The Czech Republic and into Scandenevia

Mark joined us in Prague, as did the entire rest of Europe it seemed. Here we are for 3 months, and we chose Prague as a place for Mark to join up with us for 5 days, not realizing it was the biggest weekend of the year in that city. It was the 4-day May day weekend, and the entire continent apparantly decided to go to the Czech Republic. We could only find a place to stay for the first two nights, which we thought would be o.k. to see the city. But it was so jam-packed the lines to get into Prague Castle were hours long. Then it took us an hour to walk across the bridge over the river jammed completely with people, and we decided to make a quick bolt for the countryside. We found a charming little not-overly touristed town. It was an old silver mining town in the medieval era so had beautiful architecture and churches from its hay-day. We were able to go for a tour of the old mine, and explore around the countryside. On Sunday, when the crowd had thinned considerably we went back into Prague and saw the sights there. We especially enjoyed all the marrionette puppets everywhere. It is a national art form in the Czech Republic, with puppet shops all over. Marshall got several and we went to see Mozzart's "Don Giovanni." done with marrionettes. It was in Italian, but had enough action and funny bits to keep us entertained even if we didn't always know exactly what was going on.
Mark left on Monday late afternoon, and we started heading across Germany. We had a deadline to get to Finland, and had to make tracks, so I drove until 2:30 in the morning. I saw alot of wildlife that night near the Czech-German border: enourmous rabbitts, deer, a bear and a fox. The next day we drove more through Germany until hopping on a ferry which took us into Denmark. We drove through Denmark into Sweden where we spent a few delightful days. The boys have Swedish anscestory on their father's side, which pleases Chase who is very interested in Viking history. We saw a recreated Viking village, an old castle, a million sheep, windmills, and the town where Astrid Lindgren (author of Pippi Longstocking and some of my other favorite children's books) grew up.
Today we are on a 12-hour ferry boat ride into Finland. It's a beautiful cruise by hundreds of little islands....some of the prettiest water I've ever cruised through. The ship is large and comfortable with a great smorgasboard restaurant, shops, cinema, casino. So it's a really relaxing day after all the daily travel and exploring we've been doing for the past month.
On that note....I think I'll head on back out to the deck and the view, and catch up more later. Mijke

---

---