reasons not to see the museum of torture

our last day in prague was phenomenal. we visited the schloss (no, this does not refer to a part of the male anatomy) rather it is the german word for castle. we meandered through the city, making a 40 minute stop for coffee.....getting the check in czech is not easy. And finally ended up stopping at the museum of torture. this 'museum', is to say the least, disturbing and specifically designed for tourists. The three floor building houses replicas of some of the most widely used torture devises used in europe, with corresponding drawings and written descriptions in about 12 languages.

i wanted to vomit, dan on the other hand took pictures :)

not to say the museum is all bad.... you leave with certain hope that at least humanity has somewhat progressed since the middle ages. however, i don't think it is possible to leave without a certain feeling of revulsion of the thought of what people are capable of doing to one another.

anyway...back to the schloss. so we climbed up to the palace, which is still a working palace for the government, so much of it is not available to tourists. the church from the 13th century is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful in europe. it was breathtaking. it was only off-putting by the Japanese tour group in front of us and the german tour occurring behind us. tours can be a fantastic way to learn about the history of a location, but it is hard to feel the sanctuary of a church with chatty people in all directions. not to mention, japanese tourists really enjoying taking pictures. i kept seeing flashes every time i turned around!

after the church dan and I sat in the courtyard on a bench for a while, to simply digest the day. It was beautiful to sit in the shadow of this famous church as the sun went down behind us. moments like this one always seem to give me reverence for how wonderful europe is. there is no place in the world like it. i felt lucky to be able to share such a powerful moment with daniel. sorry.... reminiscing is making me somewhat cheesy.

on our way down, we took some goofy pictures and just had a great time. dan jumped up on the rampart wall ...I was convinced, with all his grace, he was going to fall over the other side. good thing he did not, because the fall was considerable and when my friends sarah's bf fell off a wall, well..... it did nothing good for their relationship! we also met a really funny guy from iceland. he was wearing a t-shirt in 40 degree weather and looked like he could bench a volkswagen bus.

that night we had our last dinner in europe (except the one in the munich airport, which frankly does not count). it was the perfect end to our trip. Read more...

one fine day in prague

dan and i woke up early after our first extaordinarily uneventful night in prague. because our train did not get into the station until 10:45 pm the night before we ended up staying in a hotel WAY outside the city. After gettting completely ripped off for a taxi to our hotel, we made our way out onto the streets to have a look at the city. note: residential prague is not all that exciting. we never did find a place to go have a drink, so we eneded up buying a bottle of wine and drinking about half a glass in our room.

however, yesteday we did make the most of the city. we are still located on the outskirts which means our daily walk into the the old part of Prague is about 30 minutes, it is not so bad going in (as it is all down-hill) but coming back is another story. After a day of walking around and taking in the sites, we decided to take a tour in conjunction with a boat tour down the vltava. my original thought was it would be terribly romantic, a lovely dinner down the river complete with drinks.

however,it did not exactly work that way. first there were too many people on the tour, so there was not enough room on the bus. So we were moved to a regular van in the back seat for our initial tour of the city. the problem with this scenario was that you could not see anything which the guide was talking about! after about 20 minutes of this, i fell asleep on dan's shoulder. finally we get to the boat and embarked down the river. we missed all of the really beautiful parts right in the beginning becuase the guide was making us pay for the tour. Our romantic meal was a bit spoiled by the fact that our wacky vidal sasoon haired guide came to sit with us. He reminded me of prince charming from shrek.....he was quite taken with himself and his flowing blond locks. Dan had a complete laughing break down watching him eat a banana. the entire situtation was ridiculous.

so, to paint the scene, we are in a fairly small boat no longer than 24 feet long to 12 feet wide. we dock and this old man with an accordion gets on. he sits directly across from us and starts playing. immediately, we lose all ability to hear each other and all we can hear is the accordion. so we made a brief appearance on top of the ship, where it was about 30 degrees until I could not take the cold and we went back down. the rest of the boat ride consisted of us moving up and down until we could no longer stand it. i was so ready for the boat to dock at the end, i considered jumping off and swimming to shore!

all in all prague was wonderful and we have another day in front of us. funny stories like this one make the memories hilarious to remember. Read more...