Prague Second Day Oct. 22

Again, Wow!

When we checked in to the Prague Hilton a few days ago, we were given a room on the Executive Floor! Great, right?

Wrong.  Turns out our room is directly under the Executive Lounge on the 8th floor.  At 0 dark 30, the noises started above our head as the staff prepped the room for the morning Executive Breakfast rush.  Their loud noises coupled with our loud complaints to the Guest Manager has resulted in our getting free high speed WiFi for two days (normally $16.00 per day) and access to the Executive Lounge where the food and booze is free! Free booze? Do they have ANY idea who they are dealing with?

We made a reservation on a river cruise boat for a 2 hour cruise up and down the Moldava River to see the old town city sights from a different perspective.  The tour started at 3:00 and we left the hotel around 10:00 to walk to the Charles Bridge and explore the area around the bridge that we had seen but not had time to fully appreciate. We had lunch at one end of the bridge in a Czech sidewalk cafe and found the bottled water was $5.28 while my coffee was $2.60. Ouch. Talk about tourist central! And this is the end of the season.

We walked from Charles Bridge (built by Charles IV, naturally....) to the boat pier. We got there early and had about an hour to kill. We walked over to the Jewish Cemetery, part of the Jewish Museum. The cemetery holds more that 100,000 bodies buried sometimes 9 deep, and is intensely crowded with 12,000 tombstones. All in less than 2 acres!

The walks are the best part of the touring experience as we get to see and photograph all the myriad different building styles from over a 600-700 year time frame. Graffiti, dark alleyways, Baroque building facades, exposed bricks several centuries old, brand new office buildings (not in the old town as that is dedicated to history and tourism), streetcar trams, cobblestones, etc. If I spoke Czech, I would consider living here (but then who would mow the yard on Saumsville Rd.?)

On the tour boat, we met a young couple who are recently engaged.  She is Romanian and he is Czech. Friday the young lady is leaving Prague to go to work in Orlando, Florida for the company she works for now, Siemens. He is an advertising/packaging designer who does not see much opportunity for that kind of work in the US. Both of them were fun to talk with and very fluent in English.

Tomorrow is another almost unplanned day. We will probably just walk again, this time through one or two of the districts we have not seen. Maybe, just maybe, the Executive Lounge will not hold reveille at 0 dark 30. If they do, their beer supply is in jeopardy tomorrow night!!