Czeching Out

Saturday May 26.  We cruised the New Quarter today with nothing definate in mind.  Being our last day we wanted to drift a little bit.  We followed a self guided walking tour through the area and learned a bit of history about the events surrounding Czechoslovakia's escape from Communist control.  The girls had a fun time browsing and ultimately buying a few dolls.  That made a nice context to have an interactive discussion about how free markets work.  In the image below they are picking and choosing their dolly's.  They really liked the fact that if they did not like the selection or the price, or even the vendor, they could walk down a few stalls and try it again.  Voila, a free market in action.

In Rome there were a number of one off guys selling stuff in the streets.  The kids got pretty good at walking away when they could not get their price on goofy little things like splat balls a voice changing whistles.  I warned them that once they made eye contact they were in the game.  The guys seemed to let the girls off pretty easy, not Patti though.  She only did this once.  In Venice she stopped to look at one of the ripped off brand bags.  This guy would not let it go, but Patti was not going for it.  He went down a full 75% but she was still not buying.

At the girls request we rented a paddle boat and cruised the Vltava river for an hour.  After we safely navigated the helpless craft away from the waterfall the kids got their sea legs and took the helm and propulsion.  That was great. We kicked back in the reclined lawn chairs on deck and survived a few near misses with no hull damage.

Here is a shot from the boat of the Fred (Astaire) and Ginger (Rodgers) buildings by architect Frank Gehry.

Last night (Friday) we met an old friend of Patti's, Charlie, who moved to Prague about 10 years ago.  He was gracious enough to take us for some authentic Czech food.  It hit the spot even though Patti and I burped garlic for the next 4 hours.  Charlie is starting a medical tourism company in Prague.  What is that you ask?  There are a number of procedures that can be performed at much reduced prices in the Czech Republic and the patient gets a few week vacation out of it while still paying less then in the states.  The girls got crepes Czech style, nutella and all!

We have had fun on all transport types on this trip, the girls love validating the Metro tickets and would sometimes stamp them over and over.  That was not going to be a fun explaination if the transit police inquired.  The last unique type of transit was the tram system in Prague.  Which is basically a wire powered bus on rails.  For what ever reason they seem to make very abrupt stops.  I think this may be caused by tourists, like me, who occasionally step out in front of them.  Anyway, Riley who had to hold on for dear life during one of these stops and let a big toot go.  Aside from the girls dying of laughter it was largely undetectedable over the sensational body odor of the guy next to us.

The pics are up under the Prague link.