Prague July 19-24

Well at last I have got back to do a bit on the blog. It has been a while and one day runs into the other. I must admit I did think I would have a little more down time, but we are having a wonderful holiday. Since finishing our England and Ireland Explorer tour we have been on the go. After arriving back on the completion of our tour we spent one more day in London which was essentially spent unpacking, sorting and organising and repacking for the next part of our trip to Prague. We managed to organise to send some luggage home as we already thought we were carrying too much. So after most of the day on the phone and sorting we thought we had it under control. We had to make a dash into London in the rain to print the documents before everything closed- all 14 pages we discovered of customs forms required to send our one case. After finding somewhere to print our documents, and photocopy my passport we thought we had it done, only to find when we arrived back to our unit that most of the papers had not actually printed at all. So I filled out what I could and prepared for our 5am pickup in the morning to fly to Prague knowing I would have to prepare and send more documents from there.

Our flight to Prague was really good and we thought that it was funny that we passed over 7 countries in the same flight time as it takes us to fly from Para to Perth. You can really understand why Europeans fly all over Europe and beyond- everything is so close and flights can be quite cheap - one of my cousins told us it cost about 60 Euro-about $75 to fly from Holland to Spain return. Amazing.


We arrived in Prague at our unit- which was great-huge in fact after our little, little unit in London, just after lunch and decided after a bit of a rest that we would go venturing out and grab some lunch. We had a nice walk around but had to make a dash back to our unit after Matthew had a reaction to something in our lunch- not sure what-the ONLY time we weren't carrying one or four epipens and antihistamines. Anyway after an antihistamine and a rest all was Ok and we had a quiet evening in. We decided the next day to have a rest day, which in fact turned into 2 rest days as both boys were not feeling quite right.

On the fourth day we finally ventured back out to see the sights. We made our way onto the tram and headed for Prague Castle. Prague Castle is very impressive and believed to have been founded in about 880, and is today a UNESCO world heritage site and the largest coherent castle complex in the world with an area of 70000sq metres. After wandering around the Castle and grounds, went into the magnificent 14th century St Vitas Cathedral and then wandered back through the town and home via the famous Charles Bridge.

The view from our unit in Prague at night

St Vitas Cathedral

The boys in front of one of the very ornate doors of St Vitas Cathedral

Prague Castle at night (this was a print)

On the tram up to Prague Castle

Prague is very beautiful and as with most places we have been to we could have spent a lot more time there. Our final day in Prague we did a walking tour which started in the Old Town and took in the buildings and history there, including the famous Astrinomical Clock, then we walked to the Jewish Quarter and ended up three hours later at the Castle. The walking tour was great and even though we had visited the Castle ourselves the day before it was much better when you heard the history and facts about what you were seeing, especially from a local guide.

Some of the old building walking through the streets of Prague

Heading towards Charles Bridge

In the Old Town square

The view from Prague Castle

The view from Charles Bridge

At Prague Castle

The tower on Charles Bridge

The Astronomical clock

The Astronomical Clock

All in all we had a wonderful time in Prague however our next stop was the one we had all been waiting for the most - the next day we were flying to Amsterdam to spend 3 weeks with our family.