Loving Praha in spite of Praha's best efforts

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I'm surprised and impressed that LG is having any fun in Prague at all. It's been cold, windy, and raining hard since we arrived... utterly miserable for sightseeing. And still overrun with tourists. We can't even have the fail to ourselves.

Yesterday, we got stuck in a rainstorm while standing in the queue to get into the Katedrála svatého Víta, Václava a Vojtěcha (great big cathedral of some holy dudes) in Praský hrad (Prague Castle). No rain gear of any kind. I don't even remember there being a queue when Drea & I were here in 2005 and no way was I going to step out of it over a little rain. Ugh. We were wet, cold, miserable, and generally extremely Catholic by the time we got inside the doors.

The Katedrála is worth it, though. Last time I visited this place, I was incredibly frustrated by the low-light no-flash photography, almost all of mine of which came out "artistically" blurry. I had this specific cathedral in mind when I bought my latest camera with a teensy bit of computerized image stabilization. I think it helped a lot!

(Today I found out the other cathedral I had in mind when selecting this camera has apparently entirely banned photography inside sometime between 2005 and now. If I sneak around and take a few, without flash of course, anyway, and the cathedral guy doesn't notice, do you think God will mind?)

Anyway, back at the hrad (castle), I made the executive decision that rain ponchos would be more economical and easier to use than an umbrella, so we bought basically hooded trash bags to wear for the rest of the day. Sometimes travel requires practicality over any sort of fashion sense whatsoever... but the matching yellow Weeble suits really were pushing it, even for me. We wobbled (and didn't fall down) in the company of hundreds of other fashion criminals while we toured the hrad (castle) and Staré Město (old town center), but out in the suburbs the full awfulness of the ponchos was quite apparent. When Slavs are staring, you know you must look really bad.

Also, the ponchos sucked any time we wanted to go into a building... we flung water everywhere and snagged on things and couldn't figure out what to do with wet trash bags when we took them off.

Today, with the heavy rain even heavier and forecast all day, I made the executive decision to wobble into the Nové Město (new town) to see whether any department stores had any umbrellas left. We found cheery Bennetton ones at Debenham's (isn't that a British store?), discarded our ponchos with a hearty "na shledanou!" and were on our way. As expected, umbrella-wrangling and photography don't mix well, but then neither do constant heavy rain and photography, so maybe it doesn't matter.

Here in Prague, we've been following a meal plan of moderate breakfast, big hot lunch, sweet afternoon snack, and light snacky supper. It works really well with what's convenient for tourists at the various times of day. Today, we found a traditional/touristy restaurant serving 3-course lunches of soup, hearty Czech entrée, coffee and dessert. I had wonderful goulash and LG had her favorite: meat.

The rest of today's meals were another big success, I think... we stopped at a grocery store inside one of the Metro (subway) stations in town and picked up sliced salami, sliced cheese, rolls, butter, beverages and Corny (tasty granola-like) bars to take back to our hotel for dinner later, and each picked an ice cream bar to eat on the way back for our afternoon snack. If my math is right, and it may very well not be, we paid less than US$15 for the entire haul.

Our hotel loves us, by the way... they literally were installing WLAN (wireless internet) the day we arrived, and it works in our room! Plus, we have satellite TV, including a bunch of Olympic Games stuff on Eurosport, which we also watched in Dresden but are now receiving in our choice of English or Czech versions. Occasionally the text on the screen is still in German, though.

Speaking of German, I'm utterly tickled to report that LG has picked up a few German words which she uses without even thinking about them: Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and Imbiß (fast food) are the two I hear most often. Also, today, she very cutely asked me to open her soda bottle for her "prosím bitte?" ("please" in Czech and German). I had no idea she was even listening to Czech, much less picking up a word in it!

Also speaking of speaking German, I keep blurting out "bitte" and "danke" to cashiers and waitstaff here in Prague instead of "prosím" and "děkuji". Even LG rolls her eyes when I do it now. My brain feels like the Sudetenland, with German and Czech battling for dominance. (I am almost certain that neither Germans nor Czechs will find that funny, either.)

In conclusion: we're exhausted, the weather sucks, we're ready to come home, we miss our families & pets, our brains are goulash, but Prague is still amazing enough to impress even under all these unfavorable conditions, and we're very glad we hung in the extra 5 days to make it happen!

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Photos

Queue of fail
This is pre-us-buying-any-rain-gear-whatsoever...

Weeble suits
Yes, we look awesome.

Praha in rain
Hard not to love this place. And we would know.