Today I slept in again, then enjoyed the croissant I bought yesterday for breakfast. The weather forecast had a chance of rain in the afternoon, so I packed my raincoat into my bag and headed out in my sun hat. I was only a few feet from the hotel when the rain started, and it lasted most of the day.
This morning I tried out taking the tram instead of walking over the Charles Bridge again. I took a little detour from the route Google Maps gave me when I saw what turned out to be the Czech Senate. There was a pond with koi, and several peacocks, some of them the usual color and some of them white.
My first intended stop of the day was the Basilica of St. James, which was closed when I stopped by yesterday. On the way there I stopped at an ATM in a mall (almost everything can be paid for with a credit card, but Prague collects a city tax for hotels that can only be paid in cash, just like the one in Venice).
The organist was playing when I got to St. James.
Next on my list of things to do today was to stop at a jewelry store (AleAle) recommended in the guidebook. I got myself a pair of nice earrings, then headed back across the river.
Here are today's random building photos (to be properly identified after I get back to my laptop this weekend):
One of the drawbacks to traveling alone is that I don't like eating alone in restaurants, so I tend to end up eating sandwiches in my hotel room. But thanks to Susan signing us up for a food tour in Venice, I've discovered it's a great way to get out and sample local food. I don't necessarily get my money's worth, as I don't drink alcohol and am a light eater (I find that eating about half of each dish on a tour like this is just right for me), but it's worth it to get the local experience.
Today I went on a tour with Eating Europe, and it was a lot of fun! There were eleven of us plus the guide: a family from San Diego, two childhood friends with their husbands (they now live in Wisconsin & Boston), and a professor and his wife from Ohio.
First stop was on a beer boat. They actually make the beer on this boat! We had a soft cheese, which was served as two slices with a sauce between the slices, with bread on the side. The non-drinkers in the group got a house-made blueberry soda:
(The restroom doors)
Next stop was at a gingerbread shop. Czech gingerbread doesn't actually contain ginger, so it has a different taste. We sampled three kinds of cookies there, but there wasn't a good way to photograph cookies in a brown bag, so this photo was taken later at my hotel of the remaining half-cookies:
Course #3 was open-faced sandwiches. The little skewers holding them together are bamboo.
The soup course was served at a restaurant with cool-looking steampunk decor. I had the chicken noodle soup, but I also took a photo of the other one (a sauerkraut soup with spicy sausage, although one of the other people on the tour assured me that "spicy" in Prague isn't really spicy at all).
Our final stop was at Cafe Louvre, where we had a choice of beef sirloin in a vegetable gravy with bread dumplings, paprika chicken with gnocchi that resemble spätzel, or vegetable pancakes. I went with the beef, which was delicious:
We also had our dessert at this restaurant: apple strudel with a cream sauce and whipped cream.
After the tour was over, I backtracked to the gingerbread store to buy some cookies, then went to Havelsky Market to get some fruit:
On the way back to the hotel, I went into a random church. I don't even know the name of it (will look it up later), but it was really nice. I couldn't get a good photo of the organ in this one because the lighting was terrible, so just one photo:
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