PRAGUE "THE PARIS OF EASTERN EUROPE"

A WALK AROUND  PRAGUE

Prague "The Paris of Eastern Europe".  We had heard this epithet over and over again,

There is much of Prague to compare with the City of Lights. We planned a three-day trip to Prague as a little break in the middle of our Holland stay.

We wanted to see for ourselves the city that so many said rivaled the beauty of one of our favorite places, Paris.  What we found was a city dug deep in an architectural and historic heritage that indeed rivaled Paris. Culturally the city claims many of the greats of the art world.

It has Janacek and Dvorak as musical sons and its literary giants have filled the streets with bookstores on nearly every corner.

What we didn't expect was the heat. I know it isn't common. I know I shouldn't judge a place due to a heat wave the likes of which the city had never seen in its recorded weather history, but when you become nauseous due to the overpowering hundred degree temperatures it makes loving the city just a little harder to do.

Funny thing is you can't really show heat in a photograph any more than you can portray smell and let me tell you that with the heat comes a big dose of stench.

Emmy and Rick took to the air-conditioning of our hotel during the hottest hours of the day. We tried to do some museum hopping and shopping by darting into any place that looked as if it might be cool on the few times we all made it outside but our trips together didn't last more than a few minutes. We did find a few things we might not have taken in if it weren't for sign "Air-conditioned" outside a few stores.

If it weren't for that sign we never would have seen this crystal light fixture shaped like a basketball net

or found a fast food restaurant that served Mongolian BBQ.

Though the heat stopped us, it didn't seem to stop the throngs of tourists who decided they had paid their fee and they were going to get their sweaty money's worth regardless of the pain and the possibility of heat stroke. Although we did see some novel ways of beating the heat like dipping your feet in a tank of skin eating fish originally meant as a sort of live pedicure,

jumping in fountains fully clothed

or like Emmy - wrapping yourself in the cold-blooded embrace of a slithering snake.

Had I been a writer before the advent of the computer I would have had an excuse for not being able to put pen to paper. The sweat dripping from my forehead onto the paper would have smeared whatever I might have written into a marbleized mess of blue ink.

I'll not pretend to anything more than physical exhaustion and hopefully let the pictures of Prague's architectural beauty I took mostly from the hours of 5:00am to 8:00am or after ten at night do the talking for me.