Beautiful Prague

Our European trip of a lifetime is over and the photos are uploaded to dropbox so now how do I put my impressions into words, besides Wow!

I won’t try to write too much but just a little to put some of the images into context. You really need to go see all these wonderful sights for yourselves though.

Our transatlantic flight from Denver took us to Frankfurt Germany then another flight landed us in Prague which has a nice modern airport. A shuttle took us into town to our hotel in the heart of the old town area. We ventured out briefly after arriving took the standard photo of the street and the streetcars then slept for eleven hours. We had two days to roam on our own before the Tauck tour started.

Day two took us around old town and across the famous Charles Bridge and back. It was warm and apparently the first summery day of the season so everyone was out enjoying the weather. The bridge is a pedestrian only one and had swarms of tourists and street artists and musicians.

Day three took us again into old town wandering around some of the side streets and going in shops. If you get off the main tourist streets it can be very quiet and peaceful just a block away. We also had arranged with the concierge for Steve to see a dentist as he had broken off his front tooth cap eating a hard roll. Yikes! The American dentist was very nice and he took care of Steve over his lunch hour. We then ventured across the Vltava River on a different bridge and took a funicular (like a rail road up a hill) to the Petrine Park for a view of the castle and the city. We enjoyed the view from the tower high on the hill then walked down the very steep pathways back down through the wooded park and made it back just in time to dress and go to the opening reception for the tour held in the ballroom of the castle/palace grounds. In the grand dining room we had a formal dinner and were entertained by a string quartet.  It was magical.

Day four we went by tour bus back to the castle grounds to tour with a local guide. She has a PhD in microbiology and had been a researcher in the communist era stuck in a lab but now loves her job taking people on tours and telling them the history of her city. In the afternoon we took another tour of a communism museum and learned about the Velvet Revolution in 1989 when the Berlin wall fell and the communist countries of Eastern Europe gained their freedom.

The next morning we climbed onto tour buses leaving Prague for Regensburg, Germany where we toured the old town for an afternoon before boarding the Swiss Sapphire to start the river cruise portion of the trip.