Road Trip - Day 4 (Prague)

Road Trip – Day 4 (Prague)

I feel as though the words and pictures that I am capable of could not capture the spark that we saw in the kids’ eyes today as we explored Prague nor adequately express how beautiful this city is. This city has truly cast a spell on us. So, I will leave much of the detailing of our day to the many, many pictures that I took along with accompanying descriptions. Brace yourself, there are a lot.

The entry way of our hotel. I am in love with the exposed beams that were throughout the entire hotel.

The next batch are photos from the little exploration that we did on our way to the castle. LOVE these streets. They are beautiful.

The view from outside the castle wall. Otherwise known as 'Morning in Prague' :).

I don't know why, but I was heavily intrigued by the fact that someone ingeniously hung their laundry on the roof between the chimneys. I clearly need to get out more.

Jason and I sneaking into a couple photos.

Doesn't the glow around Jason's face look awesome!? One very handsome man with a Heavenly glow :).

The enchanting and engaging band that played outside the castle gates.

Heading in the castle gates. (A bit of history; Prague castle is one of the best preserved historical castles in the world. It is the full deal inside the castle walls, fancy royal lodgings, armories, a cathedral, market squares etc. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and it is STUNNING!)

The main square in the castle.

Heading through the passage and wondering what exactly everyone is gawking at...

Oh, this. The Cathedral against a perfect blue sky. Yep, that's worth gawking. We joined the gawking and took photos. I just want to note, this photo is untouched. It really is that crazy imposing.

We headed inside to continue gawking.

The stain glass windows were truly breathtaking. My life clearly needs to be adorned with more stain glass windows. The detail was incredible. We all picked our favorites. This was the winner for most detail (it's a tad blurry, sorry, it was difficult to stay steady with such a low shutter speed for the light.)

Every time we thought we had hit our gawking limit we would turn another corner and be taken away by another breath taking stain glass, intricate carvings or beautiful instruments. Atticus nearly fell off Jason's shoulders with his eyes constantly turned upward to see everything.

And it's a good thing that Milayla was securely in the wrap because she spent the majority of the time like this:

Needless to say; we were all extremely enamored  We've been in a lot of cathedrals since our start in Europe and this one is certainly near the top of the list (if not the top) for ones that we have been inside.

I have absolutely zero idea what this door is, but everyone else was stopping to take a picture so I did to. And because I continued the picture chain, everyone behind me stopped to take a picture too :). If nothing else, it's a pretty nice door.

We came back down the other side of the cathedral at the perfect time because we got to see the cathedral bathed in colorful light from the windows. It was stunning.

A pretty picture spot :). Please note Milayla, who is not awkwardly asleep, she is staring (sometimes without blinking...) wildly at the light pouring in. I think, if it's possible, she loved it more than the rest of us!

Then we headed back out into the courtyard and around the cathedral.

And into the royal lodgings. Unfortunately, there are only a couple photos on the entry hall as there were no photos allowed elsewhere. But be assured, it had everything a royal could ever want, a school room, large bed chambers, room to throw majestic balls, plenty of jewels and crowns and a thrown to sit in and listen to the people of the village. Yep, it was a pretty chill place. I'm rather in love with the roof that was echoed through most of the building.

Now, I cannot remember what this next building was, but Atticus declared it his favorite building and requested numerous photos in front of it. How could I resist such a willing subject?

Jason helped him find a place to stand.

And then the ear-to-ear smile commenced.

What a handsome boy!

Then the kids were glued to the guards that were walking passed. 

And then we headed inside Atticus' favorite building.

After being inside, Atticus declared it still his favorite and requested a photo down the side street of the building.

See that group of tourists behind Atticus? They had just stopped and taken pictures of Atticus in his pose for the previous picture because they just couldn't believe how cute he was. We had plenty of tourists taking photos of both the kids. It was interesting. The kids were pretty patient with it though; Milayla would usually point at the most interesting thing in her field of few and chat to them and Atticus would stretch a smile across his face. 

Then it was down the village street which had some lovely (albeit, verrrrry touristy) shops on it.

And into the armoury. Which had walls lined with various kinds of armour, weaponry, lookouts and toilets. Yep, toilets. Of the ancient form, of course. 

And then we stumbled upon the dungeons. They had plenty of torture items down there that I could not bring myself to take a picture of (I know, I'm a wimp). In my mind I always viewed dungeons as something fictional, but no, they were very, very real. I was pretty glad that Milayla had fallen asleep by this point.

And with that lovely note, we enjoyed one last view from the castle walls,

took a family photo,

And headed down the hill.

And with that, Charles Bridge was in our view.

We headed across the bridge to the north of Charles bridge and began exploring

The astrological clock is one of the things to see in the city. We had all the little statues and marks explained to us in the afternoon on our walking tour, but in truth, I've forgotten most of it :).

Below, are Jason and the kids in front of the Powder Tower, named such because this is where the gun powder used to be kept. Creative naming at it's best. Just around the corner from the Powder Tower is a ginormous mall that I very horribly dragged everyone into. Now, none of us like malls, or shopping for that matter. If I could buy everything online, I would. But....this mall had a Marks and Spencer and I had Christmas pajamas for Milayla on my mind and knew I would find the perfect pair in there. And I did. However, the 30 minutes it took us to find the store, locate the kids section, find pajamas, purchase them and get out of there was definitely not a high light of our trip. Needless to say, we recovered with a tasty lunch.

For dessert (because every holiday lunch should have a dessert) we had one of our few indulgances on our entire trip and enjoyed a street food called Trdelnik. Imagine a cinnamon bun dough wrapped around a metal rod (though, historically, it should be a wooden rod coated in butter...) and rolled in ground almond, cinnamon and sugar then cooked over hot coals. The result is a very soft, sugary dough with a slightly smokey flavour. It was pretty tasty. I'm glad we chose this to indulge in.

Then it was time for our walking tour. Many of the sites we saw were much the same as we had already seen before lunch, but it was nice to learn a load of history behind it all. Like the Estate Theatre, where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni.

And Wenceles Square. Yes, this is the same Wenceles that the song is about.

Very surprisingly, the kiddos (particularly Milayla) who were completely exhausted by this point would not fall asleep. They were completely and totally hanging on every word of the tour guide. We were pretty impressed by how intently they listened and even looked around at the the things the tour guide was talking about. 

Milayla's facila expressions had to be the best part of it all though, as she would give him the look below every time we told a joke. 

She very clearly did not find him funny. 

Unfortunately, we were not able to stay for the entire walking tour, but we were pretty excited about the things we did get to see.

the white crosses on the ground are to remember some folks that died. I know there is a lot more to that story...

Apparently this building is in a lot of movies. We had not seen a single one of the movies that were listed though. I really don't feel like we were missing out, though.

This is the Prague Bank where they keep all the gold - seriously. It used to be kept in the attic in the castle on the hill which is why Prague is called the Golden City but it was moved to the bank for higher security. 

There were a couple more stops on the tour (like an eerie church with ghost stories aplenty) and then we parted ways, grabbed some dinner for the road and made our way toward Charles Bridge.

We journeyed across Charles Bridge, snapped some more photos, checked out all the artists work, listened to some musicians and rubbed a piece of metal for good luck. I would seriously like to know where some of these traditions (like rubbing something for good luck) come from. Who starts them? And why do they stick? Oh right, it's because tourists like us shamelessly do these things to take pictures :).

As we stepped off the Charles Bridge it was only a few more blocks to our hotel so we took a few more photos to remember this beautiful city.

that's Prague Castle up on the hill

The end of the day came far sooner than we could have imagined and it was time to load the car up and begin the drive to Vienna. Sadly, we had to miss meeting with a school friend of Jason who lives in Prague as we had to leave before he was able to depart work (perhaps next time). The drive to Vienna was easy and relaxing as we talked about the day then listened to a session of conference and, after the kids succumbed to their need for sleep, Jason and I were left to ponder upon the day and the session of General Conference together. It was a good chat primarily focused on building a strong family and raising confident children (Elder Bednar’s talk about the difference of having a testimony of the gospel of Christ and being converted to the Gospel of Christ was a particular inspiration. I just want to express how grateful I am for technology that we can listen to all these profound gospel messages so easily and quickly. It's an incredible blessing; especially as we try to navigate our way through parenthood. ). We outlined principles that we will put into practice immediately in an effort to apply our best towards proactive parenting. This parenting thing is certainly something that I feel we are always needing to constantly learn and readjust our approach on and I feel very fortunate to have a spouse who is always at my side for this constantly changing journey. And, boy, are we fortunate to have a couple of kids that are patient and fun-loving with us as we learn the ropes. Feeling pretty lucky and incredibly loved.