Prague

Prague is a fairy tale city.  It is fairy tale pretty, with the most beautiful architecture you can imagine and large fabulous statues everywhere you look, and a beautiful boat filled river running through it with castles and cathedrals sprinkled liberally about.

It is also full of marionette's in all the fairly tale themes (Pinnochio, Snow White, etc) with an emphasis we noticed on the evil characters.

This shot is for Sue

Adding to our enjoyment is the fact that we are having unbelievable weather.  Today is October 1st and the high here will be in the 70's - very unusual for this part of the world.  Consequently it is very crowded, mostly with German's who have a holiday weekend, but the St. Charles bridge is filled with people from around the world of every size, color and language.   The train/bus (we thought it was all train but at Nurnberg they kicked us out and put us on a bus) trip had fabulous scenery.

Bye bye Frankfurt

 This is what we spend a lot of time doing

 Nurnberg, Germany

Our time here is too brief, based only on the fact that the wonderful apartment I found (for half price because he had a partial week open) was available for only 3 short nights.  Besides being romantically pretty, the flat sits in the best part of the city and overlooks the river.  It certainly did not disappoint.  Seriously - if you go to Prague (and you should definitely go to Prague) you should stay here.  Even at full price I think it beats any hotel room room in the city.  Email me for contact info.

That is the famous St. Charles bridge out our window!

Shot from our window

So I have heard a lot of comments about how we are not really "roughing it" as originally advertised, and I must admit that is absolutely true.  I can't really say we are roughing it at all.  Except perhaps that we walk a lot instead of taking all those cute little trams and boats and horses with buggies, or even taxis for the most part - oh and also that I'm desperately in need of a pedicure, salon visit etc.  Other than that, we eat less than we would normally and buy less stuff, but that is really all just an improvement over life at home.  My expectations of this trip prior to the start were based primarily on how I traveled in Europe during and just after college.  This trip has turned out to be (thankfully) quite a bit different.  First, we are staying in top notch accommodations, coming in for the most part under $150 per night.  Second we are finding that still leaves us enough to eat out at least one meal per day and also throw in occasional extras.

In Prague I talked the family into a classical concert in the the fabulously beautiful St. Nicholas church.  It was performed on the cathedral's ancient organ and accompanied by trumpet and included the Passacaglia and Schubert's Ave Maria.  I thought it was worth every penny, but Mark and the kids would have preferred a swan paddle boat on the river.  Oh well.

Mark and the kids also "splurged" on a medieval torture museum, which I decided to skip.  When I asked Wilder what he learned, he said it was that chastity belts were real (no pics sorry).

So my family, while complaining only mildly (in good humor I think) about how nice our accommodations have been, are protesting quite loudly about the "travel" clothing I had them purchase and bring.  Peyton has been steadily replacing her expensive quick dry sporto items with denim and cotton ones like we left at home.  Mark is threatening to do the same.  It turns out our nice apartments and villas are coming equipped with washing machines, and we are staying in most places long enough to get even the thickest cotton items dry (dryers are rare.)  Even the (ugly) travel shoes are proving to be the wrong choice for the kids, as looking cool is apparently more important when you are a teenager than having comfortable feet.  I guess that should have come as no surprise.

Next stop Budapest, Hungary.