Wednesday May 20th

We walked our feet off all over Prague!
It was fun, we went into the bell tower right near the St Charles bridge, hiked up to the castle on the hill. The castle grounds were closed due to a dignitary visit. We walked in the park on the hill near the castle then climbed up to a tower at th etop. It had 299 steps and my legs were really tired and I was out of breath. The view was great. There were marionette shops everywhere in Prague that lured the children in like the candy man in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Also garnet jewelry and crystal were everywhere. The city reminded me a lot of Paris, but I preferred Paris overall. The architecture was amazing. It didn't experience any bombing during the war so it was in great shape. All of our feet hurt after our day. We bought some nice artwork of Prague from a man on the St Charles bridge. He did the etchings on the metal plates and then prints it on paper. Very similar to the way Uncle Jim does his carving on boxwood.
Once the sun goes down the night life of Prague comes out. High heels, fancy dresses and sharp looking suits and sportcoats are everywhere. Interestingly we saw the elderly missionary couple for Prague. they were only 6 days away form going home to San Francisco, actually they wanted to travel a little before going home.
The streets of Prague were very narrow and many of the buildings were different colors - different from Paris. There were a lot of wooden or meal arched doors with the smaller door built into it for a person to walk through. nearly all of the streets were cobblestone. Carl got a stone from the St Thomas bridge near where they were doing maintenance. The walk in the park area near the castle was really nice, a sharp contrast to the city.
Oh, Prague is expensive...$200 for parking 1.5 days.