Prague – a selection of restaurants

Prague has to be one of my favourite cities in the world! At any season, and despite the masses of tourists, it is possible to escape and find some wonderful hidden away places. A short visit over the last couple of days provided the opportunity to explore some new restaurants that I would definitely recommend:

La Provence (Štupartská 9) – in the style of a French brasserie, serving really excellent food. The salmon and steaks were delicious, but the desserts are indeed special: outstanding sorbet (beautifully presented) and fantastic Tarte tatin. This restaurant is really worth searching out – and beneath the ground floor brasserie, there is a romantic cushioned dining room in the downstairs cellar. An interesting wine list combines local Czech wines with fine French wines.
Mount Steak (Josefská 1) – a very different kind of restaurant from La Provence, and definitely not for vegetarians! Mount Steak serves an enormously wide range of steaks from kangaroo to crocodile, but also has a good range of fulsome local Czech dishes with plenty of dumplings! The pork and chicken were really good value and delicious.
Černý Slon (Týnská 1) – I first visited here almost a decade ago, and remember enjoying the traditional Czech food and wine. Little has changed since then! Hidden away near the Old Town Square, Černý Slon still serves good traditional Czech fare – the duck (with dumplings) is definitely worth trying as an example of old-style Czech cuisine.
Breakfast at the Hilton Old Town (V Celnici 7) also has to be one of the best international hotel starts to the day – with excellent friendly service and really fresh food.

25 years of PowerPoint

For some excellent advice on how not to use PowerPoint, see Max Atkinson’s recent article ‘celebrating’ 25 years of PowerPoint in the BBC’s online magazine. It contains some great tips!

The BBC magazine also has a selection of amusing PowerPoint experiences – 10 good ones, and ten bad!

Born on the 14th if August 1984, PowerPoint is still going strong – quite a testimony to the way our lives have been transformed by computer technologies.

Freedom on the Net

For those who may not have read it yet, Freedom House’s publication entitled Freedom on the Net: a Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media and published in April 2009, provides a very valuable assessment of the balance of interests in the spread of the Internet and mobile telephony across the world.

As Freedom House’s blurb says, “As internet and mobile phone use explodes worldwide, governments are adopting new and multiple means for controlling these technologies that go far beyond technical filtering. Freedom on the Net provides a comprehensive look at these emerging tactics, raising concern over trends such as the “outsourcing of censorship” to private companies, the use of surveillance and the manipulation of online conversations by undercover agents. The study covers both repressive countries such as China and Iran and democratic ones such as India and the United Kingdom, finding some degree of internet censorship and control in all 15 nations studied.”

The overview essay by Karin Deutsch Karlekar and Sarah G. Cook argues that there is a growing diversity of threats to internet freedom and that governments have responded to the spread of new media by introducing new measures to control, regulate and censor content. As they conclude “In a fast-changing digital world, vigilance is required if we are to ensure continued freedom on the net.”

Bryan Appleyard on Steve Jobs

I have long been a Mac user, and so read with interest Bryan Appleyard’s piece in the Sunday Times magazine yesterday about Steve Jobs. It’s fascinating how Jobs provokes such contradictory opinions – very evident from the many blogs and comments that have followed the article. It is indeed an interesting question as to what will happen to Apple when he eventually ‘goes’. I just hope that Appleyard’s suggestion that a merger with Google might be on the cards is wide of the mark!

Croatia: seascapes, wine and food

Dubrovnik So, I have been hiding away in the Dalmatian coast of Croatia for the last week – and greatly enjoying the amazing coastal scenery!

Dubrovnik – despite the thousands of tourists – has to be one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. The opportunity to reconstruct it after the Serbian bombings of 1991-92, when an estimated 68% of the buildings in the old city were damaged, has been grasped imaginatively and effectively – the walk around the city walls is truly magnificent.

Vines I was hoping to explore some of Croatia’s vineyards and wineries during our stay – but with prices of most of the ‘quality’ wines for sale being between$30 and $50 a bottle, I swiftly changed my mind! To be sure, it is indeed possible to find some reasonable wines at much less than this, but I cannot imagine who is willing to pay such prices – perhaps there are far too many over-rich tourists! If Croatia wants to establish itself as a reputable wine-making country, it needs to start making better value wines!

The food was also, sadly, a bit disapponting – tasty enough, but we did not manage to find any restaurants that really impressed. The best – and reasonably priced – was Konavoski Dvori near Gruda to the south of Dubrovnik. The restaurant is in a restored watermill, and on a hot August day the swift-flowing river that runs past the dining tables provides a very welcome cool breeze! Meat is cooked in an iron bell on charcoal – which keeps it succulent and moist. Other restaurants worth visiting include:

Dubrovnik: Restaurant Orhan (Od Tabakarije 1) – situated at the foot of the Lovrjenac tower on the edge of a small bay some 200m away from the walls of the old city. Good seafood salads and grilled meats
Trogir: Alka restaurant (Obrov 10) – serving customers in the centre of the old town for 40 years, this restaurant has particularly good tradtional Dalmatian beef pašticada (marinated in vinegar, lemon and rosemary, and then cooked wth carrots, cloves, muscat nuts, red wine and prosciutto)