Viking Cruise Recap #5 - Prague: a city that is so beautiful and historic it deserves a week worth of posts on it's own

The morning after Dresden we had to say goodbye to most of our beloved crew and our lovely boat and move on to Prague.

We spent the rest of that day with our Viking comrades. We did a leisurely city tour, checked into our hotel and then got one more "hey, sorry about the water levels" concession: a "traditional czech dinner with folk songs and dancing". Is it something we would have done on our own? OH heck no. Was it super authentic? Probably not. Was it free, including beer and wine? Yes. Did we go? Yeah. It was pretty cheesy, but I got a cool gift for one of my friends and we didn't get pulled up to dance.

The next morning, most everyone left for home. Quinn and I had decided to stay a couple of extra days (thanks to Quinn's Hilton Rewards points!) in Prague so we switched to another hotel (Hilton Prague Old Town, great location, nice hotel, super art decor gorgeous lobby) and then met Tereza.

When we were planning this trip we knew that there was a lot of stuff we wanted to see and Prague and not a lot of time to see it. Quinn suggested we get a private tour guide for one of the days and I said I'd look into it. I eventually landed on Caput Regni Tours. All the guides are native Czech ladies, so I thought it was awesome to support a locally and female owned business. This was such a great choice. We booked a 6 hour tour that was crafted especially to see what we wanted to see, led by Tereza. We were a little nervous because 6 hours is a long time to be with a guide. We had no need to be nervous. Tereza was knowledgeable, personable and super smart. We walked at least 8 kilometers that day (some of it up a monster hill to get to a library in a monastery that I wanted so badly to see). We lunched together at Lokal, a restaurant filled with delicious Czech comfort food, and a delicious hazelnut dessert that I will have dreams about for the rest of my life I think. (I first heard about this place from Jamie, here! Thanks dear Jamie!) We saw great public art (some moving, some confusing, one at least pretty scary). Tereza took us down windy, cobblestone, ridiculously narrow streets and alleys that were completely void of other tourists.

The astronomical clock was Quinn's jam. It's not hard to see why, it's pretty beautamus!

In the Strahov Monastery on top of a hill in Prague there are 2 incredibly beautiful libraries. I saw them for the first time in the a beloved, but admittedly awful, favorite movie of mine "League of Extraordinary Gentleman." I thought they were set pieces. I found out later they were real. I thought "If I ever go to Prague I have to see those". And I did. On the top of the hill were also insane views looking down over Prague that also made it worth the hike. (Though I'd much rather have taken the tram!)

I'm not joking you guys, it was a big ass hill. But the views, oh, the views...

The little byways that Tereza took us down had no shortage of pretty doors for Quinn to shoot.

Do you guys recall me talking about the book "HHHH" all the time and the fact that it's based on the real life events of Operation Anthropoid? This is Sts Cyril and Methodius Cathedral where those terrible events actually took place. Tereza took us here (at my request) and recounted the whole story for Quinn, but we could only see the church from the outside because the crypt was closed. I of course still wanted to see the crypt, and Quinn was moved by the story too. So the next day we found our way back to the cathedral and entered the crypt. It's a solemn and important place. If you have any interest in WWII at all, this is a story that you need to be familiar with.

We climbed the tower that holds Quinn's clock and got great views of the downtown

Don't mind the flyaways, the bane of my hair existence!

I think Our Lady Before Tyn is just so striking

The crowd waiting for the clock show!

In short, Prague was amazing and beautiful and all kinds of other wonderful superlatives. I can't stress enough that if you have any inkling to see it that you should. Quinn and I have so many pictures that if I even put a quarter of them up here this page would never load. And all of them are great, because Prague is such a great subject.

We will have one last wrap up post and then all hands on deck for All Lady July!

Viking Cruise Recap #4 - Quinn's "European Las Vegas" - Dresden,saying Auf Wiedersen to the boat and some real talk about the cruise.

European vacation recap continues! I think that Quinn really out did herself with some of the pictures today, which is especially impressive considering she had a touch of the brown bag flu (*cough cough* hungover *cough). After reading this book about Dresden I felt like I was pretty prepared for what had happened to the city during the war, but it was a different thing to actually see it.

We did a city tour, and then had the afternoon free to do as we pleased. Quinn hung out on the boat and I dodged the (VERY TARDY) rain drops to explore the Old Master's Gallery by myself. That was some good art right there. I don't often get the opportunity to walk through a palace and look at art, and it is something I will treasure in my heart.

Zwinger palace is beautiful and large (aka "the party palace")

The rest of the pictures are all of "Fraukirche", Our Lady's Church. Actually a Lutheran church as you might be able to tell from the Marty statue out front. This place was completely demolished during the war. The rubble sat in the middle of town in a heap until it was finally rebuilt and finished in the 90s. Some of the original sandstones were used (they're the darker stones. In 50 years all the stones will match). The large cross on the top is a replica of the original (which was found in the rubble, and is now on display inside the church). The replica was made in England by a man whose grandpa was in the RAF an involved in the bombing of the city. (Dresden is full of these goosebumpy moments, at least it was for me). Quinn had trouble with the fact that so many places were built to look old but were actually quite new. Hence the European Las Vegas. I kind of loved it, to be honest. You get the old school charm without the leaks and tiny closets and all the other things that come with old buildings.

This is in the top 5 of my favorite trip pictures. #Skillstopaythebills

This night, after leaving Dresden just before dinner the boat pulled out and traveled through the night and docked in the Czech Republic, where we would leave the boat. Though we would all still be a group through the first day in Prague. We spent the evening (and most of the early morning, cough cough) hanging out with the crew, drinking, singing songs with our favorite Australians, sitting in the mist and watching the boat cruise through the night, and doing just a little bit of packing. We weren't worried about packing well because we figured we'd repack when we were going home. (Spoiler alert: we didn't really. We weighed and redistributed but basically the shoddy half hour packing job that we did the following morning was basically it.)

Real talk about the cruise:

- Food was super good. Dinner was at 7 everyday and there were only tables of 6 or 8. While it can be kind of nerve wracking it was good because it forced us to meet different people almost every night. We only had one regrettable set of dining partners, known to us thereafter as "the food spitters". They were the one pair of generally unpleasant people on the whole boat. We were a little nervous that we might get hungry because there was no room service (Quinn and I have been known to order room service at all hours when on vacation, don't judge); but it wasn't a problem.

- We were basically the youngest ones on the ship. There were two other girls almost exactly our ages but they were traveling with their mom and aunt. It could get a little bit frustrating (like on the at least 2 occasions when Quinn and I are having a conversation amongst ourselves and someone came up and with barely an introduction started showing us pictures of their grandkids on their phone. Um, okay?) but mostly it wasn't a problem. Everyone called us "the girls". Nearly every one of the 96 other passengers were friendly, interesting, well traveled and capable of being on a cruise.  When we would go on city tours they would offer a "leisure" group, so that those not interested/capable in keeping a faster pace could take that option. This was a very good move.We knew that we would be about the youngest people on the boat, so it's not like it was a surprise. This also helped us to make friends with the crew, which brings us to my next point...

-We, especially Quinn, got to know members of the crew pretty well. We would ask where they were from, if Viking was a good company to work for, how often they got to go home, who was dating who on the boat etc. etc. A lot of them came from Eastern Europe and left ocean cruise jobs to join Viking so they could be closer to home. Service was really impeccable. Always courteous and smiling and couldn't do enough for you.

-This was not a cheap way to travel but so much is included. It was nice to pay the bulk of money ahead of time and then have to worry about less money when the trip actually started. It was really low stress in multiple ways. We got our hands held on things like transportation and food, but then had free time to ourselves to do what we wanted. It was a good mixture for us. The time sailing was a good way to have forced downtime so you weren't "go go go go" trying to see everything the whole time.

-The trip obviously did not go quite as planned, but the crew, especially the captain and Radim, bent over backwards to try to help. Lunches were paid for, new excursions were arranged at the last minute, boats were squeezed through tiny locks all for us. From what we heard almost no one had a terrible attitude about it, because really, what can you do?

Tomorrow we go to what I think might be the most beautiful place on earth, PRAGUE!