Final Days in Prague
As we approach the last few weeks of our tour we are all doing rather well, although we are each a bit tired in our own way. It has been an awesome experience, but a tiring one none the less. For the past two days we have found our way to the final few sites we wanted to see in Prague. We did a 3 hour tour of Prague Castle yesterday, but as our tour guide Filip told us, it’s really not a castle. Prague Castle is more a collection of buildings and mansions than it is a castle. In the middle of the castle is the St. Vitus Basilica, which we saw last week, but this time we got all the history behind the buildings. We got to meet a bunch of new people on the tour, two different couples from Australia, a family of 5 from Colorado and more. Filip was probably one of the better tour guides we have had as he was energetic, very knowledgeable and funny.
We finished the tour a bit after 6 pm and we had tickets to a black light show at 8:30. Earlier in our stay we had lunch at a restaurant that Noah couldn’t find anything on the menu to eat. So, I took him around the corner to a hole in the wall to get a quesadilla. On our walk we passed this restaurant that sold raw fish and also had a few tables and a full kitchen that cooked the fish right there. It looked really interesting, so I told Ilise about it and she was excited to try it out. We found the restaurant and picked out a nice piece of salmon, a portion of which they sliced up as sashimi and the rest they broiled for us. The sashimi came out and it was delicious. Drew and Noah both tried it and liked it.
When the broiled fish arrived the added grilled vegetables, potatoes and a salad. The meal was absolutely awesome! As Ilise and I have said, we haven’t had a bad meal yet here in Prague. We have eaten in the countryside and in the city and all the food has been great. We also had some great ice cream here as well as some great breads. It seems like the Czech’s really know how to cook and bake! As for the black light show after dinner, I’d rather not talk about that. It was one of the least enjoyable experiences we have had on this whole trip. I can easily say that the opera was infinitely better than this show!
During our stay in Prague I enjoyed playing tennis four times. I haven’t played tennis since we left San Diego, and it took me a bit to get my timing back, but I loved getting back on the court. It just reinforced my desire to get back to playing sports on a more regular basis back in CA. In order to do that I need to be kinder to my body. That includes eating better and stretching so that I don’t pull muscles. Every time I started to get into a good rhythm over the past few years I would get hurt or I would have a spurt of travel. The pulled muscles were probably because I never stretched before or after playing. I have started a daily stretching routine that should help with that.
Tomorrow we are on our way to Berlin, through Dresden. It should be a two hour drive to Dresden and then another two hours to Berlin. We will probably spend a couple of hours in Dresden to split up the trip. We have a bunch of plans in Berlin, including some walking tours and a Rotary meeting. We have tickets to go to the top of the financial building next Tuesday which has some great views of the city. I also believe that we will have some more downtime as we have 10 days there. If there’s one lesson that we have learned over this 4 months of travel is that we can’t be tourists every day, even if we want to.
To a life well lived!
Larry Kesslin 