo their pricing options it was beyond silly and plain greedy, so I now just have a very limited free account.  I’ve still used it for this trip, but as I have to rotate photos out these may only stay in place for a year or two.  I’ve  not found a suitable alternative, that has sufficient space on a free account, allows a tree structure so I have have different albums per holiday and sub albums/folders for a level or two below, and don’t take/steel owenership.  Answers on a postcard 😉 (Flickr, Imgur, Google Photos, FaceBook are all not suitable for various reasons). Continue reading

Unexpected evening group out.

I went out for a walk to see a few places near by and to take some more photos, before heading back to the hotel and heading out again for an evening meal.  It was then I bumped in to some people going to the same event as me tomorrow and staying at the same hotel.  We agreed to meet in the hotel bar.  I was then rung by someone I know better, who also was at the same hotel and the numbers grew.

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