Day 1: Mostly travel

This blog is intended to illustrate our vacations and serve as a place where we can go to relive them as well as for others to kind of experience what we did. We hope you enjoy it!

I am structuring this a bit differently than a normal blog, in that instead of the first entry occurring near the bottom of each trip, the last entry will. Each day of the trip will be its own entry, but all will be on the same day.

Our first trip to be chronicled here is a recent trip that Brian and I took to Prague, Czech Republic. It was our first time to this country, and the first time we were taking a trip to a country where neither of us knew the language. It went surprisingly well!

Here is Brian at Chicago's O'Hare airport, waiting for departure. Believe it or not, I had never eaten a Cinnabon before! Brian thought I was making that up. Of course, I have had cinnamon rolls, but not like this. There are Cinnabon outlets all over this airport. We got one and shared it. Here is Brian, a bit exhausted, at New York's JFK airport, waiting for the plane to Prague. You can see that he doesn't look particularly happy! Our flights went well on departure day.
And here is the meal that was served on the flight. We flew Czech Airlines. It was pleasant enough, but the airline does not have the accommodations we've had on past trans-Atlantic flights. There were no TV screens embedded in the chairs; just a few monitors that pulled down. I am able to read on flights, so this wasn't a problem for me, but Brian is unable to read, so this bothered him a bit more. The food, however, was delicious! We had been told that only a snack would be served, so this came as a pleasant surprise.

Day 2: Arrival in Prague!

We arrived safely in Prague and easily navigated their fantastic public transportation system. There is a bus (100) that takes you directly to the end of Metro line C, which is the line that had a stop near our hotel. As luck would have it, our luggage was the first off of the plane, bus 100 was waiting for us, and we were in our hotel within about 30 minutes of landing.

Inside the Metro were some of the longest escalators I have ever seen. I'm not sure if this picture does it justice! Czechs are very polite on the escalator. If you're standing -- off to the right! The left lane is clear for those who choose to walk. On quite a few escalator trips, there was perhaps only one time when this convention was not honored.

This is an advertisement that was in the metro:


I'm not really sure what it's for, but there are Handel and Mozart as finger puppets! These dead composers would not be strong spokesmen in America. Prague has a rich musical history and we saw many references to classical music during our stay.

We weren't allowed to check in to our hotel at 8 in the morning when we arrived. They locked our luggage in a room and told us to return after noon. Even though we desperately needed to shower, we headed out walking around the town for a few hours. This is an outside view of our hotel, Ibis Praha Mala Strana. I didn't take any interior shots; if you care, I'm sure they have them on their website! Our hotel was very nice and close to everything. It didn't have much character -- inside the hotel, I could have been in Dallas or Tokyo for all I knew. However, we planned on spending very little time inside, so we were looking for something clean, close, and inexpensive. As a bonus, they had a fantastic continental breakfast that was included in our rate.

Here is the Lycee Francias de Prague (not sure how to get accents to work). Of course I had to take a picture! When we walked near here, we always heard at least 2 people speaking French.

Here is a funny street sign. I didn't crop out the background so that you could see the buildings and cars. I think the sign is big enough! Every time I saw this little man, I chuckled. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's his body language which seem so jaunty, but more likely it's the hat that he's wearing. It just seemed to fit right in to Prague!

We quickly found ourselves on Petrin Hill, which was only a few minutes from our hotel. We didn't realize that's where we were, and even after looking on a map, we didn't realize it. Prague is a city that is very walkable, so the map was drawn on a much larger scale than we realized. We'd made it much further on foot that originally thought! The following 2 pictures were taken while on Petrin Hill.

I didn't take many pictures from the rest of the day. We found a restaurant and had a meal, then walked around Charles Bridge just as the vendors were setting up for the day. We then went back to our hotel a little after noon. Our room was ready, and we each took a much-needed shower. We dressed and went back outside for some sight-seeing. As everyone says, Prague is a very beautiful city. It escaped wide-scale destruction during the wars and remains very charming.

Here is a picture of where we ate dinner. I took this picture several days later, as you can see sun in this picture. We did not see the sun for the first 3-4 days we were there. The food was delicious, and we had beer along with our meals. Neither one of us really likes beer, but it is very plentiful in Czech Republic! We drank it with most of our meals. We probably had more beer in these 7 days than in the previous 7 years!

Day 3: Castle District

Our 3rd day in Prague was probably our busiest. It's the one that we knocked out most of the tourist "must-dos." First, 2 more pictures of the architecture and beautiful surroundings:

Here are some things we saw along the way:

This is the Romanian Embassy. We loved the statues that are holding up the building. As the week went on, we became accustomed to seeing these kinds of buildings and stopped taking so many pictures.

Of course I had to take a picture of this gas station when we noticed that it had a parrot as its logo!

We also saw the following picture in a window display. Brian knows how creepy I find this, but he took a picture and made me promise to put it on my blog.

This store was on our way from our hotel to Old Town Square, so we passed it regularly. What a combination! Looking for some sheet music or a skateboard? Here's your place!
We spent the morning in the Prague Castle District, including St. Vitus Cathedral. Here I am on the grounds, rubbing the head of a little figure. There are tons of superstitions surrounding various statues around town. Earlier that day, we saw a professional Czech businesswoman walking across the Charles Bridge to get to work. At a few statues, she stopped and rubbed specific parts. I'm not sure why this particular statue is rubbed (luck, perhaps? I hope it's for something good!) but when we saw that part was golden, we took this picture.
Inside St. Vitus Cathedral, you can walk up one of the towers, where there is a great view of Prague. Because it wasn't the busy season, we were able to get up there in about 10 minutes.

This is a stained glass window designed by Alfonse Mucha. We thought it was very beautiful, although certainly in a much different style than the rest of the windows.

Towards the end of Golden Lane, there is a small torture museum. Here is Brian pretending to be shackled in this full body torture device.

Along Petrin Hill, there is a monument to the victims of Communism. I think the inscription can explain this much better than I could.

Here's Brian, trying to find the Lennon Wall. We found it, but not today!
This is an outside picture of the little cafe where we had lunch, in the Loreta district. We had pizza, and they brought the pizzas out whole, giving us the utensil to cut it ourselves.

After lunch we visited a library and looked into a monastery. Apparently you have to arrange a tour of the library ahead of time, but they still took our money and we could look into it. We were a bit disappointed about this!

Here I am sitting next to a statue that was on a bench. Nothing screams "tourist!" like taking one of these pictures:

Here is a picture showing the vendors on the Charles Bridge. We were a little disappointed in how touristy certain parts of Prague were.

Here is Brian, consulting the guidebook, trying to figure out which way to go:

This stone said "toilet" on it. We're not quite sure how that would have worked. If you read through this entire blog, you will see a progression of different toilets, assuming that's what this really is!

And here is a sign showing the different prohibitions on the Castle Grounds. Brian claims to have seen a sign on the first day somewhere banning ice cream, guns, and strollers. We never could find that again and we're wondering if the "gun" wasn't really something else. In any case, these banning signs were all over. With the temperatures we were facing, there was really no danger from ice cream!

We thought this was funny, so we took a picture. The side of this car advertises sightseeing tours. BUT, the car is so loud, there is no way you'd be able to hear anything! This single person was taking a tour, and passed us 4 different times in about 15 minutes as we were walking around the Loreta district. Finally I told Brian that if we saw this guy one more time, I was taking his picture and he was ending up on the blog!

This is another picture that I wasn't intending on putting in the blog originally. I can't imagine the outcry that would happen if someone tried to put this fountain up in my hometown! So, I wanted to get a picture of this fountain, but this lady would not leave. She posed by the fountain for at least 5 minutes. We could not figure out why, so finally we ended up taking her picture and decided to put her on the blog since it appears that's what she wanted!

As we were walking towards the Castle, we passed the Klemintinum, which is the Czech National Library. There had been advertisements all around town for an exhibit they were having on the Codex Gigas, so we decided to stop in and see it.

We had dinner at a restaurant named 22. The meal was quite good.

Finally, here I am posing in what must be among the smallest openings ever (there is a restaurant in the back).
You can see the walk/don't walk sign in the background. This was also different from what we're used to. There is a slow clicking that occurs continually, and when you get the walk sign, the clicking speeds up. We imagined this might be there to help the blind, but the fast pace of the clicks made us cross the street in a quick manner!

And here is Brian, consulting the map and pointing the way back to our hotel.

Day 4: Old Town Square

Saturday started off like the rest of our days in Prague -- with a nice breakfast at our hotel.

Quite near to our hotel, there was a store going out of business. For whatever reason, we thought the word "Bankrot" meaning "bankrupt" was kind of funny. There was a speaker advertising the store-closing sale, and we'd stand around to hear him say "bankrot!" Here, you can see a lady entering the store with her dog on a leash:

We found the Lennon Wall, and also a water mill:

We walked over to Old Town Square where we saw quite a few sites; among them:

The Astronomical Clock:

Even in the off-season, crowds were heavy for the hourly display of the clock. We were off to the side, so we saw death ringing the bell, but did not see the parade of figures.

The crosses commemorating 27 rebellious leaders who were executed in 1621. According to our guidebook, for centuries people avoided walking on these crosses; however, as you can see, that is no longer the case.

Near Old Town Square is the Estates Theater, where Mozart premiered his opera Don Giovanni.

Brian standing in the entranceway of the Estates Theater, in possibly the exact same spot where Mozart stood:

Walking towards the metro station, we saw a set of giant doors. Of course, I had to stand next to them. I wonder how heavy these doors are and if a normal person can open them alone?

We stopped at a cafe that was recommended in our guidebook, off of Old Town Square. We had drinks and snacks. The following pictures are Alice, Brian, and our meal:

Right near the metro station is Wencenslas Square. They were putting up the Christmas tree. The picture below that one is of a giant advent calendar in the windows of the building.

Having made it to the metro, here is Brian buying tickets. We had earlier tried to purchase a week-long metro ticket, but the office had been closed for lunch. We took that as a sign to mostly walk.

Our destination was the TV tower, located in a near suburb. You can see sculptures of babies climbing up the tower.

Here is a view of Prague's suburb from the TV tower.

We noticed a large swath of green space that was denoted on our map as a large cemetary, so we decided to walk over there. Here are three pictures of some of the more interesting graves. We found it interesting that almost all of the graves had flowers or candles on them. We're not sure if this is normal for Prague, or if it was near some sort of holiday.

We found the nearest metro station to the cemetary, which happened to be near a mall. Here is Brian, standing next to a dinosaur.

Back in Prague-proper, we decided to try to find Vysehrad. However, we were turned around and walked in the opposite direction. We may bring a compass on our next trip! Here is Brian looking at the map:

Since we were unable to find what we were looking for, we decided to stop for dinner. The first place we tried is pictured here. They told us that they couldn't serve us because the entire restaurant was reserved, but that we could come in for drinks if we wished. We were cold and thirsty, so we decided to do that. Two drinks each and more than an hour later, the restaurant was still empty!

We decided to head out to a restaurant recommended by our guidebook. However, this restaurant was rather far away. We got cold on our walk, and stopped at another bar for a drink to warm us up:

As we crossed the Charles Bridge to get to the restaurant, Brian couldn't resist rubbing some of the statues: Here is a view of Prague Castle at night. Unfortunately, my camera couldn't capture this well, but it was absolutely gorgeous.This is the restaurant where we ate dinner. It was possibly the best meal we ate in Prague.
Here is Brian, during our walk home along Petrin Hill. During this walk at some point, our guidebook is lost. You can see it in his pocket here, though. This didn't really affect our trip as we had already seen most of the things recommended in the book!

This sign was in front of a restaurant on our walk home. It almost looks like my name on top, but it's not!