So Many Things, So Little Time

It's been a while, and a lot has happened so I'll talk about the little tidbits that stuck out in my mind. Picture uploading has been a slow process, so maybe more will get uploaded later? I dunno.

Hanging out with Veronika has been a rewarding experience. She's still a little shy but I think (hope) she's waring up to us, and can tell us things no guide book can. When we went to Troja chateau, she told us about how most bourgeois buildings survived the Communist era, but fell into severe disrepair as no one took care of them. When we were in the zoo, she translated signs and bits of random conversation around the zoo for us. We saw a group of ducklings walking across one of the paths between ponds, and a young Czech boy pointed at the ducks and loudly accused them of being spies. I wonder if all the dialogue we're missing is that awesome.

The day after that, we went to Kutna Hora. It's a small mining town outside of Prague, and it was full of interesting buildings. Our first stop was the Sedlec Ossuary, which was a building just outside of town decorated with the remains of 40,000 plague victims. It was kind of unsettling in there, but still a very cool experience. We walked through town a bit, and emerged by the Saint Barbara cathedral. This church has the same style roof as Denver International Airport, but it was designed and built in the early 17th century. It was amazing in there. But what was nicest about Kutna Hora, in my mind at least, was being in a smaller town and just soaking in the surrounding countryside. There were gorgeous views in every direction, the air was fresh, and we only ever ran into one large group of tourists.

Yesterday we woke up bright and early to head to Budapest by train. There is a lot to be said for train travel. It takes longer that flying, but it is really laid back, and wonderful to be able to stretch out and walk around the train cars. We passed through Slovakia, which was gorgeous, and we both agreed that visiting Bratislava might be a very worthy expenditure of time. Another nice feature of trains is you get to see wonderful things out the window. We saw this gigantic, incredible-looking basilica named Esztergom that we would have never discovered had we not looked out the window, and there's a pretty good chance we're going to spend Saturday there.

So here we are in Budapest, and I've finally alost caught up with the blog. This city is so awesome, and I feel like I've used that word a million times so far but I'm running out of words to describe this trip as the experience it is. The roofs on some of the older buildings here have multi-colored shingles on the to create patterns, and the effect is really nice. It makes otherwise grand buildings look just superb. We spent most of today in the castle district, looking at pretty buildings and walking up truly epic numbers of stairs. We walked around for close to seven hours, and we've still only scratched the surface of this city. We're going to do a whole lot more exploring tomorrow.

Oh man the food here is so good! We went to a Turkish place for lunch, and got gigantic volumes of high-quality food for really cheap. I got this spicy chicken that had what looked like half a cauliflower plant on top of it, covered in sauce and it came with a full plate of turkish rice, which is delicious enough on its own. Then, for dinner we went to a place down the street from our hotel and got arguably the best meal I've had in a long time. I got some homemade matzo ball soup, had an elderflower soda, with apple rhubarb pie topped with ginger and elderberry for dessert. Yesterday, we got ice cream, and the server shaped the scoops into the shape of roses (hard to explain - pictures to come). My expectations have been completely shattered.

So sorry for rambling, but there's been a lot to blog about and I've been too busy to write anything before now. There is still so much to talk about, but I didn't want to overwhelm you with a gigantic wall of text, or a more gigantic wall of text anyway. Suffice to say, this trip has been one of, if not the most rewarding experiences of my life.