Prague

Another lovely, lovely city. I'm afraid that even though to me all these places feel distinct now, the pictures are all starting to look exactly the same. There are definitely similar themes running through the history of these Central European cities, but if you're reading this blog and thinking it's all the same and each place is not worth a visit, that's my fault! They're all incredible places worth seeing in their own right! And Prague is yet another....

That photo above is of the Old Town Square, the heart of the city, showing Prague's famous astrological clock on the left. Every hour the area in front of the clock is SWAMPED with tourists filming the clock's chiming. The first time I saw it I was watching the clock itself intently. But the second time I was there on the turn of an hour, I noticed how hilarious and remarkable it looked, a few hundred tourists all filming it on their phones. We people are so ridiculous.

But, then, I STILL had a hard time not taking a picture every time we turned a corner, because GOSH is it picturesque!

In a crazy coincidence, a friend of a friend of mine from New York just happened to be in Prague the first night we arrived, and by total serendipity we found out we were in the same city for one evening, so we met up and he taught my mom and me to use the boomerang feature of Instagram. Big deal for us!

On a walking tour, we got to visit the old Jewish Quarter, which in its current iteration has been revitalized as a primo shopping area and has some of the highest rents in the city. But when most of it was demolished from the slum it had become by the end of communism, the city did at least preserve a select group of buildings, including 5 synogagues, one of which is this one: the oldest (800 years old) still-active synagogue in Europe.

We went to more lovely, atmospheric cafes...



...and got to visit the catacombs beneath a building that housed alchemy labs back in the day.

We also took a chocolate-making class, which was crazy fun.

And delicious take-homes!

And we toured the Prague Castle complex, which is the largest in Europe. A few shots from that side of the city...

(The blue house, #22, on the left, was Franz Kafka's abode on Golden Lane for a while.)

And we swung by the amazingly graffiti'd John Lennon wall.

And were happy to see the city look even more beautiful at night.

The days and cities are flying by! Tomorrow we move on to yet another new country. I'll let you guess till the next post....