Prague

First of all, we LOVED Prague!  I'm not sure if it was the "no kids" or just the fun we had with great friends.  It's a beautiful city and the people are so nice.  The food was amazing and the beer cheap!  Can't get much better than that!  So thanks to my wonderful mom for keeping the kids (not an easy thing to do...4 kids, different country, and not wanting to drive anywhere), Mike and I finally got to take our first European adventure ALONE!!  I hope we have a few more to come...:)

We got into the city and settled in at about dinner time.  Our friends Allison and Scott were going to join us.  We met up and walked to a pub that was in a basement, recommended by our hotel staff.  By the way, we also LOVED our hotel!!  We have never had such great service.  The room was huge and even had an apple TV in it....that's definitely new for a Euro hotel.  The hotel was gorgeous, food great, and location even better.  It's been the best hotel, by far, that we've stayed in in Europe...pretty close to any hotel in the states as well.
Anyways, we ate at this great pub.  The food was fantastic and we had great service.  We didn't even have to ask for a beer, they just kept bringing them to us!  After a while, I knew why this place was popular.  The "weather" girls were on TV doing their "forecast" while.....taking off their clothes!!  By the end they were completely, yes totally, naked!!!  There was a local sitting beside me and I asked him if this was normal, he looked at me like I was crazy and said "of course."  Wow!  That's all I could say.

My friend Allison with our "receipt."  I think we added a few more beers after this, but the bill was literally like 60 euros...cheap!!  After this we headed to a dance club that had like five floors.  Yes, it was raunchy but we haven't been to a good dance club that played great American music for a long time.

The next morning, ok it was like 11:00 or noon (no kids!!), we decided to walk around the city.  Our hotel was close to Charles Bridge where we took this pic.

Gorgeous couple...Allison and Scott

This is the tower at the end of Charles Bridge heading back towards our hotel.

Just taking in the sites

Old Town Square

Church of Our Lady before Tyn

Street Performers

We had an awesome lunch, can you tell???  The ham was amazing and the other dish (gnocchi, ham, and kraut) was good too.  We got way too much though!  There were actually men around going through the trash and asking for money, Mike offered them our leftovers and they happily took them.

The ham cooking..it smelled so good!

Then we had some of this yummy goodness!

SOOOO GOOD!!!

I'm a total dork in this pic but it was funny.  There is a sort of sex museum in Prague and you can go into the first part without paying..kind of like the wax museums.  We got to see a few interesting things, including this love meter.  You sit in the chair and it tests your "abilities."  As you can see, I was rated as FROZEN!  Hahaha...(four kids!!!)  You can see Mike in the mirror taking the pic and Scott giving a good chuckle at my situation.

I was so excited to finally do a segway tour!  Way too difficult to try with kids for sure.  We got to practice a little and I guess it was easy, I just don't like not having control like I couldn't just put my foot down to stop.  That's the main reason I don't like to ski either.  We start the tour and it was fine, then Scott's segway battery dies.  We wait for a while for him to get a replacement but then a couple other ones die too.  Eventually we had to stop the tour because it was freezing and we were getting too far from home base to keep taking segways back and forth.  I was actually fine with it...it was so cold and I wasn't all that comfortable on the segway.  We got our money back and I still got the experience!  We also thought Allison had a dead finger!  When she took her gloves off, her finger was completely yellow and she couldn't feel it.  I was a tad worried, it just looked like a dead person's finger.  After we warmed up it finally came back to life...sheesh!

We look like total dorks

We did get to see the John Lennon wall.  Hard to take pics while my hands are freezing and I'm on a moving object.

After our segway adventure, we had dinner reservations at an American steakhouse.  All the "steaks" in Europe are usually always bad, so we were skeptical.  When I made the reservation I asked for the private room, just to see if we would get it. And we did!  It was a beautiful room to say the least.  We, again, had marvelous service and the food was DELICIOUS!  It was a great time!

We had to rub the brass stars, that mark the spot where St john was thrown in the river, so we could make a wish!

The next morning Mike and I were on our own, Allison and Scott were headed to Germany.  We wanted to walk around a bit more and go to the Jewish Quarter and SHOP! Well, I wanted to shop :)

Prague's Astronomical Clock...it's the third oldest in the world and the oldest that still works.

The Old New Synagogue-Europe's oldest active synagogue.  We were allowed to enter the synagogue and they gave yarmulkes to all the men before they went in.

Pinkas Synagogue...this is a memorial to the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia who were murdered by the Nazis

The walls inside the synagogue are all covered with the name of each murdered Jew, their personal data, and the community from which they came.  80,000 of them!  My pics are bad bc I wasn't supposed to take any....BUT Rick Steves says its kind of ok because no one will say anything to you :)

It was heartbreaking and even more so were the children's drawings that they had found and were in glass upstairs.

Old Jewish Cemetery dating back to 1439.  Jews were not suppose to destroy any Jewish grave sites or remove any tombstones.  So when they ran out of space, and couldn't afford to buy more, layers of new soil were placed on existing graves and the old tombstones were taken out and placed on the new layer.  That is why these tombstones are so close together.  This cemetery has 12 layers of graves, over 12,000 tombstones, and 100,000 burials.

We found a Hooters!!!  Yum!!



That day it rained the whole time, by the time we walked back to the hotel from Hooters in the pouring rain, I was worn out.  So, we were lame and stayed in with a movie and room service for the evening.  The next day it was time to head home and save Gran!  We had a fab time in Prague!  I'd love to go back but with so many countries to visit over here, it's hard to go somewhere more than once...but I have and I may again!