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.

Photos and Such

Sorry we haven't been blogging with any semblance of regularity - I've been too distracted by being in Prague to take the time to write about it! But do not fret, gentle reader, for I will do my best to inform you of what we have done since our last post.

(As I've said before, you can see some of our pictures here, however I've reached my monthly upload limit and can't post anything else until July 1. So instead, I'll post some photos here!)

We spent today at the Praha Zoo with Veronika, which was quite fun. I'll admit my expectations were not high, since I've never been a huge fan of zoos, but this place was quite nice. It is by far the most gigantic zoo I've ever seen, and even has a chairlift to transport patrons up a big hill. On the hillside, they have a neat mountain goat exhibit complete with craggy rockslopes, as well as an exhibit of North American elk and deer (they looked rather familiar). It was such a big place that we only saw a fraction of it, but we had a lovely time nevertheless. I really liked getting to spend more time with Veronika, too; although she's kind of quiet, I really like talking to her and learning more about Czech culture. Her hometown of Mělnik sounds really interesting, and hearing about it makes me want to see a few of the smaller towns outside of Prague.

The zoo had a free photo kiosk. We used it!

And more pictures!

Czech ice cream is unbelievably delicious, and generally not as expensive as American ice cream. Hooray!

This is a view of the Vltava River from the walls of Vysehrad, the ancient castle/fortress of Prague. Beautiful place. We happened to wander over there last week, and were astounded by it's beauty and massive fortress walls.

Dining with the Hare Krishna in Staré Město. So inexpensive, so delicious! We've had a lot of interesting foods here, and a number of them haven't been traditional Czech. Don't get me wrong -- Czech food is delicious, but we want to try everything while we're here! Actually, we even went to an Afgan restaurant in Nové Město the other day, and it was great.

We thought this sign was funny. I assume whoever designed it was unaware of the American euphemistic term "Sausage Fest."

This is the National Museum, located at the far end of Wenceslaw Square. We got to go there for free yesterday because it was Prague Museum Night, an annual event where all of the city's museums are open free of charge and there are special events going on until 01:00 am. It was really crowded and tiring, but absolutely fantastic! In addition to the National Museum, we also got to see the tower at Karlov Most (Charles Bridge) and the Museum of Music. The museums in Prague are amazing, and it was cool to see all of the different people who came out to Museum Night. It looked like the majority of people in the crowd were actually locals, which makes me thing Praguers are quite cultured indeed.

I surreptitiously took this photo while KC was photographing the National Museum. Note his adorably ridiculous facial expression, if you will.

We went hiking in Divoka Šarka yesterday, which is a great public park on the Northwestern edge of the city. 

Limestone cliffs overlooking a vast green valley.

And said green valley. So gorgeous.

I don't think blogger will let me put any more pictures in this post, so I will add more in a subsequent post. The past week has been fantastic, exciting, and exhausting. We've had a few difficulties with the language (yesterday KC and I somehow managed to get yelled at in Czech not once but twice, which was extremely awkward and embarrassing), but on the whole things are going quite well.

Also, if you are expecting a postcard from me, it might be significantly delayed or may not arrive at all. Turns out I was using incorrect postage for international mail - oh no! I'm trying to send out replacement postcards to everyone, but it may take a while so be patient.

Also also, a note on the blogs new tagline: in case you haven't already noticed, the tagline for this blog is now something like "live in hot fat and deleted the pelvis." This is Google's hilariously inaccurate translation of some all-Czech instructions on a package of palačinky mix KC and I attempted to cook. Palačinky is quite a difficult thing to make, and it's pretty safe to say we failed miserably.