Okres Benešov

One can always visit a city as a tourist but what made this trip to the city absolutely brilliant was travelling here with Czech born Jaap and my dear friend Anke. Their guidance and knowledge of so much, made the trip so special and unique.

We caught the 9:31 train to Prague, paused at the train station to organize our train trip to Salzburg on Sunday, caught the Metro, then the Tram up the hill to the Prague Castle area. I was delighted to notice the city home of Belik along our route!! Once onto the grounds of the Castle we moved quickly through the crowds, to the Palace home of the Lobkowicz family which is now a beautiful smaller museum (#1 in Prague). We paused in a gorgeous wee terrace cafe with excellent cakes and cappachino’s as first stop. The museum also has 1 pm concerts which we kept hearing bits of as we toured the museum. Next time!!

The audio for the Museum was dictated by owner William Lobkowicz with delightful anecdotes, making some explanations even more enjoyable. Highlights: Delft China sets (Delft even borrowed the huge set from them for an exhibition) and one other very lovely set including one dark blue Czech one I loved/the music room with original manuscripts from Mozart, Beethoven & Haydn - a Duke from the family even influenced Mozart to expand the production of the Messiah to include more orchestration!!/two large paintings of The Thames by Canaletto.

We strolled through the gardens at the back of the Castle grounds then descended a cazillion!! Castle stairs to the old town, now filled with embassies, monuments and palaces. We ate wonderful sandwiches at Jaap and Anke’s favourite cafe “Cukrkavalimonada” ...Lemonade in English, then crossed the Charles Bridge. Jaap took us to the Prague Public Library (loved their art piece at entrance) then Anke and I headed to the yarn stop while Rich and Jaap did some touring about. First a stop at Anke’s “fine” paper shop for paper for her boxes. The yarn shop was in the Palladium of shops - a large area full of shops and even a Sephora that had my eyeshadows which Anke really wanted and found. By now my knees/feet etc were totally done! -likely all of us feeling the same way.

Way home - Anke and I grabbed a tram to the station, had a yummy iced coffee latte at the train station, the ‘boys’ found us, grabbed the 5:31 train back to the station. Decided it was time to eat out!! First restaurant stop in “Amerika” was closed for a private event so we went on to another wee village, me a pumpkin risotto and R a schnitzel. Great dinners! Very inexpensive.

Home and fell into bed. Exhausted but full to the brim with memories of happy times, laughter and wonderful new cultural knowledge.
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