I woke up this morning to a voice message from Jezza – it was me snoring in the night – probably due to the lack of ventilation in the room as we had to close the windows because of the traffic noise – it’s quite busy here. Jezza’s not that happy with his choice of this hotel, but, as Meatloaf said, “2 out of 3 Ain’t Bad”. Ironically, I spent much of the night rubbing Jezza’s back to stop him snoring – this was made quite tricky as the mattress on our bed seemed to veer me to the edge and, because it’s much wider than our bed at home, my arm wouldn’t stretch to his back – I had to manoeuvre into the middle 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️. So, I reciprocated the voice message….
Jezza’s boxers update: still not dry on the heated towel rail after his swim in them yesterday 🤦🏻♀️
Having given up on the football last night, I had a reasonable night’s sleep and we were going to swim at 07:00, but due to logistical reasons here, which I shan’t bore you with 🥱, we decided to swim and sauna in one session this afternoon. Breakfast is included at this hotel – it’s been an extra 20-25€ per person at the previous hotels, and as I never eat breakfast and Jezza normally only has a yoghurt, we haven’t bothered, but we will go to breakfast here. I’m quite happy because I have my kettle here in the room for my early morning cuppa!!
Jezza had booked a 2.25 hour walking tour of Prague Old Town today starting at 11:15, so we were able to have a “somewhat” leisurely morning….
Oh, and my Fitbit still hadn’t done what it should overnight, but Dr Jezza was still convinced that Fitbit CPR would revive it – on verra…. In the meantime, our steps would be tracked by Jezza’s Fitbit. As we relaxed pre-breakfast, Jezza began to research Fitbits – it was at this point I realised his optimism was waning …..
Time to get ready and we had the second casualty of the holiday – Jezza’s razor hadn’t survived the transfer between Berlin and Prague – a trip to a chemist/supermarket was in order as I was not going to trawl the streets of Prague with an old hobo 😂😂.
They say things come in threes – 🤔🤔
It was a bit cooler today with a wind, so I was pleased that I would be able to wear the jumper I knitted for our trip – I thought it would go back to St Chinian unworn.
We left in good time for our walking tour and caught the train to near our meeting point and we saw an absolutely enormous LEGO model of Prague main railway station – 342,000 pieces weighing 2.7 tonnes 😳. Thomas is the LEGO expert in the family – I’m sure that would’ve kept him occupied for more than the weekend he takes to build his birthday LEGO 😂😂😂. We needed cash for our walking tour and set out to find a bank. This proved difficult and we ended up having to pay a small fortune for the privilege from an atm 🤦🏻♀️. Expensive mission accomplished, we made our way to the meeting point – at one point I thought we were in danger of the tour leaving without us 🙄. Panic over, the guide was still there 😅. Her name was Dita – she was Czech and proved to be very good.
We walked around the Old Town and saw cubist and gothic architectural style buildings. We got caught in a shower or two during our tour, but I left the umbrella behind as rain wasn’t forecast 🤦🏻♀️. The Old Town was in stark contrast to the concrete jungle that we had seen already in Prague . Jezza took lots of pics on our tour – too many to describe without boring you to tears, but if you want to know what any of them are, just ask ….
There is an astronomical clock in the Old Town which has three clock faces and, on the hour every hour, different characters appear at windows when the bells chime. It’s like a giant cuckoo clock, but everything’s over and done with in under a minute!!
We went on to the Jewish quarter and saw the cemetery containing the remains of thousands of Jews. We’ve seen so much about the Jews (and their persecution) on our trip ….
We saw the statue of Franz Kafka and Dita explained to us how Kafka died and asked his friend to destroy all his manuscripts – he died young of TB, but his friend ignored Kafka and later had his works published – one being the famous Metamorphosis.
We then walked across The Charles Bridge which started to be built at 05:31 on 7th September 1357. The numbers 135797531 denote this time/date and can be seen above the Museum entrance, being a palindrome, as they were very superstitious about these things then…
There’s a monument to a saint (his name escapes me- so many facts to take in!) and you can make a wish there which will be granted if you put your right foot here, your fingers on all points of a star and do the Hokey Cokey and shake it all about – Jezza wanted to make a wish, but knowing him as I do, I said “No”! 😂😂😂😂😂
We were coming to the end of the tour which finished at The John Lennon Wall – we wondered what the connection between Lennon and Prague was. He was never there, but upon his untimely death, young Czechs filled the wall with Beatles lyrics and messages of freedom as a non-violent protest against the communist regime, which repeatedly tried to paint over it.
Dita, our guide, told us that she was a musician and she had brought her ukulele with her. She started to play “Imagine” and got us all to join in – I found it very poignant and moving. Jezza took a video, but it’s proving difficult to upload – where’s a decent web developer when you need one? 🤔🤔. Maybe he can sort it out once we get home – it was quite emotional.
That was my favourite part of the tour of Prague 🥰🥰
We were getting tired and felt in need of some relaxation, so we made our way home. We stopped off at a chemist shop to get a razor for Jezza, but they didn’t have any – the search will have to continue tomorrow – goodness knows what he’ll look like if we can’t get one before getting back home 🤦🏻♀️ .
Because we missed our swim this morning, our intention was to swim and then sauna this afternoon, however, I only really like to swim first thing, so I suggested to Jezza that we just sauna – there were no complaints from Mr 25m Doggy Paddle 😂😂😂😂.
Our sauna session was very hot, in the range 90 to 95 degrees 🥵🥵. We were lucky enough to have the sauna to ourselves, so no confrontation today 😅😂😂. We then went into the relaxation room to relieve our racing hearts – Jezza had to wake me up!!! We felt so good and ready for the possible disappointment of the night ahead (Brighton v Chelsea), but first, it was wine o’clock, barnibbles and Bradley before we went into the hotel restaurant for dinner.
We decided to eat in the hotel again tonight – the pizzas looked quite good (but obviously not as good as Jezza’s), so that was dinner sorted. After last night’s Aperol fiasco, I just ordered water and Jezza had a beer. Neither of us could finish our pizzas, they were tasty but unlike at home, we couldn’t put half in the fridge and keep for apéro 🙃. Obviously, Jezza had room for Czech sweet buns with blueberries, blueberry coulis and ice cream 🐖 🐖 .
We came back up to our room for football ⚽️💙 – with no great expectations, but plenty of hope.
Alarm set for our morning swim – well needed after tonight’s pizza..
Total steps: 13,934
