Full Day touring Prague

No church today. Scott and Kris got the address but it was about 45 minutes to get there. Scott slept in and stayed in the hotel rather than join the rest of us to tour. We met “Katrina” who was our local Czech guide. We toured the Castle district, where the Defenestration of a couple of Hungarian policians were. We walked through some old building and my favorite was the Golden Lane. We were given 30 minutes to stroll and shop on our own. Cathi and I went into an armory which was fantastic. She quickly left me alone and went with the girls. I walked through this building which appeared to be an old castle. Inside was all sorts of armor and weapons that were simply amazing. You could buy some of it, but it was really expensive ($600 - $10,000) depending on what you were looking at). I could have stayed in there for hours, so much cool armor! But I had to hurry back to the meeting place. Check out the full photo album here.

At the meeting place off to the side was an old dungeon and execution place. There was a sculpture of a guy kneeling down with a huge skull on his back. We waited at the wall next to the sculpture for the women to finish their shopping. Katrina gave us the “30 minute limit” to enable us to better stay on schedule for the tour. However Cathi, Becky and Roceil were stuck browsing and buying "junk" as Bill would tease them with. They ran out of money and had to go convince Bill to hand over his American Express. He did reluctantly ( or playfully) while they spent an additional 15 minutes getting some manger scenes for everyone. Katrina was obviously annoyed at the delay.

We continued on and had lunch in a nice restaurant. They served all sorts of cheese and roles, with cole slaw. Bill Jr seems to constantly turn his nose up at nearly half the stuff placed in front of him. Bill Sr. offered Bill Jr $100 to eat a slice of bleu cheese. My heck how tough is that! He ended up doing it only after taking a tiny nibble and then taking a bite of a roll or drinking some water. That made me laugh. Michele was trying to get a similar deal for a picture which was for sale on the wall, but Bill ran out of cash.

When desert came around everyone gobbled it down, in fact Cathi ate mine as well as somebody else’s who was trying to watch the deserts. Vonda cracked me up when she pointed out to Bill, “Hungry enough to eat the whole desert though huh?” Busted!

We continued touring and saw many buildings along the Moldova river. One of the most spectacular buildings was the Cathedral. I took a ton of pictures of it. The details outside were unbelievable! You need to check out the full photo album of Prague here.

We stopped at the Old Town Square were there was an astronomical clock. We were there at 20 minutes to the hour and waiting until the clock chimed at the top of the hour. There were figurines of the 12 apostles walking past the windows which opened at the top of the clock. It was built clear back in 1410. (When I got back and talked to Glenn Brown about the trip he told me about the myth about how the clock maker was blinded after making it). Don't know if I believe that. No entry in snopes, but it is definitely not confirmed.)

We then were given about an hour to walk around and shop. I was tired of walking and Cathi was still mad at me for being grumpy. I was grumpy cause I had to use the bathroom, but was unable to find one. So I just walked behind her like and let her look around and shop. She bought some more magnets. On the way back I could take no more. I had to poo so bad! Again, no free bathrooms. So I went into a McDonalds and bought Cathi a McFreeze so I could use the bathroom, but then discovered that they even make customers pay to use the restroom! I was so ticked. I went and got change for a coin and paid. I sat down in the stall and tried to figure out how to use the lock on the stall door. It was different from what I was used to. Nobody else was in there so I decided to just let it go.

That was a mistake because within a minute an old guy with a scruffy beard came in and opened my stall and saw me and quickly shut it and took off. I had to laugh. I be that gave him a good scare. I held the door handle to prevent it from opening until I was done.

When I met up with Cathi we started making our way back to the statue at the old town square. We got lost a little. The signs had the names of things in czech, with a small drawing of the landmark next to it. I recognized the drawing of the astronomical clock and we found our way back just in time to hit the time we were supposed to be there. We walked several blocks to our bus where we met with Zoly. We went back to the hotel and crashed.

For dinner we went to a pub/restaurant called the U Fleku Restaurant. There was an old guy there playing the accordian that sure made the evening fun. Here is some video of that.