Adventures in Praha: December 2007

November 2007

Hello family and friends!

We hope your holiday season is going well. As usual, things here are going great and time is flying. We kept busy in November with a weekend trip to Vienna, a visit from Vanessa (a.k.a. MeeMaw) and of course, daddy's favorite holiday, Thanksgiving.

The Czech's don't celebrate Thanksgiving but some local restaurants cater to the Americans in town with a turkey dinner. Luckily, we were invited to celebrate the big day with our American friends, Dan, Valerie and little Vinson.

Enjoy the photos, keep in touch and Happy Holidays!

With love,

-Britt, Melinda & Laurence

Even though Halloween was long over, Laurence just had to prance around in her Bumble Bee costume one more time.

We jumped on a train one Friday night and headed south (about 5 hours) to Vienna for the weekend. The weather wasn't very inviting but the city, museums, and coffee were. On Saturday morning we first went to the Belvedere Palace, which is divided into two parts (upper and lower) separated by a beautiful garden.
We only visited the upper palace which houses the “art around 1900” display. It includes a big collection of Austrian art including the world’s largest Gustav Klimt collection (The Kiss and Judith), and masterpieces by Schiele and Kokoschka. Here's the link: http://www.belvedere.at/jart/prj3/belvedere/main.jart?rel=en

Like many European cities, Vienna is divided into districts. The first district is where many of the most important sites are concentrated and also includes rows of international luxury fashion shops. Luckily for us, large parts of the first district are also closed to cars, which makes the window shopping experience even more pleasant.

After some window shopping we stopped by St. Stephens cathedral. It's definitely the best known cathedral in the city and, luckily, was saved from intentional destruction at the hands of retreating German forces at the end of WWII. Here's an interior shot showing the high altar at the back of the cathedral. For more about the cathedral, copy and paste this link to your browser: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Stephen%27s_Cathedral%2C_Vienna

Daddy thought riding the ferris wheel at the Prater with mommy would be romantic, silly daddy. Later that night, while walking back to the hotel, daddy slipped and fell hard with me in his arms.
Daddy took one for the team but his cat-like reflexes saved me from a face plant into the sidewalk. After regaining consciousness, daddy looked back to see what made him slip...it was a banana peel! The 3 Stooges were unavailable for comment.

Looking down on a wet and cold amusement park.

Mommy, I can't see out from down here!!

Mommy and daddy are big fans of the movie, Before Sunrise (1994), and daddy loves the movie, The Third Man (1949). What do both of the movies have in common? Both include scenes shot on the reisenrad (ferris wheel) in Vienna.

We woke up Sunday morning to...SNOW!!!

Waiting for the S-Bahn to take us to back to the train station.

We had some time to kill before boarding the train back to Prague so we walked across the street to the Belvedere again. It looked so different under a blanket of fresh snow.

A pre-snowball-to-the-back-of-the-head look back.

Vanessa flew in from her new home in Zurich, Switzerland to see us. Sadly, she was unimpressed with the astronomical clock in old town square.

Mommy took MeeMaw to see all the greatest sites in Prague, including Europe's biggest ball of yarn and this statue from artist, David Cerny (pronounced Chair-knee).

The world-famous hall of mirrors. Love the hat.

What's that face for?

Oh.

A winter-time photo from Petřín Hill.

Pillow fight! Laurence and Vinson played around on the bed while mommy and Valerie cooked the Thanksgiving turkey. Maybe one day we'll remember to turn the lights on before recording video. In the meantime, think of it as art.

Valerie ran out of cooking space and asked if she could use our oven to cook the Thanksgiving turkey. We agreed on one condition: that Laurence and daddy got to keep the wishbone. Valerie strapped the turkey (covered in plastic of course) down to Vinson's stroller for a relaxing ride home.

Here we are at Dan and Valerie's Thanksgiving party enjoying what appears to be daddy's fifth helping. Daddy is a huge turkey junkie.

The busiest shopping day of the year wouldn't be complete without a Christmas tree. The girls are standing in front of Prague's newest, and swankiest, mall called Paladium.