Dates in Redlands

I have been to Redlands more times than I can count in the past few years, but I've never actually ventured to far off from the college campus. Just an hour away, the trips there were not based on the location, but revolved around seeing Scott and hanging out with him. The Redlands campus is beautiful, so I had never really thought to explore the surrounding neighborhood.

But a few weeks ago, Scott decided we would have a day full of dates/activities around the area, and it was so much fun. From hiking to waterfalls to more sushi than we could eat, we spent the entire day driving around Redlands exploring the area. Sadly, I lost my iPhone the Tuesday after the weekend so my many pictures of beer, sushi, and ice cream were lost. This post is long overdue, but pictures or not, the date day in Redlands deserves a blog post on it's own if for no reason other than to brag about how awesome my boyfriend is :)

Our day started with the drive to the San Bernardino National Park. 20 minutes away and you're surrounded by much chillier weather and cute little wood cabins. For $5 daily parking, we started our hike to Forest Falls. While it was short hike overall at just around 3 miles, we added our own little excitement by challenging ourselves to take the hardest route to the waterfall. Our little rock climbing shortcuts were briefly interrupted by stopping to take pictures of the beautiful surroundings. It was so much fun making it to the park, and I didn't realize that a quick trip to the Mountains was just about 20 minutes away from Redlands. Scott and I are already talking about going back for a longer hike next time.

After we finished the hike, we made a quick stop back at campus to meet Zeus--aka the cutest German Shepard puppy in the world--and to change out of our gym clothes.

Our next stop was to Hangar 24. The business is actually owned by a friend from elementary school, and it's a really laid back brewery across from a private plane hangar. The whole place overlooks the small planes and the mountains, and it would be a fun place to go back and order a tester tray. For now, I just ordered their orange beer and really enjoyed it (although, I'm pretty sure it was the girliest option I could have picked haha).

For dinner, we went to a cheap sushi restaurant that I've been to once before. It has an awesome half off menu, and we decided to be more adventurous since everything was cheap and delicious. We got a little overzealous on ordering and after a side eye from the waitress we mildly toned down our order to California rolls, cucumber rolls, spicy tuna rolls, tiger rolls, scallop and shrimp rolls, and even octopus (which was surprisingly good). They also have an all you can eat option which may be the smarter option for our next date ;)

The date ended in downtown Redlands at the ice cream shop A La Minute. It's a super cute shop which makes the ice cream using dry ice and liquid nitrogen, and the end result is super creamy and delicious. I got salted carmel which was delicious and stole bites of Scott's mint and chip. The rest of the weekend was spent doing our usual hang out on campus and get breakfast burritos routine, but I was so happy that Scott had planned a whole day of dates for us. Any day filled with hiking, food, and visiting puppies is pretty much a perfect day in my book. 

Kunta Hora

This past Saturday, our program took us on a mandatory field trip to Kunta Hora. It's an hour and a half  outside of Prague and used to be an old silver mining town. Our first tour on the agenda was about the silver mining. I thought it was going to revolve around the silver miners and mines themselves, but it ended up just being a tour of the main building where the leaders (I can't remember their title) lived and some coins were made. It was a little on the slow side, but it was fun seeing a reenactment of a silver coin being made. The guy preforming/making the old coins loved his job--he got beyond excited when people took pictures of him and started smiling after people clapped. We also got to keep a really small coin as a souvenir. 

After the tour we went to a looking point where we could see the St. Barbara Cathedral. It was the next place we were touring, but since the group was starting to get grumpy and hungry when we found out lunch wasn't til 1:30 we were given a little break to go grab something or walk around. I ended up getting my first hot chocolate of the semester. I heard that the hot chocolate was much thicker here and more like melted chocolate so I was really excited. Sadly, after the first sip I burned my mouth and throat and became very disillusioned with the drink. At the very least it was warm to carry around on a cold day.




After our break, we headed over to the cathedral. Technically, it was only a church because they never got a bishop to come to Kunta Hora, but it was built to rival the cathedrals in Prague. There was a little look out tower/building where you could go to to take some picture of the church and the surrounding town.

The best part of the cathedral were all the different scenes in the windows. These actually weren't stained glass; an artist painted each window with oil paints.

After a slightly lengthy tour of the cathedral, we finally headed over to lunch. The program had provided us lunch at a local restaurant and we were served a pre selected vegetable soup, chicken and potatoes, and dessert. The restaurant and food was really warm and the food was pretty good. Very simple and very Czech.

After lunch, the group started to get excited because we were heading to our last stop and the stop that everyone had been looking forward to the whole day. We went to Sedlec Ossusary which is a church that is decorated with tens of thousands of human bones. Apparently it had an extremely large cemetery and when industrial construction needed to happen, and artist decided that it would be better to honor the dead then to build over them. The church was really cold and eerie, and while the skulls didn't actually bother me that much, seeing the crest made from knee caps and spines freaked me out. It was definitely the best and most interesting part of the trip. My friends and I wanted to take a picture in the church, but it felt a little odd smiling in front of human remains.

We slept on the bus all the way back, and I spent the rest of the night making dinner and heading to the club Mecca with my roommate and a few friends!