What a great day we had! We
met Ruben and Paul at 8:00 in the lobby and took a cab to the Nymburk train
station. We then bought round trip tickets to
Prague and boarded a very nice, double
decker. Our timing was perfect because we only waited about 10 minutes
for the train to arrive. The train ride only took one hour. We
were so comfortable and having such a nice discussion that the conductor had
to come tell us it was time to get off.
Paul
bought a guide book with a map and we set off to discover
Prague. We decided to make our way to
the central square. We experienced various architectural styles such as
art deco, art nouveau and the more straight and tall styles that Paul said
were from the communist era.
Some
of the buildings were decorated with what is called Sgraffito. My
dictionary says this is made by cutting away parts of a surface area, such as
plaster or clay, to reveal a different color beneath it. Sounds similar
to the technique that was used by Kristy’s dad to create Mom’s owl picture
over her fireplace.
Another
amazing feature about the architecture is all the gold detailing on the buildings.
As
we came close to the central square, we came upon a parade of many
nations. They were singing and dancing and wore traditional
costumes. It all culminated inside the central square. It was
some sort of folk lorico festival.
After
doing some window shopping, we decided to have lunch. We found a
reasonably priced place which offered two items on the menu, according to the
day of the week. We all had beef and wild rice with mushrooms.
You just can’t get away from the rice here. It was very good.
Ruben had a beer and we had green tea ice tea.
We
then decided to make our way to the king’s castle. That was a long
walk, across a bridge and mostly up hill, but we finally reached the compound
a couple of hours later. It was 2:00; we just missed the changing of
the guards at the royal palace. Then we made our way back down and did
some shopping and enjoyed some gelato.
Around
5:00 we decided to head back to the train station. We walked for a
while and then decided it would be quicker to take the metro. That was
quite an adventure. Two trains later and lots of asking for help and up
and down escalators, we made it to the central train station and found our
train back to Nymburk. This was not as nice a train as we had taken in
the morning. We arrived in Nymburk around 7:00 and decided to have
dinner at the Mexican restaurant there in town. We had chili con carne
which tasted different from home, but still good. Paul estimated that
we had probably walked about 20 km (15 miles) that day. We really never
stopped walking except when we were eating lunch or on the train. We
walked back to the sport center from Nymburk and crashed. It was a
wonderful day and we really enjoyed spending it with our
Belgium
friends. |
