Prague is beautiful!

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August 26th- Today, we had a lie in (sleep in) at least a little bit.  We both needed a few extra winks today. By the time we got our breakfast and got our the door, it was 10am.  (A side note about the Hotel Davinci beds... Mom loves them. To me, they feel like you are lying on a piece of plywood.) We headed immediately for the Castle side of the river. We started at a Franciscan Monastery and wondered thru several churches on our the way to the Castle. Once at the Castle, we purchased a ticket to go into several of the Castle buildings, including the Old Royal Palace, St. Vittas Cathedral, and The Golden Lane. We took a few hours and took a gawk at these buildings. I was able to grab some nice snaps off the balconies of the Old Royal Palace.  After the castle, we decided to go to the Furstenburg Castle Gardens, which were cascading down the side of the hill. We saw tons of fruit trees and roses. The setup of this garden was a series of connecting paths with terraces.... which made you feel like you were the only one in the garden. We loved the leisurely walk down the hill. Next up.... it was time for our dose of religion. Another St.Nicholas Church and then St.Mary of the Sorrows, which included the Infant of Prague shrine which is  like Las Vegas for Catholics. We said some prayers and then decided to have dinner halfway up the hill on our way to the Eiffel Tower Like lookout. This involved riding a funicular up the side of the  hill. We made it to the station and then realized we had no Czech coins. (A side note about buying subway tickets. At first we thought it was cute that they only took Czech coins in the machines, but by day 3, we figured out that it is really just a racket to get you to buy more items. If you don't have enough change, you go to the local corner shop and buy something to get enough coins. This was something we weren't used to at all. All of the other subways on these trip have taken actual bills. When we asked Blanca about it, she said that of course it makes sense to have ticket machines that would take bills, but it will probably be another 10 years before we get them. Her exact words were "Czech's are slow and don't like change". ) So after a walk to find change, we purchased our tickets and made our way half way up the hill for our dinner stop. There were only two restaurants on the hill, and we were disappointed when the first one was closed for a wedding.....although my mom did say she wanted to try to crash a wedding on this trip!! We made our way to the other restaurant and picked a table with a  lovely view of the entire city. As this was our last night in Prague (using Czech crowns)... we were trying to budget our cash so that we wouldn't have to make another withdrawal. We assumed we could use a credit card for dinner... WRONG!! So that lead to a budget discussion before dinner. We each have 400 crowns to spend (~$20). The menu was a bit dear, but we managed to make due and  had a wonderful dinner overlooking the city. With our energy restored, we headed up the hill and climbed the replica eiffel tower which gave us beautiful night views of the entire area. At the top we had to jockey for position, in order to get the best window for photos. Mom was able to muscle a few folks out of the way, so I could get the best shots. It was a perfect ending to our time in Prague.... we rode the tram home (with a  cute dog) and tucked in to bed.

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