Czech this out

Time to Czech in to the stunning Hilton Prague.

I will attempt to start my Prague Blog.

In a misty fog, to a hog and and a frog  on a log near a bog.

OK..I had a four hour drive and I am a little spent, so I can get silly.

Actually, we couldn't take the autobahn for most of the trip, so we drove through winding roads peppered with farms and towns and greenery.

The scenic route.

Which means the long route.

I will miss my ship mates but they're all in this hotel, but you know me and faces...I expect to find Betty in our bathroom at any given moment, bless her heart, but I really hope to see some other passengers.

Last night was the kind of camaraderie and laughs that make me want to sail..dirty jokes with a raunchy crew.  The people that our friends Faith and Harvey knew are really nice, and their friends, Michael the dentist(he has had his fingers inside the mouth of Jocelyn something, that famous NY socialite they call the cat woman after all her plastic surgeries..let's hope it was for dental work.).and his wife Shelley, who  round out our crew.

I love my Brits too..Henrietta is getting more adorable by the minute, and Mr. Monopoly(I'll call him Justin from now on because I failed miserably in my attempt to hook him up with Betty) is a hoot as well.  He told us a joke about a sex shop and a blow up doll and the punchline ended in something like:  "She blows herself up!"  The joke was funny because he called it "naughty" and he said "naughty" like he was in Monty Python..

Enough babbling..you want to hear about Prague.

Well..it is a little same old, same old..baroque and gothic architecture, narrow cobblestoned streets, beer companies, fast car companies, cathedrals that I have a waning interest in(the tour guide on the bus, Angela,  says the country is about eighty percent agnostic--you could have fooled me.)

Our guide for the Food and Culture tour was named Ava.  She started right away..and it was more like a fast food, fast talking, fast walking tour.  And because our rooms were not yet ready, we had to lug our carry on stuff.  Which meant while Jim was looking at quaint bridges, I was eyeing the ninety-pound Jessica Simpson handbag he volunteered to carry, because I was certain he'd be so engrossed in the culture that he'd ignore the potential pickpocket.

I have two Jessica Simpson handbags. (I should name them Maxwell and Ace after her kids)  One is the ninety pound one with all my crap in it.  The other one is my vacation JS bag that holds only my useless hairbrush and notebook and pen.  That  vacation bag has been shedding ever since we arrived.  

I swear, I thought we had bedbugs in Budapest: germs in Germany..but it was just bits of Jessica Simpson.  It's going to carry my toiletries(I HATE that word) on Friday's flight home and then it'll be trashed. 

OMG..I get so off track!!  That happened in yesterday's blog too..I forgot to tell you that our guide in Regensburg told us about royalty crossing the bridge with their animals and I heard "with their enemas."

I forgot to tell you that she pointed out a naked baby being tossed in the air in front of a cute little book store and on closer inspection we discover it's a naked doll.  

(Even still...WTF?)

So I discuss fraying handbags but not Prague?

Our three hour tour was a little grueling(because it was three hours) but the area was mostly flat, and it wasn't as hot as when we did this walk and whine tour  in Barcelona. That's a typo that I'm not fixing.  It's supposed to read wine but this is MY Prague blog.

Our first stop was a bar on a boat..we crawled to the underbelly(or so it seemed)to sit at a large wooden table where Ava offered our first course:  Brined cheese or brined fish.  Both sounded bad but the fish turned out to be really good gefilte fish, and the slimy cheese wasn't the dog food/milk of magnesia mixture I feared it would be.  Everyone ordered beer but me..I stuck with lemonade...which tasted more like cleaning fluid than beer ever could.

We walked along more cobblestones and through a very exotic food market with interesting things in the window..and hunks of meat that made me consider going vegan.

Ava served us very elegantly..all the tanned and shapely octogenarians were saying stuff like "I won't eat  dinner now..this is so much food" and I'm seeing two hors de ouvres at best.

I'm a "the plate is half empty" kinda gal, you should know that by now.

Ava is handing out all kinds of Czech delicacies..beets with cream cheese(I wanted a dog to stroll by and snatch it from me) and chopped celery on toast (better than it  sounds) and finally, a slice of salami, ham, beef, prosciutto ,pickles, mustard..and more beer, as if they were sober enough to think this was a real lunch.and for me, lemonade that tasted even more like cleaning fluid than the first drink did.

We walked some more, waved to some pigeons, and went to the last place, a lookout point from a bar and grill that gave a magnificent panoramic view of this city.

And more beer was consumed.

This time I had iced tea..that tasted like cleaning fluid.

You would think all the mind altering alcohol was all consumed by me when you read the next part:

Ava said we could all walk back to the Hilton, about 30 minutes away, or we could all take the tram, but the decision had to be unanimous.

I scream:  "Tram!" and the entire restaurant, even those not in our group, were stunned.

It felt like I was the lone holdout on a jury that wanted to convict an innocent guy. 

Some of these hikers who probably live year round in the Sierras wanted to walk.

Oh..how I longed for Betty's company! She'd certainly have been a yea for tram.

But I won!!  One other person wanted the tram, so my grateful feet hopped on and here we are, kind of on our own tonight, ready to drink in the sites of Prague.

And of course I want dinner..a real dinner but not 'til later.

Tomorrow the entire group does a walking City tour and then some of us will head out to Terezin to see the concentration camps. 

I'm hoping to see a marionette show(with Marian!)..they're supposed to be great here.

But remember, they said the same thing about Czech lemonade.

More later