Originally, I was planning to just add the pictures and link directly without further comment, but when I was looking through the pictures and referring to my journal for more information, I got all excited again and thought I should write a few more things about our trip. I won’t chronicle the whole thing, but I want to at least make sense of the pictures for you.

On day one, we went to Prague Castle, and that’s where we first learned about defenestration. Yes, indeed. A word neither of us had heard previously and which has the wonderful and abundently useful meaning of “The act of being thrown out of a window.” In Prague, the nobles and such fell into the habit of defenstrating each other in various moments of glory, one of which ends in the defenestratee landing - through the intervention of good-humoured angels - safely in the heap of dung below. That started the 30 Years War.

Also in Prague Castle, we visited St. Vitus Cathedral. It had some of the most amazing stained glass we had ever seen before, and it also had budgers. What kind of person cuts in line to get into a CHURCH? Such is European travel, it would seem.

That night, due to some clever forward-thinking by Andy, we went to see Tosca at the State Opera. It was amazing. The singing was fablous, the hall was beautiful, and the spectacle was completely over-the-top and wonderful. We decided that we should go to the opera more often. Prague has a thriving and almost intrusive business around classical music concerts, and we did manage to find another one before we left; this one was Dvorak’s New World Symphony (we were in a Dvoraky mood after going to his museum, where we also decided that we would like to have a frescoed ceiling) and took place in the Municipal House, another gorgeously ornate building in town.

In the Old Town Square, there is an astronomical clock, which is very special because it does things. It is very old, and it indicates not just the time, but the date and some other things, too. More interestingly, it has all sorts of little folks on it that move around and doing interesting things when it strikes. The most interesting thing about the clock from our perspective, though, is the fact that whenever it strikes, people crowd around to watch it. They start showing up about 45 minutes early, and they stand on the street expectently to watch the clock do its thing. When we were there, the crowds literally filled the entire street and sidewalk for about a football field in length. When the clock does its thing, the people gasp and smile, talk to their friends, frantically take pictures, and then ultimately look a smidge disappointed, as the clock may be a bit overhyped. It’s interesting, but it might not be worth a 45-minute stand around. Anyway we stood under the clock and took pictures of people watching the clock, because we thought that was much more entertaining than the clock itself.

That’s all you need to know to make sense of the pictures I think, but also worth noting was a yummy confectionary that we managed to eat several times during our weekend away. It’s basically dough rapped around something that looks like a metal rolling pin. It spins around over a fire until it’s cooked, but more importantly, it is dipped in this wonderful cinammon, sugar, vanilla and walnut concoction that basically should be a larger part of all meals everywhere. DEEEElicious.

Enjoy the pictures!