After a really good breakfast, we decided we wanted to take a night river cruise with dinner. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we would be picked up and dropped off which was welcomed! We had our hotel clerk arrange the dinner cruise.
After breakfast, we decided to walk up to New Town to visit the Communism Museum. One of Ted's former co-worker said that we needed to see that while in Prague.
We walked up to New Town using our handy dandy map. We ran into Nina, our tour guide from yesterday, who wanted to know what happened to us yesterday. We explained the situation and told her how much we enjoyed the tour but we were hurting puppies after yesterday's marathon march. We mentioned that we were interested in going to the Communism museum and she kindly gave us and discount card for it. It wasn't much but every little bit helps!
Before going into the museum, we stopped to have a Latte Macchiato and do some people watching. We spent a few hours in the museum, absorbing what it was like to live in a Communist country. My heart went out to the people of the Czech Republic. After 40 long years of repression, they were finally free. The parallels of how their country succumbed to Communism is strikingly the same as to what is going on in the United States today. It's frightening and eerie. It feels like we learned nothing and that history is repeating itself. In fact, it's not about the people...it's about the forces of good and evil warring with one another.
Entrance to the Museum was up the stairs and to the left. On the right was a casino. How funny!
Photo of the Communist interrogation room.
Another photo of the Communism interrogation room.
My daughter, who went to school in Luxembourg for a semester, loved Prague and went back on several occasions during her stay in Luxembourg. She strongly recommended it. She went in 1995 so I believe the country had not yet been indoctrinated into western capitalism. While there, we saw Starbucks, KFC, McDonalds and Century 21. In fact, it's a bit sad to see these companies there.
Antique cars were used to do sight-seeing. KFC in the background.
I picked up a book, Legacy, in order to read more about the rise and fall of Communism in the Czech Repbulic. After soberly leaving the museum, we walked towards the Jewish Quarter but decided to stop for lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant along the way. I had a lunch of grilled eggplant and Ted had some fish.
We ran into the South African mother and daughter along the way
After lunch we went in search of the Jerusalem museum and the Crystal place we visited yesterday. We found the crystal place not to far from the place that sold the tickets for the Jerusalem museum. I purchased a pitcher (I collect them) and six glasses. It's reminiscent of the ruby glass that my grandmother had in her home. And they will deliver it to our hotel by evening...which means I don't have to carry it with me for the rest of the day!
What is interesting is that the Jerusalem museum is not a museum at all but rather a combination of the five or six Synagogues and the Jewish cemetery. Because of our time restrictions, we could only choose one Synagogue to see. We chose to visit the Pinka Synagogue because it was the one with the cemetery.
Building in the Jewish Quarter.
Another building in the Jewish Quarter.
Jewish tablet on one of the buildings.
The Synagogue happened to be the one where all of the names of the Czech Jews who were murdered during World War II are listed. There are over 77,000 names listed with last name and first initial in red, then their birth date and death date (interesting that the day and year are listed by regular numbers but the month is listed in roman numerals) followed by where they lived. When you see names upon names upon names, wall after wall, after wall...it breaks your heart to think that these people lost their lives because of their beliefs. On the upper level of the Synagogue, there were children's paintings from the Czech concentration camp. Of the 10,000 children there, only 242 survived. It was painful to see their drawings until finally I could no longer look at them. After coming down the stairs we were directed through a courtyard to the cemetery. The graveyard had stones dating back to the early 14th century. Many of the inscriptions were worn off. Many of the stones had been broken or were angled. There was even one that been moved to a 45 degree angle by the root of a tree and the root had grown around it. On the one hand, I found it disheartening that the cemetery wasn't well kept in that it was over grown with tall grasses and some weeds but on the other hand, it was a stark reminder of time marching on. Unfortunately, we could not take any photos in the Synagogue or in the cemetery.
We left the cemetery to go back to the hotel for a short rest. But my husband insisted (once again) to go his own way (without looking at the map). I followed but grumbled because I knew we were going in the wrong direction because I had the foresight to look at the map. After disagreeing about it, he finally relented and looked at the map. That's all I wanted in the first place...for him to decide where to go and then confirm it by looking at the map. He finally concurred that we were going in the wrong direction and we doubled back to where we were when we took a wrong turn.
We came to the backside of the Astronomical clock square where we found a small place that made the city's delicacy - and I don't know what the name of it was! It is a sweet bread wrapped around wooden dowels (it looks like cork screws) and covered in sugar, cinnamon and nuts and then roasted over an open fire. We decided to have a snack and some water and then head back to the hotel.
We sat in a treed area with benches just behind the Astronomical clock. There were the antique car tours and the horse and buggy tours...both of which we would have loved to take but did not do. I wish we could have had a few more days to do those two types of tours but alas, it was not meant to be.
Again, we went in the wrong direction and of course, my husband was hard-headed again. But we finally found our hotel and rested for about 45 minutes until our driver for the dinner cruise came to pick us up. What was really neat was that we did not know that we were going to get an hour mini-bus tour before we got on the boat.
Our tour guide while good, was not Nina. She did not have Nina's wonderful personality! However, she filled in the holes of the places we did not get to see yesterday.
We ran into a couple from Texas on the tour but did not sit with them. Instead we sat with two school teachers from England who were on our walking tour yesterday. We also ran into Nina again who was bringing another tour to the boat we were on. I got to ask Nina a few questions I wanted to know about and she explained them to me.
We spent three hours on the boat going through the locks in the river and having a wonderful time with our new British friends. We exchanged emails and the one school teacher offered to "put us up" if we ever got to England.
During the time on the boat, we had live music entertainment. He had a wonderful repetoire of music. After the dinner cruise was over, we hugged each of our new friends because we were getting a taxi and they were getting a mini-van. It ended up that we went into the mini-van with them. Soon we were whisked to our hotel. I still had trouble sleeping but we didn't have to move quickly tomorrow it doesn't matter.
Sunday 5/30/2010
Sunday 5/30/2010
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