3 Days in the Czech Republic - Part 1

Last month while the grandparents were visiting, Mr. Bloomsbury and I got to take a trip without the small children. It had been a long time since the two of us had a weekend away, and we were very appreciative. We left early in the morning and blasted off down the autobahn in our black beauty.

We didn't have much time invested in planning this trip, but at least I had a Lonely Planet guide and a hotel reservation. Our style for travel is mainly sightseeing during the day and a nice meal for dinner in the evening. Walking is our preferred mode of transportation, and Prague did not disappoint.

We left our car with the valet at the hotel, who promised our car would be safe. "So far, so good!" he told us. Um, not extremely reassuring, but what else are you going to do?

Our walk around town took us past the main touristy spots:

Streets of Prague

View of Prague from the Hradĉany Castle.

St. Vitus Cathedral within the castle

Another view of St. Vitus Cathedral

Castle guard

The cathedral within the castle

Charles Bridge over the Vltava River

Church of Our Lady before Tyn

Astronomical Clock

The next day, we decided we'd hire a tour guide to take us around and tell us about the city. The city is rich with history. I was so glad to have had this experience to enrich our visit.

We learned the Astronomical Clock was first installed in 1410. A clock older than America's discovery! The details are amazingly accurate showing the position of the sun and the moon in the sky and how much daylight there will be.

Next stop was the Charles Bridge, named after King Charles, their beloved king who commenced the construction of the bridge in 1357. The bridge connects Hradĉany Castle to the Old Town on the opposite side of the river. Now just a pedestrian bridge, it is a very popular place for tourists. The bridge is decorated with many statues, some of them with very interesting stories.

King Charles

Entrance to the Charles Bridge from the Old Town side

View of the castle on top of the hill

These three women were martyrs for the Christian faith.

This is Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary

Crucifix statue. The gold Hebrew letters were added in the 1600s as a punishment to a local Jew who was accused of blasphemy. He was ordered to raise funds form the Jewish Quarter to pay for the gold letters. The text reads, "Holy Holy Holy, Lord of Hosts."

Another view of the castle on the hill

Our tour guide also led us through the Jewish Quarter. It's no longer the cramped space of the ghetto it once was, but there are still remnants of the history of the community with several synagogues and an old cemetery.

A Clock with numbers in Hebrew

Our walking tour concluded at a café that was once frequented by Albert Einstein!

An old photo of Café Louvre

One of the fun, but touristy things to do is Prague is to visit a beer spa. A beer spa is where you basically take a bath in beer while drinking it. The hops and yeast are supposed to be good for your skin. We were unsuccessful in completing this mission because we hadn't made a reservation. Boo.

Prague is a beautiful city, said to be the Paris of central Europe. It's beauty is attributed to not having been completely destroyed during World War II. And the food was delicious. We ate mainly French and Italian. Aside from the crowds of people, tons of souvenir shops, and the street performers, we truly enjoyed our visit.

I've seen a lot of street performers, but never this!

One last shot of the castle during the sunset

 

3 Days in Amsterdam

While the family was visiting last month, we took a three-day trip to Amsterdam.

The most convenient and easy way to travel by far is by train, unless, of course, the train companies are striking, which they often do here. We bought tickets months in advance and watched the Deutschbahn strike and re-strike. However, things seemed to be smoothed out in time for our travel.

This is how we travel.

We left the house before 6:00 a.m. and walked to the train station. Since our tickets had already been purchased, all we had to do was find our platform, car, and seats. There were seven of us, and our seats were four facing each other with a table in the middle, either side of the aisle. This was very convenient for eating our breakfast and playing Uno with the small children.

Our train ride took us through the Rhine River Gorge, passing majestic castles, romantic vineyards, and quaint villages. The tracks took us past all the same places we go when we drive this way by car, but with a different view from the large windows of the train.

Only two connections and four hours later, we arrived in Centraal Station, Amsterdam. From there, we crossed the street to the bus office to buy passes for the weekend. Then we caught our tram, which took us to a stop right in front of the apartment we rented, Villa Kuijper, just on the edge of the central city. 

Villa Kuijper - the top two floors our apartment, the bottom floor a café/bar.

We met the owner of the building, which once belonged to his uncle. Built in 1880, his family lived there until they decided to renovate and rent it to families for short stays.

We've found the people in The Netherlands to be very friendly and able to speak English very well. This man was no exception. He greeted us warmly and shook our hands as we introduced ourselves. He then unlocked the very tall door and led us up a very steep staircase. The steps were so steep, it was almost like climbing a ladder. 

A view of the stairs looking up from the bottom.

A view of the stairs from the top looking down.

Once inside, he showed us around the two-floor apartment, which was very beautifully decorated and modern. We were starving, so he recommended the café/bar that was located in the bottom floor of the building. 

The living room

After some food and a rest, we took a city canal cruise. It was raining, but the boat had cover and we enjoyed seeing some of the city's highlights. A narrative in English was available though the complimentary earbuds. Our friend living in the UK, who decided to fly over and join us for the weekend, arrived late that evening.
 

Canal view form the boat

Some of the many house boats on the canal

Bridge over a canal

First thing the next morning, we set out for a breakfast place Mr. B and I had eaten at on a previous trip. However, that place didn't open so we searched the neighborhood until we found a different place. This delay put us in a bit of a time crunch because we had pre-purchased tickets to the Anne Frank House, which is preferable to standing in a long line. 

The line for the Anne Frank House

We made our booking and were able to skip the long line already forming. We opted to take the small children to the Anne Frank House because we learned the only graphic photos are at the end of the tour and it was possible to bypass that exhibit. Prior to the trip, we purchased a kid's story of Anne Frank for the small children so that they could understand who she was and why we were looking at her house.

 

We solemnly walked nearly single file through the unfurnished rooms of the house where the Frank family lived in hiding for more than 2 years. Reading snippets of her diary, it revealed the story of the Frank family against the backdrop of world history. The older of our two kids really enjoyed the museum.


The remainder of our time in Amsterdam was spent walking. Amsterdam is a crowded city with more people on bicycles than in cars. Walking is not a passive activity, especially for the wandering tourist. You've got to constantly be aware of where you're walking, whether you're in a bike-only lane or safely on the pedestrian sidewalk.

I took lots of pictures of the funny crooked houses.

 

 

Good burgers here!

We had dinner at the famous Upstairs Pancake House, located in a 16th century home with another nearly vertical staircase. There's only seating for 14 people, but the pancakes are delicious!

Upstairs Pancake House

The stairs going up to the restaurant

A side view of the stairs so that you can see their steepness.

Their pancakes are famous for a reason!

We bought cheese. Pounds of cheese to bring back with us. Dutch farm cheese is made from pure unpasteurized milk. 

And that's about it. The next morning, we has breakfast at the downstairs café, meandered a bit longer though the streets, and then caught our train home.

Pretty Dang Hot

I hesitated writing this post because I didn't want to sound whiney. But the fact is, we just endured a major weather event and I'd like to share what it was like. Well, it was pretty dang hot.

I've lived in some hot weather places: Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. I know what it is to get into an oven-like car and be able to actually smell the hotness. However, I've never experienced heat like this. There are no air-conditioners in Germany, and, because of this, there is no escape from the heat.

In a five-day-long record-breaking heatwave, Germany's all-time heat record was shattered with temperatures topping out at 104 degrees. In our city, we had three days of 90-degree weather followed by two 100-degree days, each day getting progressively hotter. It was so hot, the highways (autobahns) were rupturing and causing "blow-ups" or wave-like ripples on the surface.

101 is hot.

The German's approach to the torridness is to open all the windows during the cool early morning hours, and then close everything up at precisely the right moment before the temperature outside exceeds the temperature inside.

When they close up, they really mean it. Many homes here have rolladens on the windows. Rolladens are like rolling shutters on the outsides of the windows, and they provide shade and insulation against the heat. The nicer ones are mechanically controlled from the inside of the home. 

Notice the rolladens on most of the windows. Looks like the town has boarded up, but they're just preparing for the heat.

Our apartment does not have rolladens. When we moved in, we noticed some mini-blind type shades installed on the outside of the windows, but their pulley systems had long been rusted into place. In my desperate attempt to provide some relief to our sweltering conditions, I discovered that the shades on the smaller windows had pulley systems on the inside so they were still operational. 

Here are the mini-blinds on the outsides of our small windows.

Though they are not as nice as rolladens, they have provided some shade and insulation.

To survive our long hot days, I would get up around 6:00 to start closing the windows and shades on the sunny side of the building. The sun rises at 4:00, so by 6:00 the sun is already blazing. Our living room and bedroom have big windows without the outside shades so I closed the windows, the inside blinds, and the doors of the rooms, closing them off completely from the rest of the house. The other rooms had all the layers - outside blinds, windows, and inside blinds - closed up and so dark that we felt like we were living in a cave. In fact, it reminded me of how we lived through hurricanes - in the dark with boarded up windows. 

These are our big windows in our living room. This room and our bedroom are very exposed to the heat.

The first couple of days, this system seemed to work pretty well. It would get stuffy inside, but we carried our two fans with us from room to room to keep the air moving. But then the evenings didn't cool off enough to provide any relief so that when we woke up it was already sweltering. The nice cool bricks of our building had finally started holding in all the heat, turning our little apartment into an oven.

The heat became oppressive. We couldn't put the children to bed until after 9:00 when the sun went behind a building and we could open their window. And still it was in the 90s at 10:00 p.m. We would get up in the morning, get as much done as we could until we just couldn't do anything anymore. Then we'd nap in front of the fans until we'd all wake up a sweaty mess. I gave up cooking and we ate cold food: salads, sandwiches, fruit. We made lemonade and ate Popsicles. We took cold showers. 

One afternoon we took everyone to a local pool. It was actually pleasant out beside the Rhine River eating a picnic dinner under the shade of a tree. The pool was packed with Germans, all seeking respite from the heat: swimming, eating, sleeping, playing cards, reading, and playing Ping-Pong in the shade. In America, you would never see this amount of people outside in heat like that day. Americans would all be inside sitting (heck, me included!). Here, I felt a sense of community, like "Hey, we're all hot. Let's make the best of it."

We celebrated the Fourth of July at a friend's house, sitting in the shade as best we could, sweating profusely. All the kids blissfully splashing in a tiny plastic inflatable pool and eating popsicles. A small thunderstorm passed close enough for us to see about six drops of rain, but still no relief from the heat.

By the last day, it was unbearable. We fled the house by 3:00 and went to Mr. B's office. His small department has air conditioning. With bags packed with snacks and quiet activities, we waited out the heat as long as we could. At 7:00 p.m., it was still 102 degrees. After we got home and started opening everything up, a wild wind storm whipped up and started dropping the temps. Finally some relief!

Be sure to remind me of this when it's winter and I haven't seen the sun for 4 months.