Excellent Adventure 2018 Day 5 - Changing Countries

Today was the day we were supposed to get on a bus and travel to the town of Decin in the Czech Republic and board our ship, the Beyla. And then wake up tomorrow morning in Germany.

Instead, we are getting on a bus and driving to Germany, touring the Bastei along the way.

So now the adventure really begins!

Traffic due to construction along the way turned the 2 hour drive to a 2 1/2 hour drive. The tour guide accompanying us to the Bastei was the same one from the Panoramic Prague tour on Saturday morning - Irene. So we got to hear her “history of Prague in a nutshell” speech, virtually identical word for word, a second time. It didn’t get any better.

There was a bathroom on the bus, but there was a sign on it stating it was closed while the bus was in motion. Well, when else would anyone need to use the bathroom?

Anyway, when we arrived at the Bastei we acquired a new, German, tour guide - Kristina. Very enthusiastic to see us, she announced that we would head towards the Bastei and check out a couple of easy to get to view points, THEN there would be a bathroom break. This meant after 2 1/2 hours on a bus, we still had at least 10 to 15 minutes to go.

It was about 5 minute walk from the parking lot to the first viewing point; as usual I was the one who complained enough and we headed to the bathroom first. What a concept!

Here is a link with more information about the Bastei - a national park in the Saxony part of Germany containing interesting rock formations that resemble the “hoodoos” from Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.

The challenge is - to get a really good view of the rock formations, you need to go down a steep trail with 100 steps. Andy went with the group going down the trail, and I stayed behind and chatted with two other people on the bus with us, Pat and Caroline from Houston, TX.

Here’s some photos from the view at the bridge that’s at the bottom of the trail:

Right around 5:00 p.m., we were back on the bus heading towards our ship, the Astrild. We arrived right around 6:00 p.m.

It really is a tiny, tiny ship. There’s only about 70 of us altogether. The room is also very tiny (smaller than the staterooms we’ve had on ocean cruise ships), but it does what it has to do. We also have our tiny veranda - this is the view:

View from our veranda on the Astrild - the offices of the Prime  Minister of Saxony

At 6:45 we headed to the lounge for the meet-and-greet. Benne (finally found out how to spell her name) introduced us to the crew, made some announcements for the next day (e.g. options for the morning excursion), and then off to dinner we went.

We had great dinner conversation with a couple from Baltimore, and a guy from New York.

Tomorrow: Dresden!

Excellent Adventure 2018 Day 4 - Meeting Up With The Tour

Saturday morning we actually had to get up somewhat early. The meeting time for the morning’s tour was 8:20 a.m.

We had selected “Panoramic Prague” - a walking tour of Prague’s highlights. We saw the beginnings of the confusion generated by people who had taken Viking up on the offer to cancel the trip. We ended up waiting a little bit for people who were not coming. There will be more of this for another day or two, until it all settles down.

Anyway, onto the buses we went - there were two of them, headed in opposite directions. One bus would start at the castle (our bus), the other would start with a brief walk through the Jewish quarter and the old town square.

Our tour guide’s accent was a little hard to understand at first, until we figured out some of her mannerisms (“chick” = Czech). She was pleasant enough, but also a bit boring.

The castle is now the seat of the current government - a complex of huge buildings. The only one we were able to go inside to see was the cathedral, which is spectacular.

The guide mentioned that although the Czech Republic has many churches, it is the least religious country in Europe - 75% of the population considers itself atheist or agnostic. Apparently after centuries of assorted governments forcing the current brand of religion on the Czech people, they became distrustful of government-imposed anything. When the Communist regime came to town and imposed government atheism, Czechoslovakia had the least trouble with that particular aspect of government intervention.

This is a  view of the entire courtyard.

Prague Castle courtyard

The cathedral’s front facade

Prague castle cathedral

And inside:

After the cathedral, we continued on to walk through the Lesser Town to the Charles Bridge. The temperatures were already soaring; the guide did her best to keep us in the shade. Once on the bridge there was no hiding from the sun. The vendors were just beginning to open their stands.

Of all the statues of saints on the Charles Bridge, the only one she talked about was St John of Nepomuk, who has a halo with 5 stars on it. St. John was thrown into the river by a King, who was annoyed that St. John wouldn’t break the seal of the confessional and tell the King what the Queen had confessed. Reportedly 5 stars appeared when St John’s body popped up to the surface.


The Charles Bridge is not very long, and even in the heat it didn’t take long to walk across it. We followed the guide through the mobbed narrow streets to the Old Town Square - where she left us for a “break” (basically lunch), after which we would go back to the bus to take us back to the hotel. We plopped ourselves down in the nearest restaurant and had something light.

We also saw Benne, who said something a little different - the walk back to the bus would be through the Jewish quarter. So we have a mis-match of information.

When we did meet up with the tour guide after the “break”, she reiterated that we were going back to the bus - when we asked about the Jewish quarter, she said she would point things out along the way, but there would be no stops (that’s a separate tour that we did on our own, and also everything would be closed because it was Shabbat). We decided to not take the bus back.

Instead we went back to the street that we walked along from the Charles Bridges and did some shopping, something we hadn’t done at all up until now.

At some point it was just too hot to continue to walk around, and ubered back to the hotel. While we were waiting for the car to arrive, we saw a parade (?) of people on scooters/small motorcycles - no clue what it was about, but we called it the “Rolling Thunder of Prague”.

Back at the hote, we had a few hours until the “Prague at Night” optional tour. Time for our Shabbat nap!

For dinner we tried walking to a restaurant that had gotten good reviews on Yelp. But after a bit of confusion, we figured out the restaurant was long gone. Rather than wandering too far and then having to walk all the way back, we went back to the hotel and had dinner at the bistro.

We met the group at 7:45 p.m. for the night tour. There was a little more confusion over missing people, but once that was settled, we boarded a van and were on our way.

The evening tour guide was just as difficult to understand as the morning guide, and boring as well. Or maybe we were just tired. The first place we stopped was at a monastery with a great view of the city:

The second stop was at the TV tower . We went up to the top and saw this nice viewing of Prague a the sun set.

That was about it. we were back at the hotel by 10:00

Tomorrow: on to Germany, in some confusing fashion.

Excellent Adventure 2018 - Day 3 - Finally Run Out Of Jewish Quarter To See

Another relatively leisurely morning - we were finally underway around 11:00ish. We're getting good use of Uber here - we Ubered back to the Maisel Synagogue to pick up the audio tour device.

We picked up where we left off: Stop #5, the Chevrei Hadisha (burial society). A relatively small exhibit with lots of stairs. Though it seemed like every tour group in creation just decided to show up. There were people yesterday, but today everything was mobbed.

I did like the stained glass windows and the view of the cemetery next door. Plus there was a nice breeze at the windows, the only place there was moving air in the entire building.

Next stop - the Alt Neu Shul (Old New Synagogue). There were at least 3 different explanations as to why it's called that. It all reminded me of how I think of  Yankee Stadium: the Old Old Yankee Stadium  (was there once or twice), the Old New Yankee Stadium (definitely there a couple of times), and now of course the New New Yankee Stadium (not currently on the list).

Anyway, of all the historic synagogues, it was the only one that is regularly active as a synagogue. It is the center of the Jewish community in Prague. The entrance is below ground.

Alt Neu Shul Bima

The women's section is not the more typical balcony - the women are behind a solid wall with small peep holes into the main sanctuary. I cannot imagine what they can hear of the service.

The audio guide kept referring to something called a "nave" - I know what that is in a church. I couldn't quite figure out what it was referring to in the synagogue. The Torah reading table, maybe?

Alt Neu Shul Torah Reading Table

The Spanish Synagogue is the last on the list. It feels like there's a Moorish influence, though it was built long after the Moorish period in Spain had come and gone.

Andy's panorama photo from the original women's section up in the balcony is the best:

Though we were done with synagogues, we listened to the audio guide's explanation of the Golem legend. It's a fun story - we could all use a Golem to do stuff we don't want to do, right?

After turning in the audio guide back at the Maisel Synagogue and taking the opportunity to sit in the shade on a real bench, we decided to get something light to eat at the Restaurant U Golema next door.

Bathroom story for the day: we're done with our meal and ready to go, and of course I'm going to take advantage of the free bathroom. The lights are on a motion sensor, which is fine. Except that the lights go out if I don't move for literally 2 seconds. Some things take longer than 2 seconds in a bathroom. I was constantly flapping my hands to get the light to come on, and then it'd go right out again. Figuring out how to get the toilet paper out of the holder became a serious challenge - I finally resorted to using the flashlight on my phone. I was beginning to wonder if the Golem was loose.

We decided we were going to tackle the traditional walk across the Charles Bridge. In theory only about 10 minutes away, with the heat and the amazing throngs of people everywhere, it took a bit longer than that.

Some really interesting (?) statues of saints all along the bridge, plus vendors, and some performance artists - it reminded me of Las Ramblas in Barcelona and/or the Rialto in Venice.

It's not clear what's happening here:

Or here:

Oh yes, and this:

This young woman is holding an albino ball python. Very nice critter. Small - not even 10 feet long!

Once on the other side of the bridge, it was time to head back to the hotel in theory to meet for a walk at 5:30. The walking part was looking more doubtful, but we wanted to at least maybe meet some of the people in our group. To get back in any kind of a reasonable time frame would require Uber, of course, but the tight streets around the bridge and the castle made that a bit of a challenge. We almost lost our driver due to the confusion as to where to meet him, but it all worked out.

We found Bennie in the main lobby talking to new comers. We asked about tonight's "walk" - it's only to the new town square, where we had dinner our first night here. Really not worth the energy.

At the moment we're contemplating going to dinner. Tonight is a full lunar eclipse - we might head up to the club on the roof to watch.

Tomorrow: we meet the rest of the group on the Panoramic Tour of Prague.

Excellent Adventure 2018 - Day 2 Jewish Prague (or why I wanted to come here)

We decided to sleep in this morning to recuperate from the lingering effects of jet lag. By the time Andy got back from his run and we were done with breakfast, it was after 11:00 before we headed out the door.

Today’s goal - the Jewish quarter. We are purposely doing this on our own and not on a tour so we can see everything and not be raced through anything.

I had found a self guiding walking tour that looked good at first. Once we arrived in the Old Town Square (see the photo of the Astronomical Clock that is still being renovated),

we began to realize that something was wrong with the guide and its map. They didn’t match at all!

Eventually we gave up on it and headed directly to the Jewish Quarter as identified on more reliable maps.

We sort of stumbled across the first synagogue- the Maisel Synagogue. We bought a package ticket to all 6 synagogues plus an audio guide. We finally felt like we were on the right track.

In this photo, that's Andy on the right in the yellow shirt.

Here’s a link to some info about the Maisel Synagogue. It’s most famous rabbi is Rabbi Lowe, who is reportedly the person who created the Golem that protected the Jewish community.

Maisel Synagogue in Prague

This is a panorama of the inside the sanctuary:

We had lunch in the King Solomon Restaurant- one of the few kosher restaurants in Prague. The menu was in Yiddish and English.

After lunch we went to the Pinkas Synagogue, which is the Holocaust Memorial. Normally I don’t go into those, but I decided to brave it. So glad I did.

The walls of the sanctuary has the names of all 80k people murdered during the Holocaust.

The bima is bare and the Torah reading table looks abandoned and sad. The second floor had an exhibition of the children in the Terezin concentration camp. I did not go up there. I knew my limitations.

Next we went out to the cemetery. Dating back to the 1400s and restricted in size by assorted ruling regimes, people had to be buried in layers. The headstones are also stacked or lean against each other. The great Rabbi Lowe is buried here - there is a tradition for people to leave notes and wishes in the cracks and crevices in his headstone. Some headstones are in great shape, some not so much. Some are seriously huge (mini-mausoleums) and some are tiny. So many life stories!

Continuing on, we saw an add-on exhibit - the mikvah that was discovered during the renovation of the synagogue 20+ years ago. We paid an extra $5 and this nice young man, whose name totally escapes me, took us on a min-tour of the old mikvah. Well worth the $5 - he told us that the entrance fee goes 100% to the maintenance of the new Mikva has, built in 1997.

This is the original mikvah - you can see the bottom is wet from the natural ground waters. The water table is now too low to fill the mikvah.

This is the original entrance to the original mikvah, which shows that there definitely was a connection between the Pinkas synagogue and the mikvah.

Next we moved on to the Klausen synagogue - a museum of Jewish ritual artifacts.


I was decidedly uncomfortable in this museum, listening to tour guides talk about my culture and religion as if we were extinct. But some of the items were interesting - very old prayer books, original hand painted Purim scrolls, etc. This is a High Holiday prayer book:

We had to return the audio guide to the Maisel synagogue by 5:30, but we will pick it up again tomorrow.

Coming back to the hotel, we decided to try Uber. Though we had to wait about 10 minutes, the “surge” price was $5 (plus $1 tip). Vladimir our driver wasn’t very chatty; we're guessing his English was not great. We’ve decided that we’ll do this more often to save our walking energy for when we need it.

After a day of walking, we decided to have dinner at the hotel.

Tomorrow: Finish off the Jewish Quarter,  maybe some part of the castle, and our first meet up with the rest of the group.

2018 Excellent Adventure - Days 0 and 1 (Overnight flights make the days run together into a blob)

We already know that this year’s Excellent Adventure has gone off the rails just a little bit. The water level in the Elbe river is too low for the Viking river ship to actually go anywhere. So instead, the Adventure has turned into a bus tour, unfortunately, using the ship as a hotel.

Day 0 - Getting ourselves to Prague.

We drove to JFK in the pouring rain - until we got to Delaware, and then it stopped. We experienced the expected NYC rush hour on the Belt Parkway, which is still under construction  as it has been for the last eleventy billion years. Literally I do not remember a time since I’ve had a driver’s license when that road has not been under construction.

Our flight was slightly delayed - the right engine had to be rebooted? That's not discomforting at all. But all was well - relatively easy 8 hours in the air. I think I managed to pull together 3 hours of sleep! This is close to a personal record!

Day 1

I'm just going to leave this here, because the first photo in the blog becomes the cover photo once it's published. This is the town square, much later in the evening:

Always entertaining using ATMs outside the U.S. - finding the button to switch to English, plus figuring out the exchange rate. Apparently there's about 20 Czk (koruna? krowns? still working on that) to the U.S. dollar. We didn't want to take out much, but it took a few tries to get down a small enough amount - 1,000 CZK. Even knowing that ATMs typically spit out minimum sized bills, we were still somewhat surprised by what popped out - a single 1,000 CZK bill. Hopefully it won't be too hard to break that.

Passport control was dreadful. Lines stood stock still for 5 to 10 minutes at a time. Changing lines didn't help - randomly line 3 was closed, forcing it to merge into line 4 (where we were standing). We also knew if we tried to change lines again, it would also magically come to a grinding halt. So we didn't bother, and waited it out.

Customs was a walk through - I can't remember the last time we had to fill out a paper customs form?

The Viking hosts were waiting for us - we were the next to last couple to pop out of Passport Control, with one more to go. Who never showed. After waiting quite a while in hopes that they might show up, we were escorted to the bus that took us to the Prague Hilton.

We met our tour director - Bennie (?). She ran through things rather quickly, but basically we’ve got a a couple of days in Prague on our own until Saturday, when we start go on our 5 hour walking tour.

The elevator system in this hotel is entertaining - you scan your room key at a panel by the elevator, type in the floor you want, and then the panel tells you which of the four elevators will take you to your floor, and only to your floor.

After that we pretty much crashed for several hours. At some point it was time to struggle our way to wakefulness, take showers, and find dinner.

And of course there’s always a bathroom story. The bathroom in this room is actually two rooms - there’s a separate room for the toilet. With an unhelpful mirror:

The shower is in another room - the shower itself is a tub shower, with tub walls that are half my height.

Entertaining bathroom!

After consulting with the concierge as to a plan of action, we set out to find the recommended restaurant that is off the town square. Bit of a challenge (green awning, behind a bunch of trees, to the left of the market), but we did find it.

"Typical Czech food" as described by the concierge - I had half a roasted duck with two kinds of sauerkraut (white and red), plus bread dumplings.  This was huge:

Always up for a challenge, Andy helped me finish off the duck. I'm not really a meat-n-potatoes kind of person - there is no way I'll be able to keep this up!

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a supermarket and got some fruit and Diet Coke. Well, it’s Coke Zero because we are in Europe. And because we couldn't figure out how to get the mini-bar unlocked (to use it as a fridge), it will be warm Coke Zero. Yum.

We got here in one piece - successful Day 0 and Day 1!

Tomorrow the adventure really begins - the Jewish quarter.