I had such fond memories of Prague and the Czech. I was actually here in 2005 one year almost to the day of my baby brothers passing. That time I was here on a mission trip and met some amazing people. This time no mission just fun & education. Mandi and I have enjoyed the free tours and tour guides. The things we get to learn about the city and the culture is great. We have been to two different kinds of free tours one group has tour guides from different places like the US and Australia and the other only uses locals. I prefer the one with the locals because they are patriotic, they love their city and they have an understanding of their culture a foreigner could not understand. The other tours are good don't get me wrong but Americans have a pride about them, again don't get me wrong I am proud to be an American (and Texan), but the history they give is more like reading a script. The locals tour from their experience/culture and give personal suggestions on where to eat and drink that is cheep and good. For example, our guide Klara gave us three restaurants to go to and told us if the place has smoking permitted it is Czech with local prices. She also told us if we have a hang-over in the Czech the locals say I have a "monkey" instead of a hang-over, we saw the guide a week later and Mandy told her she had a small "monkey," Klara loved it. Prague was still as beautiful as I remember it. Since we were there for a week we were able to see and photograph a lot as you can see from the post. I will try harder to keep that up to date. Thankfully since it is winter here there were not a lot of tourist but it is cold. I know I have lost my mind when I am happy it is 40 degrees outside. I am happy to say I found Mulled wine, yummy. Annie (from VA) good call on the wine add a few scoops of sugar and grrr. I will have to confess when you told us about it before we left I thought you said "mold" wine. That did not sound to good to be honest. :) The buildings here are amazing and the original town of Prague was covered over and the new(er) town built on top because of flooding. We could have gone down to see it but it cost and since we are saving what we can we avoid anywhere it costs to go into. If we had unlimited funds we could but we are still staying here till March so we must be wise.:) The Charles Bridge was fun to go over however I remember more musicians from before. I did miss the palace last time and we saw it twice, once in the day and once at night. We also saw the John Lennon wall and the Love Bridge (with many locks). There were also horses with earmuffs, you must know it is cold if you have to put earmuffs on a horse. We also saw the Jewish quarter and learned before the war there were about 35000 Jews and now 3000 or less. They had a memorial set up with drawings from children (so Klara said) who believed they were still going home and they were just at summer camp. Klara said it is very sad and be prepared if we paid to go in it is very difficult to see. We again opted not to go because of the fee and we were not sure we could recover after Klara's warning. We were also told that before the war Jews were required to wear a yellow hat (almost looked like a Micky Mouse hat from back in the day) to separate them and it may have been where Hitler got his idea for the yellow stars (FYI: did you know when the Jews had to register to get their stars they had to pay for them?) Our last day, we decided to make our last walk around and I actually had a lady "hiss" at me, very strange but I prayed and asked the Lord to be with her then we went on our way. All in all I still enjoy Prague and will continue to have fond memories of it.
Lots of love from between countries,
Ana
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