Prague Day 35

Well I had thought the architecture in Dublin was worth a look, but Prague completely blew my mind. What a stunningly beautiful city. Building upon building of beautifully carved and crafted stonework, endless cobbled streets, 10th and 12th century churches at every corner, the lazy Vlatva river winding its way through the city with decorated with bridges studded with statues and monuments, and Prague castle looking down serenely on it all. Just fabulous.

Martin and I alone in a city on honeymoon - how terribly romantic! We wined and dined in style in cobbled courtyards and squares taking life very slowly whilst swigging Czech beer and taking the odd photo. Martin to date has had an eating experience in each destination - tofu in Hong Kong, potatoes in Dublin and here in Prague it was smazene syr - or fried cheese. This comes in many guises - deep fried bread crumbed brie or edam or sometimes just unidentified cheese. He had this religiously twice a day for the entire 5 days - a record I think! One happy man though...

When not eating we wandered around the city being the tourists that we are. We walked for miles, listened to a Dvorak piano duet played by two sisters in the town hall on Wencelas square, went to museums, parks and millions of churches (I am sure I was having a spiritual moment or two). We visited the most disturbing modern art gallery I have ever been in - in fact I had to leave as I was so overwhelmed - it was like seeing Edward Munch's The Scream in hundreds of different forms on every wall - bizarre - does this reflect the czech psyche I wonder? Surely not as the people we met were great and the young women beautiful - the receptionist in our hotel especially, who Martin positively drooled over and wanted me to take a picture of her (a souvenir perhaps?)

Martin has been a fan of all things Czech for as long as I can remember and has visited here in the past so he acted as guide, informant and interpreter. We did spend a long time searching for (non-existant) Skoda hats so he could proclaim his fervour to the world! (In fact in the UK Skodas have printed on the back of the car - "It's a Skoda, honest!") Martin assured me that the word for please was "prosseme" (my spelling) and thank you was "auchst bleef" (my spelling - pronounced kind of like roast beef). So we were merrily becoming bilingual until I realised that no-one was responding to Martin's auchst bleefs at all. I finally plucked up the courage to ask the beautiful receptionist (yes while Martin drooled behind me) and she told us that please was indeed "prosseme" and that thank you was "de-kew-yay". Oops Martin had been speaking dutch all along - no wonder no-one understood him!

So that was Prague. It was lovely being without the children but we missed them both terribly and were keen to get home - strange really...