I recently had the privilege to spend 10 days in Europe with some amazing girls. I left the husband at home to man the house, entertain his family and bring home the bacon while I gallivanted off on a European vacation with 4 other girls from Grace. I left later than the other girls after celebrating with Joe and Stephanie in Indiana and met up with them in Prague. I was so glad to see their beautiful faces after traveling half way around the world by myself. Luckily all the travel went smoothly and everything worked out perfectly. I got there around mid-day on Monday April 2 and had the best welcoming committee in the whole airport! We spent Tuesday and Wednesday exploring Prague. Prague is definitely high up on my list of favorite places. It was beautiful!!
Here are some highlights from the first day shortly after I arrived...
(I realize that I
didn't take many pics with people in them so I'll have to get some of
those from the other girls)
My first view of the city as we walked across St. Charles Bridge to the Old Town Square
My first Czech lunch...Fried cheese and rice...the best option...interesting.
Since it was so close to Easter they had lots of decorations and festivities in the market square.
On the hour, every hour, in the cathedral in the market square a bugle man plays music and the 12 Apostles parade by the windows above the clock and the statues dance. (Apparently it's called a glockenspiel). It is so fun! I'm hoping that one of the other girls got a video of that.
My first view of the other side of the river as we walked back to our hotel that night. What a beautiful view.
This is where we stayed in Prague. It was kinda like a bed & breakfast/hotel/apartment.
Facebook Pic of the Day
The first afternoon we spent time doing a walking tour of the Old Town which gave us lots of history of the city and was very interesting (I'm actually surprised I was still walking at that point with zero sleep). We got dessert and coffee at a cute little shop where I kept falling asleep so I was happy to head home and go straight to bed!
Day 2 highlights:
Leah makes a good statue
The St. Charles Bridge was pretty vacant on our way over...what a beautiful view of the city
More amazing views of the city
Facebook pic of the day!
A Jewish cemetery at a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter. So many graves were just piled on top of each other.
Another synagogue in the Jewish Quarter.
Dori and Marianne!
We spent time on the castle grounds and went to several parts of the castle.
My sweet girls!
A beautiful cathedral within the castle walls
Stained glass windows in the cathedral
The cathedral from the outside.
We climbed 287 steps in a tight circle to get to the top of the cathedral. I thought I was gonna throw up by the time we got to the top after walking around and around and around.
Amazing views from the top!
The view was well worth the climb up.
Another view of the cathedral from the outside.
Inside a very old synagogue
Emily, Marianne and Dori
This is the cutest little street with shops but you had to have a ticket to go down it...weird. Interesting fact: Franz Kofka used to live there.
The view from the outdoor wine bistro that we went to for wine and a pre-dinner dessert. Except they didn't have red wine....very weird.
Leah and Emily
Marianne, Me and Dori
We spent the first half of Day 2 in the Jewish Quarter. We went to 7 different places in the Jewish Quarter including several cemeteries. It was very sobering to learn so much about the Jewish history and architecture of the city. We spent the afternoon at the castle, exploring a few different sites around the castle grounds. That night we had the best dinner at a little Italian restaurant in the Old Town. Our waiter was so precious and sat down with us to chat. He even brought us free lemoncellos since he didn't have Marianne's lemon gelato.
Day 3 highlights:
We spent our last day doing the New Town walk and then just spending time in the market and wandering the streets. We did some shopping for last minute Prague souvenirs. We met a man from Michigan in the market who was very excited to hear us speaking English. I know how he feels. We headed back to our hotel, picked up our stuff and headed to the train station to take the night train to Krakow.
Funniest story from Prague: We were in the train station plenty early for our train. We had dinner and hung out waiting to find out which platform our train was coming on. It was not on the board yet so once it got pretty close to our departure time we stood in front of the board waiting for it to pop up. There were lots of people standing around but there were tons of trains coming in and out so that didn't seem weird. All of a sudden, just a few minutes before the train was supposed to leave, our platform showed up on the board and there was a sudden, mad rush of all of the people to our platform. All of the people were waiting on the same train and it was like a herd of elephants took off for the platform. We got to the (very long) train and followed the numbers to where our car should have been. By this point it is time for the train to leave. We hear an announcement that our cars have been switched and are at the other end so we have to take off running with all of our stuff down the whole train platform to the other end where we met our sweet conductor who helped us get settled in our cars. Gracious.
Here is a video of our train room (we had 2 rooms - one with 3 beds, one with 2) and the telling of the above story:
Stay tuned for adventures in Krakow!
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