Day 9-Turista Praha

After yesterday's emotional and quite draining day I had the morning off to regroup and write some posts and look at pictures and think about what I had seen, felt and experienced.
I'm glad I took the time. I truly needed it.

Refreshed Vlasta came home at noon with some traditional Czech donut type pastries. These were fresh and yummy and were just the ticket to give me energy to go! The donut is like our "jelly" donut but the filling is quite tart; of course it was fantastic!

Energy to burn now I ventured off to the metro to head downtown to the Old Town and seek out my Czech hockey jersey and other tourist things. The weather here, again, is lovely, actually quite hot! The temp was 22 degrees when I left and when I got out of the metro at St. Wensceslas Square it was at least 30! Wow, hot! Millions of people and from all over the world. I heard languages from the United Nations. I had such a great time being a tourist!
I wandered through some amazing streets of the Old Town and found, among other places the Jerusalem Synagogue. Unbelievable colours and so ornate. I hadn't seen it on any tourist map, but I found it!

Jerusalem Synagogue

Once I found the sports store where they sold hockey jerseys I had the best time finding the right one. I know, I know everyone must think it's totally weird to find this item but it's something on my bucket list and something I've wanted for YEARS. Got it!

Purchase in hand I headed off to find my other touristy things. I had fun looking in different stores and from what you might think there are not as many "tourist trap" stores around. They are hiding in little streets that you never expect to see. Then "poof" one appears that attracts you.
So I found one and had a great time looking at stuff. More purchases in hand I headed off to find the country jewel, garnet, in settings that I knew would make me know it would be the right one!

One of the first stores I went to was more high end and the pieces were quite expensive and they didn't give me a chance to even haggle a bit! I left there and wandered around some a couple of other streets and found a little one just behind the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, just off the Old Town Square. The lady there, Marika, was lovely and explained, in English, where the garnets were mined and how they were mined and what a good colour is. Two pieces jumped out at me and after a little discussion we came to an agreed price. I have to quickly calculate out what the Canadian equivalent would be by dividing by 20, the exchange today is 1 Canadian dollar is 17.5 Czech Krona. Happy I moved into the chaos and heat of Old Town square.

Decorated and alive with the preparation for Easter weekend Old Town square was simply a sea of people enjoying the sights, sounds and smells (so much food, so little time) of a truly amazing place. There were many little booths selling everything from decorated easter eggs (yup, got some) to typical touristy magnets and stuff like that. There were many food booths as well. A typical snack is a tdliky, this doughy, spiral, cinnamon, sugar, nut and caramel treat is really neat. The dough is wrapped around a large diameter pole and spun around in hot oil. Really good!

Of course I was enjoying myself!

Once done with my touring I descended into the metro again to head back to the apartment.
Vlasta, Mirek and Petr were heading to the mountain apartment for the weekend and I was going to Tomas and Jana's for dinner and to the Kuchar family cottage for the weekend on Saturday morning.

Tomas and Jana have a lovely large apartment (condo) that is actually two apartments that have been joined into one. When their two children lived at home it would be quite spacious in Prague terms but now with the two of them it's very large! Jana, who works in a bank here, had prepared for us a lovely meal and they have the neatest table top grill that cooked our meal right in front of us and it was hot to the plate. So cool! Kind of like fondue but flat! Very neat.

We had a nice visit, Jana, receiving translation from Tomas, added her comments too.
Tomas presented me with a lovely, quirky momento of Dad rowing. It's a piece of a boat with the rowing club shield and two pictures of Dad on it. One rowing and one wearing some weird bathing suit. It was very funny to look at. I gave them t-shirts and a scarf and mitts with the Canada Olympic symbols on them. Jana loved the maple leaf mitts.

So tomorrow we are off to South Bohemia for some Czech Republic Cottage living.

Ciao!