Prague

This is the second leg of our journey...

Thursday, June 22

We flew from Copenhagen to Prague, and for this flight we were in economy, and we ended up having an older gentleman sit between us (you may recall that we almost always sit aisle/window, and sometimes we luck out with an empty seat between us and other times we don't!).  He was very nice and we chatted about travel and what to see in Prague (he was heading home), which made the already short flight zip by.  It's amazing to me how travel is a universal topic of conversation and it is always great to get advice from a local!

We landed just before dinner time, and C had arranged a car service to take us from the airport to our hotel.  I mentioned in my last post that, in general, we are not fancy people.  So it was fun to ride in a Mercedes because it definitely felt very fancy!  And it only got better from there because our hotel was AMAZINGLY fancy!  It is located about 30 steps from the American Embassy, and there was police check on the road, at which point our driver explained that we were staying in the safest part of Prague for this very reason – lots of security.  The name of our hotel was The Alchymist and I loved everything about it!

As we were checking in, we were given glasses of champagne, which was delightful, and then our bags were delivered to our room for us while we were given a tour of the hotel.  Let me say that it was the kind of place you would not want to leave – it had a romantic, old castle feel to it and I was reminded just how lucky I am that C plans all of our trips and I just get to go along for the ride!  I am continually surprised and thrilled everywhere we go!  He is THE BEST!

Friday, June 23

We ate breakfast at the hotel and then walked to Prague Castle.  We spent a few hours there, and it provided great views of the city, but if I'm being honest, I did not think it was worthy of the title "castle" because it was more like a fortress with a large, impressive church.  Still lovely to visit, but it didn't really have that royal feeling that I love.  We stayed to watch the changing of the guard because walking back down into town for ice cream and lunch.  One thing I will say that I loved so much about Prague is that everywhere we went, there were so many options for potato-based dishes, and as vegetarians, it was awesome.  After having such a hard time finding food to eat in Tokyo, it was so nice to be in Europe and to have lots of choices in every restaurant!  Also, random share…at one restaurant, the bill came to us in a little treasure box!  So cute!

After lunch, we walked over to take a funicular ride up to get some additional views of the city. And there were beautiful gardens at the top.  I could have taken hundreds of photos of those flowers!  Instead of taking the funicular back down, we decided to walk, which was actually a little bit more of a hike, but the views made it worthwhile.  We stopped at the hotel for a short rest, and then walked across the Charles Bridge over to Mirror Chapel for a concert.  It was a string quartet, organist, and opera singer.  Some of the performers are members of the national orchestra, so as you might imagine, it was beyond fantastic!  And the best part of the whole thing was that Mozart himself played on the organ that is in the chapel!  I had chills!  We heard Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, and several other pieces.  My former orchestra & band member self was in heaven!

We ended the evening with several hours of walking around the city, dinner, and ice cream.  I can't explain it, but there were SO MANY ice creams places in Prague!  Ice cream everywhere!  So we ate a lot of ice cream during our visit!

Saturday, June 24

Once again, we ate breakfast at the hotel because the food was delicious and the atmosphere and service could not be beat!  We then walked over to the nearest metro station in an attempt to buy tickets.  I have not yet mentioned that language was a bit of an issue for us in Prague.  Some places had things in English, but there were many times when we were struggling a little to figure things out.  Even in restaurants, there was no guarantee that the menu would be available in English or that our server would speak English.  Thankfully, everyone was extremely kind and patient with us!  However, we had zero luck buying a metro ticket from a machine, even though we thought we were following the directions correctly.  We finally gave up and grabbed a taxi instead out of frustration with the entire process.

Our sour moods evaporated quickly when we arrived at our destination.  Remember how I mentioned that C is the best travel planner?  I had no idea what was in store…all I knew was that we were going to a university library.  I was excited enough about that, but when we got inside…OH.MY.WORD.  Every floor inside was rainbow colored.  It was the coolest library I have ever seen – and we've been to our share of libraries!  I took a ton a photos of the different floors and honestly, I cannot describe just how much I loved it.  I enjoyed just about every single thing we did and saw in Prague, but that just takes the cake!

After I spent a couple hours oohing and ahhing all around the library, we walked to the nearest metro station and decided to try the crazy ticket machine again because it just didn't seem like it should have been as difficult as it was.  Lo and behold, we were able to purchase the tickets without incident, and came to the conclusion that the machine we'd tried earlier in the day must have been broken.  We returned back to the downtown area and wandered around the city.  The buildings are just so beautiful in Prague!  We also stopped by the public library, which, frankly, was nothing to write home about, with one huge exception.

When you enter the library, there is what looks like a sculpture.  Upon closer inspection, you realize that it is in fact made of countless books, strategically stacked, to form a fascinating open column.  And if that weren't enough, when you look inside, you how mirrors have been cleverly arranged to create the illusion that the column of books continues on forever and ever.  I don't know who created something so mesmerizing, but it was awesome!

We stopped for a late lunch, and it might be a good time to share that we eat a lot of pizza when we travel.  Not only do we love pizza, but it is an easy item to get almost everywhere for vegetarians.  What we noticed repeatedly both in Prague and in Copenhagen was that when we ordered pizza, it would be delivered to the table on two plates, already cut in half.  When it happened once, we thought it was a bit a odd; the second time, we suspected it wasn't a fluke, and by the third time, we realized that this was somehow the custom in both countries (and perhaps elsewhere).  I guess they wanted to make sure we each got our fair share?

After lunch, we got some ice cream, and continued to explore the city until it was time to return to the Mirror Chapel once again for another concert.  This time, it was a pianist, two opera singers, and a violinist – the violinist and the female opera singer had also performed during the concert the previous night – and the concert was once again fabulous.  There is just something about sitting in an old historic chapel in the middle of an old European city listening to amazing classical music that really filled my heart up.  It's hard to articulate how deeply these two concerts moved me.  I played piano and French horn for a very long time and live instrumental music – particularly classical music – stirs something very deep inside my soul.

So again, I have C to thank for finding these concerts…he spends weeks and months researching most of our trips and the payoff is amazing.

Sunday, June 25

We had our final breakfast at the hotel, and then walked over to the Lennon Wall, which is a place where people use graffiti to keep the spirit of John Lennon's message of peace and love alive.  It was a beautiful tribute and it is clear it is considered a place of importance because all of the visitors spoke in hushed tones and I saw more than a few tears shed when reading the messages – my own included.

This was our last day in Prague, so we wandered around to soak up as much of the city as we could.  We saw what is referred to as the "Dancing House," lots of stunning architecture, and a few unusual things – a seemingly random row of (I think) plastic penguins, car boats, a old timey car that looked like it could have belonged to Cruella De Vil, and a large floating octopus, to name a few.  We stopped at an outdoor café along the water to enjoy the beautiful afternoon weather, and then made two last stops.  First, we checked out the Lego Museum, which was really cool, and then finally – you guessed it – we got ice cream.  The employees scoop the ice cream into cones in such a way that it looks like flower petals, and then they top the cone with a macaron.  I made unwise choices in my ice cream flavors because the color was not that different from the cone itself, so I didn't really capture a great photo of it.  Oh, well!  It still tasted amazing!

We ended the night back at the hotel and unfortunately, it was time to pack up and get ready to head home in the morning.

Monday, June 26

We left the hotel at about 6:15 am, once again being spoiled in a Mercedes thanks to the car service C had arranged for us.  We grabbed some breakfast at the airport and then took a flight from Prague to Stockholm.  We were in economy for that leg, but it was a short flight and we lucked out and had an empty middle seat between us, so no complaints here!  I took some photos as we approached Stockholm.

We landed around noon and deplaned.  Normally I would have nothing to share about that process.  However, after leaving the jet way, we had to take an escalator up one floor to get to the gate area.  We had been seated near the front of the plane, so we among the first 40 or so people to get off the plane.  We got on the escalator and realized there was a crowd at the top.  It turns out that the doors that we were supposed to exit through were locked, so the escalator just kept dumping more and more people into a very small area.  It was kind of scary, to be honest.  People moved out of the way the best they could, and when there was no more room, people were shouting down to those at the bottom not to get on the escalator because there was no room at the top.  Others were banging on the glass doors to no avail, and some people had to turn around with all of their carry on luggage and try to make their way back down the ascending escalator.  While it only lasted less than ten minutes, it was madness!  Finally the doors opened and we were released into the gate area, but what insanity!

We had a five-hour layover in Stockholm, which was not really enough time to leave the airport and do anything, so we just found a place for lunch and then camped out there for a few hours before heading to our gate.  As we were departing, I spotted a rainbow in the midst of the rain through the plane's window and figured that was a good omen for our trip home!  The flight was a dream, because we were in business class again, so I was able to sleep soundly for several hours.

One of the things I love about Norwegian Air, other than its amazingly reasonable fares, is that every plane we've been on has these awesome colored lights in the ceiling and I get super excited when they put them on the rainbow cycle (most of the time, from what we've seen, they are light blue or light peach, depending on day or night flights).  As you can see from the photos, I love them!

After landing at JFK, we breezed right through immigration thanks to our participation in the Global Entry program (not having to wait in line is the best!) and then since we didn't have anything of value to declare, we cleared customs very quickly as well.  We picked up our luggage, hopped on the Air Train (and were gifted with a lovely sunset), and were back in our car in a very short amount of time!  We didn't hit much in the way of traffic for the drive home (it was about 9 pm on a Monday night), so we got home at about 2 am, tired, but so happy to see our gals!

What a fabulous adventure!  According to my phone, we walked a total of 15 miles in Prague – less than half of what we walked in Copenhagen – which reflects the relatively intimate size of Prague.  I'm not entirely sure I would return to Copenhagen – I liked it very much, but there are so many places I still want to see – but I would go back to Prague in a heartbeat!  I loved everything about it!

I would be remiss if I didn't also thank my mom for watching Maddy and Ginny for us for ELEVEN days!  We are so lucky to have her because we don't have to worry about them for a single second, knowing she is watching them!

If you haven't already, be sure to read all about the first part of this trip when we visited Copenhagen!

Happy Tails to you!