DAY ONE: February 10th, 2008; Eating Above Praha

This is the Henry Tower which is along the "Royal Route" from the Prague Castle (which is on the other side of the Vltava River). After the concert on the staircase Ellen and I were starving as we hadn't eaten anything since 11am that morning and it was now after 9pm. So we walked around trying to find something that looking good and interesting and we came upon this tower. On the 7th and 8th floor is the Restaurant Zvonice Jindrisska Vez (I have no idea what that means). So we went up and got a table and had a wonderful meal (probably our most expensive...but the atmosphere was great and the food was delicious!).
The Henry Tower is a Bell Tower...and this is it's bell...still the original bell from way back when. It doesn't ring anymore...which I was thankful for as we were sitting right next to it for our meal.

It was a cozy, Gothic bell tower in which we ate and there weren't many people there...which was nice because it wasn't loud and obnoxious.

Ellen and I both had hit our heads at some point during the evening because of the low beams...not hard...but enough for us to remember to duck next time.

I ordered a green iced tea and this is what I got. It was German and it was delicious. I don't quite get what the green beans on the label have to do with green tea but tasty is tasty.

I ordered the herb crusted Pike perch with lime potato pure. It came with the mini zucchini and carrots too. The potatoes were AMAZING!!! I did find a piece of plastic on my fish tho...and it was a little on the dry side...oh well.

Ellen ordered this dish...some kind of meat thing. I can't remember what it was...I just remember her liking it a lot.

And of Course if there is bacon on the menu Ellen is going to order it. This is a Bacon Salad.

Because of the plastic that was on my fish the restaurant gave me a dessert for free...can't remember what it was called (as it was in czech) but the translation was something like "traditional czech pancakes with forest fruit, a Carmel basket and cream". What it was like was like sponge cake or pound cake with berries on top. The Carmel basket is that decorative piece on the side (which tasted as good as it looked) and the cream was not ice cream, not quite sour cream...more like a heavy butter cream. It was very good.

The Lime Potato Pure was still my favorite of this entire meal tho...mmmm...got to make me some of that!!

DAY ONE: February 10th, 2008; Concert on the Inner Staircase of the Museum Hall

After the National Museum closed it's doors to regular guests we stayed. We had tickets to see the Czech String Chamber Orchestra under the artistic leader: Ondrej Krbec dipl. um. play on the inner staircase of the Museum Hall.

It was a sextet (2 violins, 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 bass, 1 pianist) playing Mozart's "A Little Night Music", Bach's "Air", Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", Braham's "Hungarian Dances", Monti's "Csarda's " and my personal favorite (plus he was a local and is buried there) A. Dvorak's waltz's and his "Humoreska" (Humoresque).

So we sat on the stairs themselves...not the most comfortable and not the best view...but it was all about the acoustics and the music! WOW! It truly reminded me why I loved playing in symphonies and chamber orchestras and really made me miss doing that...I might have to pick it up again...if I can strengthen my ombature again to where I can play longer and more than just a scale or two.

Here is a little video so you can have a little taste...it's not the one I wanted to post...the one I wanted to post was too large of a file and it couldn't be posted so this one will have to do and the others will have to wait until we see each other in person for you to hear. Wish you all could have been there in person to hear this...

DAY ONE: February 10th, 2008; The National Museum of Praha

Now this is a model! A wonderful model of the National Museum of Prague. It looks as if it was carved...not molded but carved with knives and sharp little instruments. Amazing detail...it just needs color.

Here is the beautiful National Museum of Prague. It sits at the end of Wenceslas Square and is beautiful at night.






Me...in front of the National Museum and the statue of "Good King Wenceslas".






A much better view of the statue of St Wenceslas and the National Museum.



The architecture on the museum is amazing! Plus the pieces molded out of gold add shiny bits of color.

The inside of the museum is just as beautiful as the outside of the building. Fresco's everywhere...marble staircases...ornate ceilings. Wish the collection of stuff in the museum was as interesting as the building itself...oh well.

Almost every ceiling was like this one...ornate and frescoed...but with different paintings.

This is a hand-made scooter from Uganda. Care to take a guess as to when it was made?? Go on...guess.

Ready for the answer? It was made in 1970! Got to love Communism.

Ellen took this picture...I love it. It looks like he is looking at his reflection.

"I like big butts and I can not lie..."

This song came to mind when I saw these little statuettes. I thought they were so funny.

The best exhibit in the museum was the one inside the giant foot. Most of it was not in English but was we were able to glean from it the exhibit was all about feet...activities done with the feet...from feet growing in the womb to astronauts landing on the moon...feet feet feet in all cultures, time periods doing all kinds of different things. Strange...but quite interesting.

Long, LONG day...

So my day started on Saturday...I woke up from a long night at work around 11am. I did some

house cleaning, ran a few errands then I tried to go back to bed because I knew what I had ahead of me. I was scheduled a Fantasmic! rehearsal shift Saturday night from 9pm to 7am (I'm the spot op on the left) Sunday morning then I had 3 and a half hours before I had to be back at Disney to work a Honda Asimo shift (the nifty little Robot show) from 10:30am to 7:30pm. So as I write this I have been up for more than 28 hours so please forgive any grammatical errors and typos or just plain bad English. So the night started off in rehearsals...me at the top of a 40 foot tower freezing my ass off spotting the same thing over and over and over again and again and again...rehearsals are quite boring and very cold when you are stuck at the top of a small tower, a victim to the wind, the moist air and lack of movement.

Then I was sent down to the basement (Bucky's home...the Dragon) to cut, thread and grind about 30 custom sized pieces of pipe. Each length of pipe started out as a half inch diameter 5 foot long piece of pipe. I used a chop saw to cut the pipe down to the specific size pieces needed...then I had to grind all the burrs off, then I got to use a lovely tool that threads pipes (I really gives you an upper body workout). Unfortunately the 1/2 diameter pipe did not fit the C-Clamps that we are using so I had to grind down the opposite side of the pipe until it was thin enough to fit into the C-Clamp. By the time I was done my whole body was vibrating and my hands were shaking so badly that I had trouble with my next project which was wiring small little things.

I had 12 of these boxes in 9 different lightwells to wire up. The cable is 12/4 and each of these boxes were custom made by either me or someone else on the crew. Holes had to be drilled (into fiberglass boxes...ick) and the connections all had to be soldiered. So with shaking hands I slowly get all these stripped and wired.

Morning comes...the sun rises...and we all take the raft off the island back to the mainland and walk back to the bullpen. 7am comes around and we all clock out and go home...only I go home just to shower, change, grab something to eat then back into work I go...

In between each of my shows I did my best to nap a little...which did help a little...but it was tough to get through each show without completely zoning out at least a few times. The brainless wonder that is Disney Scheduling though did try to extend me tonight for an emergency Fantasmic! rehearsal. They couldn't get anyone to come in (because a majority of our crew have regular 9 to 5 jobs Monday thru Friday so they can't work a graveyard shift on Sunday night). The money would have been nice but there was NO way I could have gone to the top of a 40 foot tower after already being up for more than 24 hours.

I'm home now and my nice warm cozy bed is calling my name...

DAY ONE: February 10th, 2008; Good King Wenceslas

Wenceslas Square (which is not a square but a long wide street) is a touristy area by day, seedy by night (drunkards, prostitutes, you name it) but some pretty sites. This is a side street off of Wenceslas looking at the Henry Tower. There is a bar at the bottom and a restaurant on the 7th and 8th floor. We ate there that evening (I'll write more about that later). It is a Bell Tower along the "Royal Route". The bell is still there between the restaurant floors but I don't think they ring it anymore.

This building fascinated me because of the old architecture below with the modern addition on the top.

I liked this building just because of the slight curves and roundness it seems to have along with all the different "levels". Modern architecture is so plain and boring. Too bad that it's too time consuming and complicated and expensive to make beautiful ornate buildings like they have in Prague (and most of Europe). It would make for a more beautiful place to live.

This building was amazing! The whole thing was frescoed (Painted with images)! It was a beautiful building already but add the artwork of the fresco (even tho they were faded; which does make me wonder how often they have to do restoration on it so they don't lose it completely) and it's a piece of art.

In Prague most buildings are watching you. A little history lesson: most of the statues are images of gods and heroes/heroines to help protect the family that lives there. But there are also the statues of what looks like cherubs but if you look closely these "cherubs" have horns so there are images of demons and "scary" things also to help convince the ghosts or evil spirits that might be floating by that the building is already occupied with evil spirits and demons.

Always being watched. I love this picture. As the guy in the middle is watching all of us down on the street so is he being watched by the big stone guy to the right. The stone guy the left is watching the same thing the guy in the middle is looking at.

This made me think of Lord of the Rings.

This is NOT the same Budweiser we have here in the states. This Budweiser is actually good beer (a dark amber beer) and made in the town of Budweis. As the Czechs say "how can America have a beer call Budweiser when it's not made in Budweis??" Good question! So American Budweiser is called something totally different in Europe ("Bud") and the Czech Budweiser is called something different here in America ("Czechvar").

The man on the horse is sv Vaclav (St. Wenceslas of "Good King Wenceslas" Christmas Carol fame - but he never was a king...but apparently he was a good man). At the foot of the statue is a little modest plague which is "The Memorial to the Victims of Communism". This area is where most of the protests happened before the Velvet Revolution happened. Behind Wenceslas is the National Museum (which is most like our Natural History Museums here). It houses mostly pre-history stuff: stone tools, clay pots etc..., paleontology (some human but mostly animal, and lots and lots of rocks and minerals. There were a few things that were translated into English but for the most part it was all in Czech. Our favorite exhibit seemed to be one on feet. (More on that later).

This is the view from the steps of the National Museum looking down Wenceslas Square.

This was my first "Tourist" shot of my trip. Me standing in Wenceslas Square with the Statue of Wenceslas and the National Museum behind me. Yay! Wenceslas Square is now mostly casinos, high priced hotels and restaurants, shopping establishments (mostly for tourists), several "cabaret" shows and many black light theatres (which was an interesting experience let me tell you...it's theatre in the black light with a touch of Cirque, and a hint of the Muppets. Very strange indeed.

Skiing

So I went skiing for the first time in almost 15 years. Found out that my skis bindings are broken so I had to rent skis...but skiing is like riding a bike...it came back to me like I did it yesterday. Granted my knee was killing me by the end and my ski boots didn't fit as well as they used to so I have some bruises around my calves and ankles but I had a wonderful time!

I promise I will write more about Prague soon...I just needed to report the skiing as it's been over a decade since I've been...

DAY ONE: February 10th, 2008; Uhelny Trh

This was the neighborhood Ellen and I stayed in while in Praha. This particular area was called Uhelny Trh (I'm not sure what the Uhelny means...maybe a person's name but I'm quite sure the Trh mean "triangle" or something of the sort since this area/park was in the shape of a triangle. I didn't get a picture of it but to the left in this picture there are two set of staircases going down into the ground (I thought at first it was like NYC and it led down to the metro which is their version of a subway) but in fact it was just bathrooms that were closed up at night. Our apartment is on the other side and to the right of that red building (we were off a side street). Great location...walking distance to pretty much everything!

This is a daily open-air market just off another side street from Uhelny Trh called Havelska. They sold everything from fruits and vegetables to clothes to souvenirs and novelty items. After 10pm at night this is one of the streets that became part of the red-light district as it had several "Cabaret" shows and of course red-lights. If you continue down this street and toward the left you would end up in Old Town Square which is the hub of the city.





This is a church that was tucked away in a back alley just up the street from our apartment. We found it as we were walking trying to find Tesco (a supermarket). This church in retrospect in not nearly as grand as the ones I'll show you later but it was pretty and quaint and I liked that it was kind of hidden in the alley.



Tesco is kind of like a Fred Meyer. It has five floors...the 4th floor is all electronics, the 3rd is women's' fashion, 2nd is Men's, ground floor was cosmetics, toiletries, cleaning supplies etc... and negative 1 floor was all food and only food. Ellen and I picked up some supplies for breakfast since we have the lovely kitchenette. Now the Czech Crown (Koruna; Kc) to the American dollar exchange rate was about $1 to 17Kc. So a 100Kc was worth about $6, the 200Kc about $12. It was weird cause when I pulled money out of the "Bankomat" (ATM) I would pull out 3000Kc which was worth about $350. Not counting my plane ticket I spent about a total of $936 (but this included the week long stay at the apartment), so all the food, travel, museums, souvenirs, tours plus our apartment all cost less than $1000! It would have been far more expensive if they were on the Euro as our Dollar is only worth 65cents to 1Euro.

Down this street which is Rytirska you can reach Wenceslas Square (which is not a square but a big fat wide and long street) on the right or if you continue straight you can reach Old Town Square (which is a square) on the left...but directly at the end of this street is the Estates Theatre (I have more pictures of it for later) which is where Mozart himself premiered the opera Don Giovanni. The theatre looks rather small for something that grand and amazing...but it's still amazing! I stood where Mozart had been!