Saturday, October 6, 2007

September 2007

Lions and Tigers and Birthdays, Oh My!

September just flew by, didn't it? Here is a rundown of what happened:

- A visit to Prague's natural history museum to see the mammoth exhibit
- An amazing trip to the city Zoo
- Britt's 36th birthday party (eek!)
- A day trip to beautiful Liberec

We hope you enjoy the videos and pictures, and get ready for more exciting adventures from Praha. By the way, blogger has added a new feature allowing its users to embed videos right to the blog site. The feature is great because now we don't have to post them to youtube.com first and then link them to our blog. Be advised that the videos lack the giant "play" arrow in the center so they may be harder to spot.

Much love,

Britt, Melinda, and Laurence Sophia

We kicked off the month of September with a trip to the city's natural history museum with our friends, Morgan and Petr. The museum sits at the top of Wenceslas Square and is a great way to kill a rainy afternoon.

The interior of the museum is so regal. They shot a scene from the first Mission Impossible movie, starring that crazy Scientologist actor, on those same steps.

"Someone tell that mammoth to hold still, he's ruining the shot."

The mammoth ride is finally over. Whew!

View of the museum's inner courtyard. Shot from inside the museum.

After our big day at the museum viewing mammoths, we all went to a cave man-themed restaurant. It was only a few blocks away and they served the best steaks and kabobs we've had in quite some time. The decor was...lame. So lame that, after we ran out of diapers, Laurence decided to pee all over herself and mommy. The two had to leave early and clean up at home but we met up with them later and had a nice relaxing evening drinking wine and talking about Morgan and Petr's future life in Luxemburg. They leave at the end of October:( We'll miss them.

We finally made it to the Prague Zoo. Instead of taking the metro and city bus there we decided to walk a couple of blocks down to the river and take the ferry. This was our first trip to the Zoo here and it's, by far, the best Zoo we've ever been to. The scenery there is amazing, the variety of animals is incredible and they all have lots of natural habitat to roam around in. Put it on your list of things to see when you come for a visit.

"Sometimes when you dream, I dream too..."

This is the point of the river where the ferry turned to drop us off at the Zoo.

Luckily, we were among the first 9,000 visitors that day. Had we arrived later, we would have been forced to clean all the cages.

Monkeys!!!

Skyride!!

Somebody has been a good boy this year.

Where is everybody?!! Expats are always notoriously late.

Looks more like a pre-school than a party.

Laurence helped daddy blow out the candles and cut the cake...such a good helper.

Me, Josh and Augustin enjoying the post-cake sugar coma.

Melinda and Morgan teamed up at the party with Atreyu (like the boy in Neverending Story) and Laurence.

Laurence's new fall collection: striped sweater and rugby-style hat.

"She was a day-tripper, a one-way ticket yeah"...on the last Sunday of September we left Prague for a day trip to the town of Liberec (pronounced: Leebrr-its), about one hour North of Prague by bus, near the border of Poland.

The most getto elevador in Prague is found at the Cerny Most metro stop.

Next stop...playland.

I'm lovin' it!

Big props to Student Agency and their busses. The most luxurious bus ride ever, even though it was only one hour.

Making our way up Prazka street to Liberec's town square.

Liberec's Chinatown = one Chinese restaurant.

Liberec's town hall.

When was this town square built anyway?

Laurence makes it a point to run around every town square she sees.

Liberec's Opera House (Saldovo Divadlo). Too bad it was closed and we couldn't get inside to view the stage curtain designed by Gustav Klimt:(

Probably the world's oldest fire hydrant.

The top of the Imperial Hotel in Liberec looked interesting against the sky.

Mmmm, train station sandwiches are yummy.

A quick glamour shot while waiting to change trains in the great metropolis of Turnov.

They're heeeeere!