i love/hate maps

Today we conquered Prague alone. No tour guide, no group, just us three ladies. We had a few things that we wanted to do, but for the most part it was just nice to not have 20 other people in our group. So we took the tram from our hotel to more of the center of Prague and took a funicular up to a lookout spot where we thought we would be able to see all of Prague, but that didn’t really happen. But there were many beautiful rose and lavender gardens up there and we also had fun in the mirror labyrinth. After that we walked around some more and again got tired of looking for Infant Jesus of Prague medals in 20 different garnet shops. We also got lost probably 4 times trying to go to a jazz concert on Kampa island but I was happy just following my mom and Jenni like a little kid because I had some Starbucks to keep me occupied. J We stopped in some good souvenir shops along the way to the concert too. We ate lunch at (I think) the best pizza place in Prague and (funny story…) were given menus in Czech, I guess because we said “dobry den” when we walked in and ordered our drinks in Czech. So we whipped out our Czech-English dictionaries and tried for quite a while to figure out what was one which pizza and which one to get. The waiter then noticed probably 10 minutes later that we had no idea what was on these menus and brought us English ones. Thank goodness! Apparently we seemed Czech! J The jazz concert ended up being very good and it was so nice to just sit in the grass, rest, and enjoy good music. After that we took the tram back to the hotel and headed off for the farewell dinner in Středokluky just out side of Prague that included a huge dinner, drinks, and a band with dancers who changed outfits and did dances from all different regions. We then went back to the hotel (we even sang on the bus) and said our goodbyes to our group. It was an awesome trip with a nice group of people!