Springing into Prague!!!!!!

Went to the Prague Zoo today. It was quite beautiful. They have the animals who like mountains way up a hill that one takes a ski lift to climb. Beautiful view of the city from there. We found that to be true from the park near Anja and Sofie's pottery class as well. It over looks the river and the old town, new town, and real new town. One can also see a miniature Eiffel tower from everywhere. Haven't been there yet though. The National Museum was a natural history museum of which we saw Zoology and 'Pre-History to Walking on the Moon.' That museum had a lot of shoes. Really gorgeous shoes from Morocco. I find that the Moroccan style is one of my favorites. Often when I am struck by the beauty of something, it turns out to be Moroccan. I am sorry I missed the Moroccan spring herb tour but the timing did not work for me at all. The shoes Anja was most struck by were the ones put on women whose feet were bound in China in the past. Ouch! Everywhere we go, we see so much, yet we always inevitably leave something to come back for. We want to go to the National museum for the two more floors of exploration and back to the zoo for some pretty large animals -the elephants- that we somehow missed. The zoo is 62 hectares which didn't really mean anything to me before going there, but I now realize is pretty large. There was a big flood in 2002 that wiped out a good part of the zoo. They received a lot of money for re-building and the zoo is beautifully done. All the animals seemed quite content. We've really made a tour of Europe by zoos and natural history museums. Anja counted the steps in the church tower we climbed. The sign said 286 or 7. But she said there were only 280. You gotta keep on top of these things. I think the people climbing as she counted on the way down appreciated knowing how many more steps were ahead of them. Atleast the ones near the top appreciated it anyway. Today we had chicken stir fry for dinner thanks to Caleb. Anything but sausage would be good at this point. Prague, like Germany, is filled with sausage on the streets, at the subway stations, everywhere. The butcher has I-don't-know-how-many kinds of sausage and then if you buy something else, it somehow tastes like sausage. Caleb thought he was buying a small loaf of bread and it turned out to be sausage. We are not even trying to learn the language this time. Just gonna stick with the francais as far as language acquisition goes for this year. You can't help but pick up some fun words though like Brambury are potatoes. Practically everything ends in "y", well especially words that would otherwise be English like cigarettey. Though casinos are Herna of which there are many everywhere. The Czech people must like to gamble, drink a lot of beer, and smoke a lot of cigarettys. The Marionettes are quite popular especially in the touristy areas. They are fun, though mostly not as nice as the ones Simon and Mary sent us. We have yet to go out for some goulash, and there are enough museums in this town to keep us busy for twice our stay or more, but we've really been enjoying the local pool in walking distance. We also really enjoyed our two hour walk alone together during pottery class so we signed them up for six more Tuesdays. The Horse Chestnut trees are about to bloom as are the Lilacs which are huge like Michigan lilacs. There are so many fruit trees and tulips in full bloom now. It is gorgeous. I really want to make it to the botanical gardens (there are two). One is said to have twenty something varieties of cherry trees which should be spectacular right now, though if we wait, there is said to be a great Rhododendron garden as well. Either way should suit us just fine.