Praguemattic

This is a world class city! It feels a lot like what I'd imagine Germany looked like, before they started a war and got their country burned down. From the moment I got off the train until today, I've been awed by the architecture and scenery. Prague manages to keep a lot of green and blue in the city, thanks to the big river and all the parkland and trees. Throw in the red roofs and you've got a masterpiece on the level of Wien and Paris.

Yesterday, I did the whole tour thing and looked around the city, including the castle district and old town areas. I also had an excellent dinner at an Italian restaurant on a boat, recommended by the tour guide.

There was free bread, which came with a delicious herb butter:

Then came my appetizer, Tuscan salami, olives, and salad:

I ate some before I took the picture. Sorry. Same goes for my penne all'arabbiata:

It was all excellent, as excellent as the view of the castle:

And it was just 21€, with a juice and a tea. The only negative part was when the waiter spilled an entire hot, foamy drink all over my shoulder, arm, and backpack, and was more concerned with cleaning it up than with having spilled it on me. I was all ready to tell him it was no big deal but he never really cared anyway. Oh well. I am tempted to go back today for the pizza.

I think I managed to rest away and sleep off the illness that was attacking me because I feel a lot better today. Rather than search for touristy things to do, I decided to explore the city on my own terms - Geocaching! I found about 8 caches today, by 3pm or so. The best part is that it allowed me to discover an excellent park, where fall was in full effect.

There was that nice fall wind, not cold but windy enough to be blowing the leaves every which way. It was really great. One Geocache was even set up to bring you to a little traveled great viewing point in the park, where you could observe the whole city.

Later, I actually ended up looking for a Geocache on an island and running into two strange Czechs who were doing the exact same thing. We all pretended to just be walking by but I took the step of initiating an international effort of cooperation to locate the cache. For the record, I made the find in the end!

So now I am resting a little, planning to take a tea and read maybe for a short while or try to give Danielle a call, before I go out again to see Prague at night. It is supposed to be quite beautiful when it is all lit up at night. I think any city on a river is especially that way.

Prague's definitely a must-see and I can give you a restaurant recommendation to boot. I'll come back here for the opera or a concert some day. Somehow, I think the fall colours really bring out the colours in the city, though. I wonder how it looks otherwise. I bet it's great in the winter, under a blanket of snow.

Tea time.