Prague highlights

While my nephew & his wife were visiting us from the U.S., we decided to use our 4-day Labour and Ascension Day holiday weekend to travel to Prague with them. DD#1 didn't come with us, as she stayed home to study for the upcoming AP exams. The rest of us had a great time, however, on this weekend excursion.

We started the trip early on Thursday morning, driving the northern route to Czech so we could stop at the concentration camp Terezin on the way. As Americans, we knew nothing about Terezin before researching it for this trip. It was fascinating to see how the Nazis used this entire ancient town as a work camp, although Terezin was not a death camp. After lunch in a traditional Czech sidewalk cafe, we toured the museum in the center of town, learning more about the numbers of Jews who were relocated to Terezin, but then sent by train from Terezin to Auschwitz and many other death camps. After the museum, we drove to the Small Fortress, visited the cemetery and the prison. Our guide showed us the horrid conditions in which suffered the resistance fighters, Czech military, and other political prisoners of the time. Most outrageous for me was the way in which Terezin was use as a propoganda machine by the Nazis, pretending that the town was more a summer camp than a work camp and that the prison was decent and humane, in an effort to hide their atrocities.

We got into our hotel in Prague in time for dinner in a fun local pub on Thursday night, after dh & my nephew had a ridiculous time parking the car at our hotel. Friday morning, we met our guide and another family of friends from Frankfurt, for a 4-hour walking tour of Prague. We definitely recommend hiring a guide, as it's a beautiful city and has many fascinating sights, but would be tough to cover in a short time on your own. We saw the Dancing House, walked the incredibly crowded Charles Bridge (we don't recommend it while it's still under construction), saw the astronomical clock and ended up in a traditional Czech restaurant in Old Town for lunch. Dh really enjoyed the Czech food - lots of goulash, meat, sauces, potatoes, dumplings, and beer - but there wasn't as much for dd#2, the vegetarian. During the afternoon, we strolled the streets of the Old Town area, visited a street market and did some shopping, winding our way back to the river, a stop at a pub and then back to the hotel. We were tired from all our walking, so we ordered in pizza and played a hotly contested game of Charades late into the evening.

Saturday morning, our tour guide met the 6 of us back at the hotel for another 4-hour tour. We started the day on the street car, going directly to the top of Castle Town. The Prague Castle is enormous and is really a series of huge buildings, rather than one large one. The crowds were incredible, but so was the weather, so we didn't mind a bit. We went in the treasurey but not the cathedral and ended up in the Senate and the beautiful gardens there. Our tour guide made sure to get us to our chosen lunch spot - TGIFridays - where we all thoroughly enjoyed a welcome taste of home. I don't know why we don't have TGIFridays in Frankfurt. After lunch, we did some more shopping and made our way to Wenceslas Square. From there, we walked back to our hotel, did a little food shopping, and then headed out later for dinner in a Mexican restaurant. We had an early night, as Sunday was an early morning for the drive back to Frankfurt and then delivering Steve & Alissa at the airport for their flight to the U.S.

Prague is a beautiful city with incredible building and a long history. It's also an incredibly affordable city, even though hotel rooms are sparce and not inexpensive. When you're outside of the most expensive, tourist places, shopping and dining is incredibly cheap. It was fascinating for me to see how so much of our tour guide's commentary was colored by her feelings of and reflections on the communist rule, the legacy of the Nazis, and, as with so many Europeans, the current politics. We both felt that Prague would be a comfortable city for an American expat, as the people were very friendly, everything is so inexpensive, and English was everywhere, at least in the center of the city. The countryside in and around Prague is lovely, with rolling hills and fields. All-in-all, it was a great trip and a very different kind of place than we've seen in our other travels, so definitely a good choice for our long weekend travels.