Blogs from Malá Strana, Prague, Czech Republic, Europe - page 3

I saved the Jewish Quarter for when my aunt, Cynthia and her friend, Anne came! So, it was their first day in Prague. They just arrived last night. We met at Malostranska and walked across the bridge. I showed them my academic building on the way to the Jewish quarter and they were pretty impressed. We all got tickets to see six sights of the Jewish Quarter museum... They were kind of expensive- 300 crowns each, but I got the student discount :) We saw the cemetery where over a quarter million Jews were buried in a grave yard smaller than a soccer field. They apparently were buried on top of each other because they weren't aloud any more land for living or to bury the dead. Next, we saw the Spanish synagogue. It was very ... read more

This morning I went for a training run (I finally didn’t slack off). I started out by going over the Charles Bridge and running what I thought was a semi-planned route around the city. It felt strange because my typically sound sense of direction seemed off. After a few miles I tried to get my bearings and was totally lost. I kept running. Eventually I came upon this huge tower. It was a TV tower. I was completely in the opposite direction from where I thought I was. That’s strange. I don’t remember crossing another bridge to get here. With my bearings set, I navigated myself back to Old Town to get to my hostel. Nothing there was looking at all like the area where my hostel was. Then it hit me. You idiot. Charles Bridge ... read more

Praha, Česká Republika, Aug. 4th - 9th, 2009 After spending several weeks staying with Dan's wonderful aunt, it was inevitable that we would have to return to the hostel life. When we arrived in Prague and started walking towards the Chili Hostel we quickly realized that Prague is like no other city we have seen so far. Most of our days in Prague were spent exploring this enchanting city. Every street we turned down was like a new fairytale waiting to be discovered. For centuries Prague has been nicknamed as the “city of a hundred spires” and "Zlatá Praha" or Golden Prague - it truly is a glittering jewel of art and architecture nestled at the center of Europe. Held captive by communism for 40 years, Prague has emerged as one of Europe's most beautiful ... read more

Wow, where did the last three months go? Oh that's right - we had a baby! Good bye normality (if that's what you could call these last 2 years since we moved to Prague). But anyway, we're thrilled to officially blog-troduce you to Dahlia May Toovey - our little spring flower. Hang on, we're getting ahead of ourselves... Rewind to the end of winter (our coldest since being here), and Anth's 30th birthday - TRAM PARTY here we come! Ok, explanation warranted - there's this historical tram (complete with fat controller!) you can hire that drives round the city for functions. It's normally reserved for tourists, but we're kinda like long term tourists and it's actually much cooler than it sounds so far . They have it renovated, and the fat controller(!) serves drinks and snacks ... read more

Our last and final day in Prague. We decided to take a tour to Kutna Hora which is about 70 miles from Prague. It is one of the oldest towns and used to be a huge silver mining town at one time with a population greater than Prague’s. Now it is a small town of 20,000. Probably the main reason that people go there is to see the Ossuary. Kutna Hora lost thousands of people to the Black Plague and the cemetery ran out of room. They excavated 40,000 graves and invited some famous artist guy (sorry don’t remember the name) to come and “do something” with the bones since they were literally just piled inside of the church. What he did was pretty amazing and cool. As you will see in the pics, he decorated ... read more