Honeymoon Trip Day 1

 Technically its day 3…but the first two days were travel days and there really isn’t much to say about that. I thought it would be nice to break out this blog again for another big trip - I can’t believe it’s been four years since we were last in Europe…well I guess I can because covid. 

This time our trip goes like…

Prague 5 days (with side detour to Cesky Krumlov

London 5 days (joined by my family!)

Liverpool 5 days (with a marriage celebration party)

Isle of Harris 5 days

Today in Prague we walked so much - it is a beautiful city, and we decided to orient ourselves to it using two different self-guided tours from Rick Steves. 

First, we started with a walk around Wenceslas Square (yes, it’s named after the Duke from the Good King Wenceslas song except he was not a king). Then we headed to the Old Town square, with the famous Astronomical Clock.

What is not shown in this picture are the tourist hordes everywhere in the square. Our driver yesterday who brought us to our Airbnb said its the most crowded on the weekends, so at least we miss that. There are just a lot of people here, and after not traveling for awhile, you forget how busy popular sites are. Thankfully, our friend Rick Steves is good for getting you away from the masses. 

The buildings are just lovely; Prague wasn’t bombed during WWII, and the Communists didn’t destroy anything. So everywhere you turn they look pretty: 

We walked to the famous Charles Bridge, which was nice and all but I don’t quite get the reason it’s so famous. The view from beside it is actually better:

Tomorrow we head up that hill to see the Prague Castle complex. After seeing the bridge and walking over half of it, we backtracked to the Klemenatium, which now holds the National Library of Prague. Unfortunately the current library was closed, but we could do a tour of the Baroque Library…which was definitely worth it:

Unfortunately they wouldn’t let you walk inside it and technically pictures are not allowed but our guide said we could take them without a flash as long as we didn’t tell her boss - so this needs to be a secret!

Afterwards, we decided to hop on a river cruise. It was not recommended in the guidebook but we wanted to sit down. I think the reason it wasn’t recommended is it narrated what you were seeing in eight languages, so it was not easy to follow and the timing of the narration was off. Still, it was nice to relax on the water for an hour and see the city from a different perspective. 

We ended the day painting a brick for charity and then heading to an outdoor market for dinner. It was a lot like the TimeOut market in Boston, with many different vendors and outdoor seating. It was a great first day to the trip!