Prague mishaps

Finally, I am able to use my Czech language skills in Prague.  I know “Good day” and “thank you” and I use them interchangeably if necessary.  Czech people have the nerve to smile at my noble attempts to speak their language which has very few vowels.  Speaking of Czech people, they are not the friendliest in the world.  We have noticed that they don’t look at you when they walk past or respond to our friendly nods and smiles.  There are a number of Asian tourists here who have selfie sticks about the size of a golf club.  In order to entertain myself I have tried to photo bomb as many as I can.  One guy even took a video of Bill and I.  Wouldn’t you love to see his vacation pictures!

We arrived in Prague at a very nice hotel and got settled in only to find out it wasn’t the right one – mistake by travel company.  Anyway, we enjoyed our stay there.  We walked around and looked at the beautiful architecture and stumbled onto a great restaurant.  In keeping with my goal to only eat native foods, I had schnitzel which would be like a flattened fried pork chop.  I eyed a man with a big smoked piece of meat on his plate and asked what it was.  It was a pig knuckle which would now become my next quest.  Below is a picture of the pig knuckle I had.

I had scheduled a tour of Jewish town with a lady that I can’t pronounce her name so we called her Henrietta.  She had clown-red/orange hair and walked about 30 miles per hour.  I am a little gimpy and was practically running behind her to keep up.  The tour was very interesting and humbling.  The picture of Bill does not mean that he has converted – he had to have his head covered to go through the Jewish cemetery.  Although the tour was interesting, I was glad to see Henrietta’s back walking away from us.  I was in froth from sweat.

As a surprise for Ronnie and Charlene, Bill and I had booked an antique car to take us around the city.  This could have possibly been one of the greatest plans that I made.  Our little man picked us up in a car which had about 2 inch wheels and we zipped around the city.  It is still very hot here but the breeze was wonderful.  We went around the castle district and signed the John Lennon wall which satisfied my inner hippie.  The driver had difficulty getting across the river because all of the bridges had traffic jams which he said was unusual.  When we finally got on the other side of the river traffic stopped dead.  That cute little antique convertible car was very hot sitting out in the sun.  I literally stuck to the black seats.  The taxis had all decided to have a strike and stop their cars at the ends of the bridges coming into the city and honk their horns.  I guess not every visitor gets to experience that but it sure sucked and the top of my head got sunburned.

From this day of adventure in extreme heat I needed a way to cool off.  They do not believe in extremely cold air conditioning so sitting naked in my room was not working.  I had washed all of our sweaty clothes in the bath tub and it looked like a Chinese laundry so we couldn’t take a shower.  I was hot from the inside out and talked Bill into going swimming with me.  You enter the male or female side – we got that part right.  Bill would have appreciated by side because in the “locker room” I saw quite a few naked women.  I raced passed them in my swimming attire (sorry no pictures) and jumped in the pool.  It was extremely deep and I couldn’t stand up in it.  I did the best I could to swim to the side (remember I have an injured groin so one leg isn’t moving too well).  At last, I am cooling down which is the first time since June 15^th.  When I came up out of the pool I looked at the people standing around and almost puked.  The man closest too me was covered in thick hair, and I mean everywhere.  Then I looked over and saw a man in a speedo.  I closed my eyes and went under and told myself how refreshing the water was feeling.  Bill swims over to me and threw something out of the pool. I said, “What was that?” and he said he didn’t know.  We took one look at it and almost screamed.  It was about a twelve-inch hairball that was in the pool.  I told Bill he mustn’t play with floating objects in the pool.

We have moved to our new hotel which is very nice but apparently bargain priced because it is not near anything.  We have been very lucky with food except for last night.  We had directions to an “authentic” Czech restaurant down the street in an alley.  Prior to this time Charlene had befriended a single lady, Peggy, and we asked her if she wanted to come with us.  Oh what frivolity was had.  We drank and laughed and completely grossed out Peggy with our stories of our youth.  As you know, I have been eating heavy Czech cuisine and when it came to order I was last.  Everyone had ordered fairly dainty meals and I thought I want Peggy to think that I too eat healthy – I didn’t think that she would notice from my size that I was not an athlete.  They ordered fish and grilled vegetables so I thought I would too.  The waitress brought the saddest looking cooked fish to our table.  She had some English skills but when I asked her what kind of fish it was as if sshe suddenly lost her abilities.  From what I understood she kept saying “wolf fish.”  Mine had one glassy eye staring at me and I thought this looks like crap, it may have been carp.  I accidently touched it’s mouth and it had teeth, so then I guessed it must be a piranha.  The others had started eating it and said how good it was.  I told them my piranha was apparently a bottom eater because it didn’t taste so good.  Well one out of three fish were apparently good and I got the bad one.  So now, not only do I have a pulled groin, but food poisoning.  I love my husband so much after last night.  It was worse than childbirth.  I saw the cleaning lady coming to our room and ran down the hall away from her.  I did not know how to say “Sorry” in Czech. 

After we had consumed quite a bit of beer at the diseased fish eatery, we decided to stop at a little grocery and get the national beverage, which is made of herbs and supposed to help with digestion (NOT!!!!!) and act as an aphrodisiac (NOT!!!!).  Remember, we still are dragging Peggy around with us.  So we stood outside of the store swigging on the bottle like a bunch of drunks.  Bill said it tasted like Aqua Velva.  For some reason during this time Charlene said that Bill needed his eyebrows and moustache trimmed and a haircut.  So here all five of us come to our room.  Charlene is playing beautician with Bill, Ronnie is taking a little nap, and Peggy was unable to escape. 

Ronnie is like the bad brother that you never wanted.  When he left our room he took all of the toilet paper and put it outside our door.  Remember, I was just beginning to feel the effects of food poisoning.  Fortunately, Charlene had texted Bill to tell him what Ronnie had done because it was disastrous enough as it was.

Thank you for letting me share my physical ailments with you.  I appreciate all the well wishes for my pulled groin and hope to continue to improve after the crappy carp incident.

P.S.  Charlene and Peggy were going to a concert tonight while the boys and I go to Rick Steve’s favorite pub.  Surprisingly, we haven’t heard from Peggy.