Kunta Hora

Coat of arms in bones.......
Chandelier of bones......

Met for breakfast....Sabrina is planning on how she's going to bring our waiter, Lucky, back home with her...he anticipates her every desire. Then we went on a tour with 13 of our new best friends, plus the driver (who will not be receiving any safe driver awards soon) and the tour guide. We're generally not tour people, but this is really the only way to get out of Prague to this area. And Rick Steves says that 90% of the tourists never leave Prague, so that's a dare to us.

We got to experience the slow ride out of the city to the highway. You can really tell that this country was beaten up by years of communism. These are hardy people....hard workers, very friendly, and they loathe large institutions and politicians. But they have a history of gruesome kings that do horrible things. They lost many people during the plague, so they decided to take the bones from about the 40,000 who died and piled them up in their church....not something we would of thought of...

Typical Prague Evening

This is what we do at night....we go out to dinner. But here in Prague the restaurants also have live music with people all singing. We got a tip from Blanca, our tour guide, for a local place. I think she took pity on us because of our 8,000 Korun. So here is what we got for 1,200 Korun tonight:
Three mixed green salads....these are so fresh and the the veggies were crispy. It was wonderful
One Greek salad for Dave, which is didn't finish because it was really big

Michael's goulash (beef which was so tender) with bread dumplings

Sabrina's salmon with fries

Dave's salmon with boiled potatoes (that Michael ate)

Edie's ham (which was extremely moist and tender) with sauerkraut and potato dumplings (which Michael helped consume)

And we all helped with dessert. Sabrina and Dave say that Michael and Edie have a food addiction but they're in there with fork and spoon too. This is warm raspberries, vanilla ice cream with real whipped cream.

The whole time we were dining they had live music (an accordian player) and the tables all sang songs. Most were old American songs. For instance, Delilah by Tom Jones....we sang too. And there was dancing. As we were leaving this man grabbed Sabrina and they took a few twirls around the floor. He had her all over the restaurant and the rest of use laughed so much it was all we could do to take this photo.

Computer Lesson

Michael just bought himself a new Mac....Sabrina wanted no part of it because she thought it a frivilous purchase.....so far, Michael is having a tough time ripping it out of her hands! But he's getting some personal tutorials from Dave and Sabrina. Some of the trouble is that when you log on in a foreign country it comes up in the native language the first time! And can I just say that we thought German had too many letters in their words, but Czech is out of control....I mean they are not even letters, but symbols! And we can not even make our mouths move to say the words.

We're having real trouble loading photos...we'll see what we can do to give you visuals.

Prague

Left Berlin around 10:45 am....after spending all of our Euro...which turned out to be a bit of an error....we had no funs for lunch on the train! All we had was enough for one bottle of water....which we split between the four of us...along with the almonds we had in our backpack.

We had a private 1st class cabin...until the couple from CT showed up...but that is okay because they were really interesting, funny, and told us to just walk from the train to our hotel. Which was a real help because we were totally freaked about the taxis after reading Rick Steves' warnings.

It was a nice ride throught he countryside and the couple that joined us in Dresden had a lot of stories to tell us...and they pointed out things along the way from their guided tours the day before.

Arriving in Prague was really easy...the station was very nice and modern. We felt very safe, and even lined up to get cash from the ATM. The money is pretty, but in huge denominations. For instance, it would have been 300 Koruns for the taxi ride. but we did the 20 minute walk rolling our bags behind us for free....which is good because we spent it on our most delicious dinner ever! It was 7,500 Koruns!

We love our hotel. The young woman that checked us in was warm, professional, and very good looking with tight clothing...just ask the guys about that one. Our rooms are European size (cozy) but elegant and they have Michael's favorite soaps, L'Occitane.

We were starving so we thought we'd have a quick meal before our night tour. Well we walked in to the casual pub like place for some traditional Czech food....we walked out because they were all smoking. We went to the next place, and well....it turned out to be one of those places that take 3 plus hours and have 11 courses! We asked them if they could go only 3 courses and get us out in an hour, they said yes, but it didn't go quite that way.

We missed our tour, but we called them later and it's all going to work out even better for us. We made friends with the other diners as they came in and really rocked the house....much to the chagrin of the wait staff!

Let's just say that we really spent a lot of money...but it is not a crime to be good to yourself!

Got to go...we're all hovering over the computer looking at all of Megan & Jason's wedding photos!

Berlin - Potsdam day

Our soup lunch...delicious....
We've seen a few of these hot dog vendors. They carry the whole thing, including the umbrella, attached to their bodies. The dog w/bun is 2 Euro.

Two handsome old dudes we think we'll keep

Last night in Berlin

We're trying to get up to date since our internet connections have been so poor:


So tonight we went French and had the most delicious dinner yet. We were exhausted from our big tour to Potsdam and long walk back to the hotel, so we just went down the block for dinner. We started out with wine for the guys and water (without bubbles) for everyone. Along with a basket of perfect bread.

Then we had salads.....with sheep cheese (very mild) and chopped tomatoes (almost like a salsa) and Dave had grilled goat cheese on little breads.

For the main course the guys had filet mignon with match stick potatoes, and the girls had sole with the most wonderful spinach (it had vinegar and perhaps butter)....oh, and the girls ate most of the guys potatoes.

Salad with sheep cheese



Fabulous dinner and then we leave for Prague in the morning

Berlin - Tours, etc.

We've been on three tours. The first day we went on a city tour which was awesome. Mostly because we had the best tour guide ever.....Machine Gun Mike from New Zealand. He has several degrees in history and is married to a woman that lived in the former East. His father-in-law was jailed for being in the Stassi and his mother-in-law pines for the days of socialism. He brought an understanding to the human side of what Berlin has been through.

We drove a Trabi car for an hour which was like an E ticket ride. And then today we went on a tour to Potsdam and the summer palace of Frederick the Great.

Potsdam is in the East and you can see the old, gray, and delapidated homes that have yet to the renovated next to the lovely "newer" homes. And all this is very recent since the wall just went down in 1989.

After we got dropped off from bus tour to Potsdam, we walked around the area, found a soup place and a toilet (we have a great technique to using toilets for free), and then walked over 4 miles back to the hotel. We did walk through the bad part of town....through the hookers (it's legal in Germany)...I guess that's part of the tourist experience.