Observations

I've been keeping a kind of list of things we've learned/observed on this trip. Not history or culture so much, but just things we've noticed. 

But before we get to that, today's rundown of events.  Jerry has been getting up at 5 in the morning for some reason, so he has been enjoying walks at that hour with no crowds around to get in the way of his photos. Me? I'm sleeping.

We went in the other direction today, away from Old Town, across the river and up the hill to the north to a large park. It goes steeply up the hill - who needs a Stairmaster?! At the top is a sculpture that is an enormous metronome, swinging back and forth all day long. You can see it from all over town. And also, our destination, the Technological Museum. It contained examples of transportation of all kinds - balloons to aircraft to cars. Reminded me of the Smithsonian, the way they had the aircraft suspended from the ceiling. Interesting! No photos from inside because although they allowed photography - even encouraged it - you had to pay extra for it. Really! There were guards everywhere enforcing the rule. Weird! I also got yelled at for trying to see the exhibits going counter-clockwise instead of clockwise. Whoa! I could understand if it was crowded, but not the case today. There are still some remnants of the Communist era here, I think.

 Jerry wanted to get in some farming

Fish and chips for lunch! Actually, salmon and chips, and calamari. The calamari was among the best I've ever had, The rest was good, too. We really haven't had a bad meal here.

This afternoon, we did three museums in quick succession. It helped that we didn't go in the first two. We saw enough of the Chocolate Museum and the Cubist Museum from the outside and the gift shop to make paying the admission fees unnecessary. We did go into the Museum of Communism. It increased our appreciation of what the people here went through during that era and how the Velvet Revolution came about. Makes you wonder if you would have enough courage to stand up to the oppression. We would like to think we would.

The US was definitely the bad guy!

So to the observations.

• Which would be better for your clothes, drying them on schranktrochen or bugeltrocken?
• Do you think starocesky hostinec is good to eat?
• Three pages of instructions was left for us on using the oven. I'm not touching that thing!
• Women do seem to dress more fashionably here. But we have always been in the heart of big cities. That may be case in the US, too.
• Scarves are still BIG - literally. Most are large and wrapped around the neck in big loops.
• Shoes are very stylish and new looking. No stilletos, though. There may be a corolation with the cobblestones, not sure...
• We are usually addressed in Czech when walking into an establishment. And when we say Hello, they seamlessly switch to English. We are so lucky!
• When you start to think you know your way around, that's when you really get lost.
• There's no ADA in Europe. Most buildings have many stairs, and few have elevators. Pushing the correct button is a challenge, too. The ground floor is zero, then comes one. We won't even go into the minus ones. 
• You get better at division in your head when you have to divide all prices by 18.76 to come up with a dollar equivalent.

And here's today's bride!